Wood-Folk Comedies

Part 1

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

BOOKS BY WILLIAM J. LONG

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES HOW ANIMALS TALK

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817

“Deer appear on the opposite shore, stepping daintily; the wild ducks glide out of their hiding place.”]

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

The Play of Wild-Animal Life on a Natural Stage

BY WILLIAM J. LONG

Author of “How Animals Talk” “Brier-Patch Philosophy” “School of the Woods” “Northern Trails” etc.

Illustrated

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published October, 1920

I-U

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD 3

II. THE BIRDS’ TABLE 15

III. FOX COMEDY 32

IV. PLAYERS IN SABLE 44

V. WOLVES AND WOLF TALES 57

VI. EARS FOR HEARING 78

VII. HEALTH AND A DAY 90

VIII. NIGHT LIFE OF THE WILDERNESS 113

IX. STORIES FROM THE TRAIL 138

X. TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY 176

XI. WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER 184

XII. A NIGHT BEWITCHED 214

Part 2

XIII. THE TRAIL OF THE LOUP-GAROU 233

XIV. FROM A BEAVER LODGE 256

XV. COMEDIANS ALL 283

ILLUSTRATIONS

“DEER APPEAR ON THE OPPOSITE SHORE, STEPPING DAINTILY; THE WILD DUCKS GLIDE OUT OF THEIR HIDING PLACE” Frontispiece

“HE SCRAMBLED UP IT WITH ALMOST THE EASE OF A SQUIRREL AND DISAPPEARED INTO THE TOP” Facing p. 42

“THE REST SPREAD INTO A FAN-SHAPED FORMATION AS THEY CAME STRAIGHT ON” “ 74

“HE IS A VERY EXPERT FISHERMAN, AND FINDS PLENTY TO EAT WITHOUT INTERFERING WITH ANY OTHER” “ 188

“THEIR VERY ATTITUDE MADE ME FEEL QUEER, FOR THEY WERE IN TOUCH WITH A MATTER OF WHICH I HAD NO WARNING” “ 226

“WITH A SUDDEN ACCESS OF COURAGE HE POUNCED ON HIS FIND, WHIRLED IT UP IN THE AIR, SCAMPERED HITHER AND YON LIKE A PLAYING KITTEN” “ 242

“THE SILHOUETTE OF THAT QUIET BEAVER STOOD OUT LIKE A WATCHMAN AGAINST THE EVENING TWILIGHT” “ 266

“THEN HE PEEKS CAUTIOUSLY AROUND THE TREE, AND VERY LIKELY FINDS A BLACK NOSE COMING TO MEET HIM” “ 296

WOOD-FOLK COMEDIES

PRELUDE: MORNING ON MOOSEHEAD

Sunrise in the big woods, morning and springtime and fishing weather! For the new day Killooleet the white-throated sparrow has a song of welcome; fishing has its gleeman in Koskomenos the kingfisher, sounding his merry rattle along every shore where minnows are shoaling; and for the springtime even these dumb trees grow eloquent. Yesterday they were gray and dun, as if life had lost its sense of beauty; to-day a mist of tender green appears on every birch tree, a blush of rose color spreads over the hardwood ridges. Woods that all winter have been silent, as if deserted, are now alive with the rustling of eager feet, the flutter of wings, the call of birds returning with joy to familiar nesting places.

Above these quiet voices of rejoicing sounds another note, loud, rhythmic, jubilant, which says that Comedy, light of foot and heart, has once more renewed her lease of the wilderness. High on a towering hemlock a logcock has his sounding board, dry and resonant, where he makes all the hills echo to his lusty drumming. The morning light flames on his scarlet crest as he turns his head alertly, this way for the answer of a mate, that way for the challenge of a rival. Nearer, on the roof of my fishing camp, a downy woodpecker is thumping the metal cover of the stovepipe, a wonderful drum, on which he can easily make more noise than the big logcock.

Every day before sunrise that same little fellow appears on my roof, so punctually that one wonders if he keeps a clock, and bids me “Top o’ the Morning” by sending a fearful din clattering down the stovepipe. It is a love-call to his mate, no doubt; but the Seven Sleepers in my place must be roused by it as by dynamite. This morning he exploded me out of sleep at four-twenty, as usual; and so persistent was his rackety-packety that I lost patience, and threw a stick of wood at him. Away he went, crying “Yip! Yip!” at the meddlesome Philistine who had no heart for love, no ear for music. He was heading briskly for the horizon when, remembering his shy mate, he darted aside to the shell of a white pine, where he drummed out another message, only to meet violent opposition from another Philistine. He had sounded one call, listened for the effect, and was in the midst of another ecstatic vibration when there came a scurry of leaves, a shaking of boughs, and Meeko the red squirrel appeared, threatening death and destruction to all drummers.

Evidently Meeko was planning a nest of his own in that vicinity, and had no mind to tolerate such a noisy fellow as a near neighbor. As he came headlong upon the scene, hurling abuse ahead of him, the woodpecker vanished like a wink, leaving the enemy to threaten the empty air; which he did in a fashion to make one shudder at what might happen if a red squirrel were half as big as his temper. Once I saw a bull-moose accidentally shake a branch on which Meeko happened to be sitting while he ate a mushroom, turning it around in his paws as he nibbled the edges; and the peppery little beast followed the sober great beast two or three hundred yards, running just above the antlered head, calling down the wrath of squirrel-heaven on all the tribe of moose. Now, in greater rage because the object of it was so small, he whisked all over the pine, declaring it, kilch-kilch! to be his property, and warning all woodpeckers, zit-zit! to keep forever away from it. Hardly had he ended his demonstration of squirrel rights and gone away, swearing, to his interrupted affairs when another hammering, louder and more jubilant, began on the pine shell.

Here was defiance as well as trespass, and Meeko came rushing back to deal with it properly. Sputtering like a lighted fuse he darted up the pine and took a flying leap after the drummer, determined this time to make an end of him or chase him clean out of the woods. Into a thicket of spruce he went, shrilling his battle yell. Out of the thicket flashed the woodpecker, unseen, and doubled back to the starting point. There a curious thing happened, one which strengthened my impression that all birds have more or less ventriloquial power to make their calling sound near or far at will. The woodpecker lit on precisely the same spot he had used before, and hammered it with the same rapidity and rhythm; but now his drum sounded faintly, distantly, as if on the other side of the ridge. Growing bolder he changed his note, put more hallelujah into it, and was in the midst of a glorious rub-a-dub when Meeko came tearing back through the spruce thicket and hunted him away.

So the little comedy ran on, charge and retreat, till a second Meeko appeared and held the fort, while the first ran after the drummer. Now, as I watch the play, there is triumphant squirrel talk on the pine shell, and the woodpecker is again drumming lustily on the stovepipe cover.

Farther back in the woods sounds the roll of another drum, a muffled brum, brum, brum, which you must hear many times before you learn to locate it accurately. Of all forest sounds it is the vaguest, the most mysterious, the hardest to associate with distance or direction. Now it comes to you from above, like a dim echo of distant thunder, and suddenly you understand the bird’s Indian name, Seksagadagee, little thunder-maker; again it drifts in vaguely from all directions, filling the air like the surge of a waterfall at night. Listen attentively, and the drum seems to be near at hand, quite distinctly in front of you; but take a few careless steps in that direction and it is gone, like a flame that is blown out, and when you hear it once more it sounds faintly from the valley behind you.

Somewhere out yonder, not nearly so remote as you think, a cock partridge or ruffed grouse is finding a mate by the odd method of drumming her up; for he never goes in quest of her, but rumbles his drum day after day, sometimes also on moonlit nights, till she appears in answer to his summons. Though I have often seen little Thunder-maker when he was filling hill and valley with his love-call, never yet have I learned how he sounds his drum; so I must have another look at him. Taking every precaution against noise, moving only when the muffled thunder rolls through the woods, I creep nearer and nearer till I locate a great mossy log and-- Ah! there he is, a beautiful creature, standing tense as if listening. There is a flash of wings up and down, so swift that I cannot follow the motion or tell whether the hollow brum sounds when the stiffened wings are above the bird’s back or in front of his pouting chest. He does not beat the log; I have an impression that the booming sound is made by columns of air caught under the wings and driven together when the grouse strikes forward. If you cup your hands and drive them almost against your ears, repeating the action till you hear the air boom, you will have a faint but excellent imitation of the partridge’s drum call. The explanation remains theoretical, however, for even with the bird under my eyes I cannot say for a certainty how the sound is made. I see flash after flash of the wings, and with each comes an answering brum; then the wing-beats follow faster and faster till individual sounds merge in a continuous roll; which suddenly grows faint, as if moving away, and seems to vanish in the far distance.

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