Watched by Wild Animals Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo. by E. R. Warren_ _The Prairie Dog_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo. by E. R. Warren_ _The Cony_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Drawing by Will James_ _Looking for Small Favours_]

A dignified grizzly and a number of pompous, stiff-necked rams met and were so filled with curiosity that everyone forgot reserve and good form. They stopped and turned for looks at one another and thus merged a rude, serious affair into a slowly pa.s.sing, successful meeting.

I sometimes sat at a point on this ridge trail so that the pa.s.sing animal was in silhouette. The background was a lone black spruce against the s.h.i.+fting sky scenery. Horns and whiskers, coats of many colours, and exhibits of leg action went by. Horned heads, short-arched necks, and held-in chins abundantly told of pride and pomposity. But the character topography was in each back line. From nose tip to tail, plateau, canon, hill, and slope stories stood against the sky.

The tail, though last, was the character clue to the pa.s.sing figure.

Regardless of curve, kink, or incline, it ever was story revealing: sometimes long and flowing, but the short tail att.i.tude incited most imaginative interest in the attached individual.

From treetop I watched one trail where it was crossed by a stream.

Generally deer and sheep went through the stream without a stop. In it bears often rolled. Sometimes they used the wilderness bridge--the beaver dam, and occasionally they splashed through the pond. Coyotes, porcupine, squirrels, rabbits, and lynx used the dam. A porcupine backed a lynx off this into the water, the lynx threatening and spitting. But the lynx met a rabbit near the other end and the rabbit went back with the lynx.

A grizzly was about to cross when three fun-loving grizzly cubs appeared. He stood aside and watched, perhaps enjoyed, their pranks in the water before coming across. On the bank the cubs hesitated for a moment before pa.s.sing a sputtering squirrel who was denouncing them for youthful pranks. A few inches of the first snow was on the ground.

I went back along the trail and examined tracks. At one point a lion had come out of the woods and given the cubs a scare; and still farther back they had stood on hind feet one behind the other, evidently watching a black bear go well around them.

Two flocks of bighorn mountain sheep pa.s.sed by in single file like two lines of proud, set wooden figures. One of these flocks was down from the heights to visit a far-off salt lick. The other evidently was returning to its local territory on the high range by a circuitous route after being driven off by hunters. A few days later I saw these flocks meet on a high plateau. They stopped to visit. Then one flock turned back with the other and both edged over to an outlook rim of the plateau where I left them, racing and playing in the on-coming darkness.

In numberless places I saw a single wild fellow meet his species. Two coyotes advanced bristling and pa.s.sed snarling. Another time two coyotes met, eyed, and then turned off in the woods together. Two wild cats advanced with declaration of war, made the forest aisles hideous with whoops and threats, struck att.i.tudes which go with blood and gore--but nothing happened. Two squirrels approached, each loudly demanding the right-of-way. They bl.u.s.tered, backed-up, threatened, raced tempestuously up and down trees, and finally boastingly pa.s.sed.

Many a time two rabbits speeded silently by without a slowing, a signal, or a look. Others kicked as they pa.s.sed. One mid-winter day two rabbits leaped to meet mid-air; then like bucking bronchos they leaped high for action and like miniature mules turned here and there to kick at the target with two feet. If this was fight or frolic only rabbits know.

It often happened that the breeze was favourable and I watched the pa.s.sing processions from my camp. Near camp two otters met and turned aside and later I followed their trail to otter slide. Two woodchucks met by a boulder on which I sat quietly. They counter-marched in half war-like half circles. A pause, then with apparently friendly negotiations progressing, they discovered a coyote slipping toward them.

Many times through the years I waited for odd hours, and days, at a promising place on a trail a few miles from my cabin. The tracks along this showed it to be in constant use, but never have I seen a traveller pa.s.s along it. My being at many a meeting elsewhere was just a coincidence. Years of wilderness wanderings often made me almost by chance an uninvited guest--I was among those present.

Dull fellows well met were skunk and porcupine. These dull-brained but efficiently armed fellows are conceded the right-of-way by conventional wilderness folk. They blundered to head-on clash. Never before had this occurred. Each was surprised and wrathy. There was a gritting of teeth. Each pushed and became furious. Then the skunk received several quills in the side and in turn the porcupine a dash of skunk spray. Both abandoned the trail, sadder but not wiser.

Deer, bear, beavers, and wolves travel because they need to do so, or for the fun of it. Deer s.h.i.+ft for miles from a summer to a winter range, travelling a regular migration route. A number of enemy wolves may follow this moving food supply. Beavers may be seeking a home in new scenes and a bear may be off on an adventure.

Wild life trails were worn by generation after generation of wild animals using the same route, the line of least resistance long followed from one territory to another. Trampling feet a.s.sisted by wind and water maintained a plain trail. Indian trails often were wild life trails. Stretches of buffalo trails on the plains and bear trails in Alaska were abandoned because so deeply worn and washed.

From a low cliff by a mountain stream I watched the wild life along the trail on the other side of the stream. The canon was wooded but the trail immediately opposite was in the open.

Two packs of wolves met on the trail across the river. The leaders rushed to grips and a general mix-up was on. But this was surprisingly brief. There was an outburst of snarling and the gangs pa.s.sed with but little loss of time and with but one limping.

Often as these travellers pa.s.sed out of sight after a meeting I wondered what and when would be their next adventure. Around a turn of the trail within five minutes after the black bear met the skunk he clashed with a lion, so tracks by the trail showed.

I often wondered, too, what experience an animal had been through immediately before he trailed into my sight. The peevish lion was just from her fat, safe, happy kittens. One of the two cross grizzlies was from a row with another grizzly, while the other had been playing along the trail and was on good terms with himself and the world.

When skunk and mink--the more offensive of the smelly family--meet in contest, then smells to heaven their meeting. Driven into a corner, the mink will spread high-power musk in the only avenue of advance. He then is in an impregnable position--no fellow has nose sufficiently strong to pa.s.s. Or, if the mink place a guarding circle of musk around a prize kill this makes a time lock and will hold his prize for hours against all comers.

A skunk and mink clashed by the trail across the river. The skunk was leisurely advancing to seize a flopping, misguided trout on the bank when a mink rushed as though to close with the skunk. The skunk hesitated--and lost the fish. The mink in the delay of action made musk screen near the trout. The skunk went into action and drove the mink off with vile skunk spray. The musk of mink caused his advance to pause, he edged around to the other side, but too much, gave up the fish, and walked off gritting his teeth.

Beavers commonly leave stuffy house and spend summer vacation miles up or down stream. They travel by water. The swift water of a rapids forced two companies of beaver travellers to use the trail of land-lubbers on the bank. Here the company going up visited with another company going down. They mingled, smelled, and rubbed noses.

The company going up turned back and both went off to frolic in a beaver pond. Later one company went on down and the other up the stream. Tracks showed that ten left the pond going down; this company had numbered twelve when it met the other company. The up-bound company numbered fourteen at the meeting. Late that day I counted those going up stream as they left the trail and took to the water at the head of the rapids. They had increased their number to sixteen.

Two droves of deer met one October on the trail by stream and a beaver pond. They stopped, mingled, visited, and then laid down together. One drove was migrating from summer range on the peaks and high plateaus to winter range miles below. It was following along a trail generations old. The other drove was home-seeking. A forest fire with smoke still in the sky had laid barren their home territory.

From my treetop observation tower I saw a single coyote coming, and wondered what would be his att.i.tude concerning the blockading of the trail by superior numbers, and also how these superior numbers would receive a single ancient enemy. But the deer were indifferent to the lone little wolf. They utterly ignored him.

The coyote walked leisurely around the vast a.s.semblage with an air of owners.h.i.+p. Then he sat down before them and eyed them with a display of cynical satisfaction. He turned from this inspection and with a leisurely, contented air walked by with, "I haven't time to-day--but I should worry."

I had my camp by a cliff a short distance up stream and of mornings birds were numerous. A waterfall was at its best in the night. I had planned to watch this place another day or two but the wind was from the wrong quarter--it would carry my scent and warn travellers that a possible killer was in ambush. So I travelled away on this trail.

Many a time in the wilds I "met up" unexpectedly with wild life. And as I recall these meetings I plan again to be among those present.

Unexpected meetings and near meetings were had with most large and leading species of animals on the Continent. The alert grizzly, realizing I was one of the super-killer species, generally avoided me.

I travelled alone and unarmed, and before I had satisfied myself that the grizzly is not a ferocious animal I most unexpectedly met one. I was his bogie--both acted on the impulse.

In the wilds one may meet a skunk or a bear. Either gives concentration--one's every-day faculties take a vacation, and the Imagination has the stage. A bear adventure is telling. You meet the bear, he escapes, and eager listeners hear your graphic story.

The skunk is a good fellow--a good mixer. His policy is to meet or be met--the other fellow will attend to the running. The war-filled wilderness of tooth and claw ceases to be aggressive in the pacifying process of the little black and white skunk. When a skunk goes into reverse thus runs the world away. From the met skunk you absorb story material--local colour, carry off enduring evidence; your friends scent the story, they shrink from you; from registered fragments their creative faculties have restored a movie scene.

CHAPTER X

REBUILDING A BEAVER COLONY

In pa.s.sing the Meadow Beaver Colony one July afternoon I saw an old beaver come up out of the water with a ball of mud in his forepaws. He jammed this mud into a low spot in the dam. Tracks in the mud along the top of this old dam, and a number of green aspen sticks with the bark eaten off lying on the side of the house, showed that a number of beavers had been using this old house and pond for several days.

This was interesting because the place had been abandoned fifteen years before and most of the old beaver works were in ruins. One house, now a mound overgrown with willows, retained its form. The pond it was in had not filled with sediment.

Did this repairing of the dam mean that this old colony was to be resettled by beavers? It probably did, for the beavers ever work for a purpose and not just to be working. It was mid-summer and all beavers who were not making emergency repairs or extensive improvements were off on a summer vacation.

Beavers, like people, occasionally settle in scenes formerly occupied by their kind, and build among the ruins of the long ago. Many a beaver colony, like many an ancient city, has one or more cities buried beneath it.

A few days after seeing the big old beaver at work on the dam I discovered him digging in a ca.n.a.l all alone. Tracks showed that other beavers had been working in the ca.n.a.l, but just why this one was so bold and showed himself during the daytime I could not guess.

That these beavers were at work on a ca.n.a.l left no doubt about their having come to stay. Meantime, the beavers occupied the old house and pond while making this ca.n.a.l and doing other pioneer settlement work.

They cleaned it out and patched it up for a temporary camp only.

A ca.n.a.l is one of the best exhibitions of beaver skill. About twenty feet of this ca.n.a.l was finished and it was about three feet wide and eighteen inches deep. It began in the northeast corner of the old pond and was being dug across a filled-in gra.s.s-grown pond which had been washed full of mud and sand. It pointed at an aspen grove out in the pines two hundred feet away. It was probable that this ca.n.a.l would be dug as close as possible to the aspen grove, then the ca.n.a.l filled with water from somewhere and used to float aspen poles down to the beginning--the lower end--of the ca.n.a.l. And close to the lower end a house was almost certain to be built.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Meadow Beaver Colony Water level in ca.n.a.l 3 feet higher than level in pond Ca.n.a.l 15 inches deep 30 inches wide, 70 feet long Aspen grove 120 feet from house.

Willows gra.s.s aspen grove where food is obtained Ca.n.a.l dug in meadow formed by silt and sediment filling old beaver pond A Beaver Ca.n.a.l]

A buried log in the ca.n.a.l was gnawed in two and removed. The ca.n.a.l curved around a boulder too large to be removed. At a distance of eighty-one feet from the lower end the ca.n.a.l-builders came in contact with granite rock and brought the ca.n.a.l to a stop by enlarging the upper end into a basin about ten feet across.

The entire length of this ca.n.a.l was through the sediment of a former beaver pond. After making a pond beavers must occasionally raise the height of the dam to deepen the water, and also dredge the mud from the bottom. But despite both dredging and dam raising, the pond sooner or later fills with sediment and has to be abandoned. In due time it is overgrown with gra.s.s or a forest.

Food shortage--complete exhaustion of the aspen growth--had compelled the abandonment of the Meadow Colony after it had been a beaver settlement for a great many generations. Two large ponds, a dozen smaller ones, and three houses were left to their fate. Most of the smaller ponds were completely lost, being overgrown with willows. Two of the houses had crumbled and were now low wild flower beds.

Since abandonment a number of aspen groves had grown, and although these were some distance from the stream, they could be reached and would furnish necessary food supply.