Samuel Scoville

A thousand and a thousand years ago, seven saints hid from heathen persecutors among the cold mountains which circle Ephesus. The multitude who cried, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” are drifting dust, and the vast city itself but a mass of half-buried ruins. Yet somewhere in a lonely cave sleep those seven holy men, unvexed by sorrow, untouched by time, until Christ comes again. So runs the legend.

It is a far cry to Ephesus, and whether the Seven still sleep there, who may say? Yet here and now seven other Sleepers live with us, who slumber through our winters, with hunger and cold and danger but a dream. Their names I once rhymed for some children of my acquaintance. As I am credibly advised that the progress of a camel through the eye of a needle is an easy process compared to having a poem printed by the Atlantic Press, I hasten to include in this chapter the following exquisite bit of free verse (I call it free because I don’t get anything extra for it).

The Bat and the Bear, they never care

What winter winds may blow;

The Jumping-Mouse in his cozy house

Is safe from ice and snow.

The Chipmunk and the Woodchuck,

The Skunk, who’s slow but sure,

The ringed Raccoon, who hates the moon,

Have found for cold the cure.

Something of the lives of these our brethren of the wild I have tried to set forth here—because I care for them all.

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First comes the slyest, the shyest, and the stillest of the Seven—the blackbear, who yet dwells among men when his old-time companions, the timber-wolf and the panther, have been long gone. Silent as a shadow, he is with us far oftener than we know. Only a few years ago bears were found in New Jersey, in dense cedar-swamps, unsuspected by a generation of near-by farmers. In Pennsylvania and New York they are increasing, and I have no doubt that they can still be found in parts of New England, from which they are supposed to have disappeared a half-century ago. In fact, it is always unsafe to say that any of the wild-folk have gone forever. I have lived to see a herd of seven Virginia deer feeding in my neighbor’s cabbage-patch in Connecticut, although neither my father nor my grandfather ever saw a wild deer in that state. In that same township I once had a fleeting glimpse of an otter, and only last winter, within thirty miles of Philadelphia, I located a colony of beaver.

The blackbear is nearly as black as a blacksnake, whose color is as perfect a standard of absolute black on earth as El Nath is of white among the stars. He has a brownish muzzle and a white diamond-shaped patch on his breast. Sometimes he is brown, or red, or yellow, or even white. Not so wise as the wolf, or so fierce as the panther, yet the blackbear has outlived them both. “When in doubt, run!” is his motto; and like Descartes, the wise blackbear founds his life on the doctrine of doubt. As for the unwise—they are dead. To be sure, even this saving rule of conduct would not keep him alive in these days of repeating rifles, were it not for his natural abilities. A bear can hear a hunter a quarter of a mile away, and scent one for over a mile if the wind be right. He may weigh three hundred pounds and be over two feet wide, yet he will slip like a shadow through tangled underbrush without a sound.

Bear-cubs are born in January, after the mother bear has gone into winter quarters, blind and bare and pink, and so small that two of them can be held at once on a man’s hand. Bears mate every other year, and the half-grown cubs hibernate with the mother during their second winter.

The blackbear is a good swimmer, and may sometimes be seen crossing lonely lakes in the northern woods. At such times he is an ugly customer to tackle without a gun, as he will swim straight at a canoe and tip it over if possible. A friend of mine, while fishing in upper Canada, on a sluggish river between two lakes, saw a bear swimming well ahead of the canoe. He began to paddle with all his might to overtake him, but to his surprise seemed to be moving backwards. Looking around, he saw his guide, who was more experienced in bear-ways, backing water desperately. Just then the swimming animal turned his head and saw the canoe. Instantly the hair on his back bristled and stood up in a long stiff ridge, and he stopped swimming—whereupon my friend found himself instantaneously, automatically, and enthusiastically assisting the guide.

Even where the blackbear is common, one may spend a long lifetime without sight or sound of him. There may be half a dozen bear feeding in a berry-patch. You may find signs that they are close at hand and all about. Yet no matter how you may hide and skulk and hunt, never a glimpse of one of them will you get. In bear country you will more often smell the hot, strong, unmistakable scent of a bear who is watching you close at hand, than see the bear himself. In fact the sight of a wild blackbear is an adventure worth remembering.

Personally, I am ashamed to say that, although I have tramped and camped and fished and hunted on both sides of the continent, I have never really seen a bear. Twice I have had glimpses of one. The first time was in what was then the Territory of Washington. I was walking with a friend through a bit of virgin forest. The narrow path was walled in on both sides by impenetrable wind-breaks and underbrush. As we suddenly and silently came around a sharp bend, there was a crash through a mass of fallen trees, and I almost saw what caused it. At least I saw the bushes move. Right ahead of us, in the mould of a torn and rotted stump, was a foot-print like that of a broad, short, bare human foot. It was none other than the paw-mark of Mr. Bear, who is a plantigrade and walks flat-footed. Although I was sorry to miss seeing him, yet I was glad that it was the bear and not the man who had to dive through that underbrush.

Another time I was camping in Maine. Not far from our tent, which we had cunningly concealed on a little knoll near the edge of a lonely lake, I found a tiny brook which trickled down a hillside. Although it ran through dense underbrush, it was possible to fish it, and every afternoon I would bring back half a dozen jeweled trout to broil for supper. One day I had gone farther in than usual, and was standing silently, up to my waist in water and brush, trying to cast over an exasperating bush into a little pool beyond. Suddenly I smelt bear. Not far from me there sounded a very faint crackling in the bushes on a little ridge, about as loud as a squirrel would make. As I leaned forward to look, my knee came squarely against a nest of enthusiastic and able-bodied yellow-jackets. Instantly a cloud of them burst over me like shrapnel, stinging my unprotected face unendurably. As I struck at them with my hand, I caught just one glimpse of a patch of black fur through the brush on the ridge above me. The next second my hand struck my eye-glasses, and they went spinning into the brush, lost forever, and I was stricken blind. Thereafter I dived and hopped like a frog through the brush and water, until I came out beyond that yellow-jacket barrage. I never saw that bear again. Probably he laughed himself to death.

The blackbear is undoubtedly leather-lined, for he will dig up and eat the bulbs of the jack-in-the-pulpit, which affect a human tongue—I speak from knowledge—like a mixture of nitric acid and powdered glass. Moreover, he is the only animal which can swallow the tight-rolled green cigars of the skunk-cabbage in the early spring. An entry in my nature-notes reads as follows:—

“Only a fool or a bear would taste skunk-cabbage.”

My lips were blistered and my tongue swollen when I wrote it. The fact that the blackbear and the blackcat or fisher are the only two mammals which can eat Old Man Quill-Pig, alias porcupine, and swallow his quills, confirms my belief as to the bear’s lining. The dog, the lynx, the wild cat, and the wolf have all tried—and died.

Last spring, in northern Pennsylvania I found myself on the top of a mountain, by the side of one of those trembling bogs locally known as bear-sloughs. There I had highly resolved to find the nest of a nearby Nashville warbler, which kept singing its song, which begins like a black-and-white warbler and ends like a chipping sparrow. I did not suppose that there was a bear within fifty miles of me. Suddenly I came upon a large, quaking-aspen tree set back in the woods by the side of the bog. Its smooth bark was furrowed by a score of deep scratches and ridges about five feet from the ground, while above them the tree had apparently been repeatedly chewed. I recognized it as a bear-tree. In the spring and well through the summer certain trees are selected by all the he-bears of a territory as a signpost whereon they carve messages for friend and foe. No male bear of any real bearhood would think of passing such a tree without cutting his initials wide, deep, and high, for all the world to see.

The first flurries of snow mean bed-time for Bruin. He is not afraid of the cold, for he wears a coat of fur four inches thick over a waistcoat of fat of the same thickness. He has found, however, that rent is cheaper than board. Unless there comes some great acorn year, when the oak trees are covered with nuts, he goes to bed when the snow flies. One of the rarest adventures in wood-craft is the finding of a bear-hole where Bruin sleeps rolled up in a big, black ball until spring. It is always selected and concealed with the utmost care, for the blackbear takes no chances of being attacked in his sleep. The last bear-hole of which I have heard was not far from home. Two friends of mine were shooting in the Pocono Mountains with a dog, about the middle of November, 1914. Suddenly the dog started up a blackbear on a wooded slope. After running a short distance, the bear turned and popped into a hole under an overhanging bank. Almost immediately he started to come out again, growling savagely. I am sorry to say that my friends shot him. Then they explored the hole which he was preparing for his winter-quarters. It was beautifully constructed. The entrance was under an overhanging bank, shielded by bushes, and it seemed unbelievable that so large an animal could have forced his shoulders through so small a hole. The burrow was jug-shaped, spreading out inside and sloping up, while a dry shelf had been dug out in the bank. This was covered with layers of dry leaves and a big blanket of withered grass. In the top of the bank a tiny hole had been dug, which opened out in some thick bushes and was probably an air-hole. Just outside the entrance, a bear had piled an armful of dry sticks, evidently intending, when he had finally entered the hole, to pull them over the entrance and entirely hide it. The bear itself turned out to be a young one. A veteran would have died fighting before giving up the secret of his winter castle.

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The opal water was all glimmering green and gold and crimson, as it whirled under overhanging boughs aflame with the fires of fall. The air tasted of frost, and had the color of pale gold. Around sudden curves, through twisted channels, and down gleaming vistas, our canoe followed the crooked stream as it ran through the pine-barrens. The woods on either side were glories of color. There was the scarlet of the mountain sumac, with its winged leaves, and the deep purple of the star-leaved sweet-gum. Sassafras trees were lemon-yellow or wine-red. The persimmon was the color of gold, while the poison sumac, with its death-pale bark, and venomous leaves up-curled as if ready to sting, flaunted the regal red-and-yellow of Spain.

At last, we beached our canoe in a little grove and landed for lunch. By the edge of the smoky, golden cedar-water, in the pure white sand, was a deep footprint, like that made by a baby’s bare foot with a pointed heel. I recognized the hand and seal of Lotor, the Washer, who believes firmly in that old proverb about cleanliness. That is about as near, however, as Lotor ever gets to godliness. He is the grizzled-gray raccoon, who wears a black mask on his funny, foxy face, and has a ringed tail shaped like a bÂton, and sets his hind feet flat, like his second-cousin the bear, while his menu-card covers almost as wide a range. Whatever he eats—frogs, crawfish, chicken, and even fresh eggs and snakes—he always washes. Two, three, and even four times, he rinses and rubs his food if he can find water.

That footprint in the sand carried me back more years than I like to count. It was on the same kind of fall day that I first entered the fastnesses of Rolfe’s Woods. First there came Little Woods, close at home, where one could play after school, and where the spotted leaves of the adder’s-tongue grew everywhere. Then came Big Woods, which required a full Saturday afternoon to do it justice. It was there that I accumulated by degrees the twenty-two spotted turtles, the five young gray squirrels, and the three garter-snakes, which gladdened my home.

Far beyond Big Woods was a wilderness of swamps and thickets known to us as Rolfe’s Woods. This was only to be visited in company with some of the big boys and on a full holiday. That day, Boots Lockwood and Buck Thompson, patriarchs who must have been all of fourteen years old, were planning to visit these woods. Four of us little chaps tagged along until it was too late to send us back. We found that the perils of the place had not been overstated. In a dark thicket Boots showed us wolf-tracks. At least he said they were, and he ought to have known, for he had read “Frank in the Woods,” “The Gorilla-Hunters,” and other standard authorities on such subjects. Farther on we heard a squalling note, which Buck at once recognized as the scream of a panther. Boots confirmed his diagnosis, and showed the reckless bravery of his nature by laughing so heartily at our scared faces that he had to lean against a tree for some time before he could go on. In later years I have heard the same note made by a blue jay, a curious coincidence which should have the attention of some of our prominent naturalists.

LOTOR, THE COON

Finally, we came to a little clearing with a vast oak-tree in the centre. As we neared it, suddenly Buck gave a yell and pointed overhead. There on a hollow dead limb crouched a strange beast. It was gray in color, with a black-masked face, and was ten times larger than any gray squirrel, the wildest animal which we had met personally. There was a hasty and whispered consultation between the two leaders, after which Buck announced that the stranger was none other than a Canada lynx, according to him an animal of almost supernatural ferocity and cunning. Furthermore, he stated that he, assisted[Pg 185]
[Pg 186] by Boots, intended to climb the tree and attack said lynx with a club. Our part was to encircle the tree and help Boots if the lynx elected to fight on land instead of aloft. If so be that he sprang on any one of us, the rest were to attack him instantly, before he had time to lap the blood of his victim—a distressing habit which Buck advised us was characteristic of all Canada lynxes.

This masterly plan was somewhat marred by the actions of Robbie Crane. Robbie was of a gentle nature, and one whose manners and ideals were far superior to the rough boys with whom he occasionally consorted. Mrs. Crane said so herself. After reflecting a moment on the lynx’s unrestrained and sanguinary traits, he suddenly disappeared down the back-track with loud sobbings, and never stopped running until he reached home an hour later. Thereafter our names were stricken from Robbie’s calling-list by Mrs. Crane.

As Buck, boosted by Boots, started up the tree, the perfidious lynx disappeared in an unsuspected hole beneath a branch, from which he refused to come out in spite of all that Buck and Boots could do. One member, at least, of that hunting-party was immensely relieved by his unexpected retreat. It was many years later before I learned that even such masters of woodcraft as Buck and Boots could be mistaken, and that the Canada lynx was really a Connecticut coon.

It was not until recently that I ever met Lotor by daylight. Three years ago I was walking down a hillside after a sudden November snowstorm. My way led past two gray-squirrel nests, well thatched and chinked with the leaves by which they can always be told from crows’ nests. From one of them I saw peering down at me the funny face of a coon. When I pounded on the other tree, another coon stared sleepily down at me. Probably the unexpected snowstorm had sent them both to bed in the first lodgings which they could find; or it may be that they had decided to try the open-air sleeping-rooms of the squirrels rather than the hollow-tree houses in which the coon family usually spend their winters.

Sometimes at night you may hear near the edge of the woods a plaintive, tremulous call floating from out of the dark trees—“Whoo-oo-oo-oo, whoo-oo-oo-oo.” It is one of the night-notes of the coon. It sounds almost like the wail of the little screech-owl, save that there is a certain animal quality to the note. Moreover, the screech-owl will always answer, when one imitates the call, and will generally come floating over on noiseless wings to investigate. The coon, however, instantly detects the imitation and calls no more that night.

Unlike the bears, Mr. and Mrs. Coon and all the little coons, averaging from three to six, hibernate together soon after the first snowstorm of the year. One of the few legends of the long-lost Connecticut Indians which I can remember is that of an old Indian hunter, who would appear on my great-grandfather’s farm in the depths of winter and, after obtaining permission, would go unerringly to one or more coon-trees, which he would locate by signs unknown to any white hunter. In each tree he would find from four to six fat coons, whose fur and flesh he would exchange for gunpowder, tobacco, hard cider, and other necessities of life.

Mr. and Mrs. Coon are good parents. They keep their children with them until the arrival of a new family, which occurs with commendable regularity every spring. A friend of mine once saw a young coon fall into the water from its tree in the depths of a swamp. At the splash, the mother coon came out of the den, forty feet up the trunk, and climbed down to help. Master Coon, wet, shaken, and miserable, managed to get back to the tree-trunk and clung there whimpering. Mother Coon gripped him by the scruff of his neck and marched him up the tree to the den, giving him a gentle nip whenever he stopped to cry.

In spite of his funny face and playful ways, Mr. Coon is a cheerful, desperate, scientific fighter. In a fair fight, or an unfair one for that matter, he will best a dog double his size, and he fears no living animal of his own weight, save only that versatile weasel, the blackcat. I became convinced of this one dark November morning many years ago, when I foolishly used to kill animals instead of making friends of them. All night long, with a pack of alleged coon dogs, we had hunted invisible and elusive coons through thick woods. I had scratched myself all over with greenbrier, and, while running through the dark, had plunged head first into the coldest known brook on the continent. Four separate times I had been persuaded by false and flattering words to climb slippery trees after imaginary coons, with a lantern fastened round my neck.

This time my friends assured me there could be no mistake. Both Grip and Gyp, the experts of the pack, had their fore-paws against an enormous tulip tree which stood apart from all others. In order that there might be no possible mistake, black Uncle Zeke, the leader of the hunt, who knew most of the coons in those woods by their first names, agreed to “shine” this particular coon. Lighting a lantern, he held it behind his head, staring fixedly up into the tree as he did so. Sure enough, in a minute, far up along the branches gleamed two green spots. Those were the eyes of the coon, staring down at the light. It was impossible to climb this tree, so we built a fire and waited for daylight.

Dawn found us regarding a monster coon crouched in the branches some forty or fifty feet up. Uncle Zeke produced a cherished shot-gun. The barrel had once burst, by reason of the muzzle being accidentally plugged with mud, and had been thereafter cut down, so that it was less than a foot in length. In spite of its misfortune, Uncle Zeke assured us that it was still a wonderful shooter. We scattered and gave him a free field. In a properly conducted coonhunt, a coon, like a fox, must be killed by dogs or not at all. Uncle Zeke told us that this one, as soon as he heard the shot, although uninjured, would come down, like Davy Crockett’s coon.

Sure enough, when the shot cut through the branches well above the animal, he started slowly down the trunk, head-foremost, like a squirrel, and never stopped until he reached a branch some twenty feet above the yelping pack. Then, with hardly a pause, he launched himself right into their midst. As he came through the air, we could see him slashing with his claws, evidently limbering up. He struck the ground, only to disappear in a wave of dogs. In a minute he fought himself clear, and managed to get his back against the tree. Then followed a great exhibition of scientific fighting. The coon was perfectly balanced on all four feet, and did wonderful execution with his flexible fore-paws, armed with sharp, curved claws. He went through that mongrel pack like a light-weight champion in a street fight. Ducking, side-stepping, slashing and biting fiercely in the clinches, he broke entirely through the circle, and started off at a brisk trot toward the thick woods. The pack followed after him, baying ferociously, but doing nothing more. Not one of them would venture again into close quarters. Though we came back empty-handed, not even Uncle Zeke grudged that coon his life.

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The motto of the next sleeper is, “Don’t hurry, others will.” If you meet in your wanderings a black-and-white animal wearing a pointed nose, a bushy tail, and an air of justified confidence, avoid any altercation with him. The skunk discovered the secret of the gas-attack a million years before the Boche. He is one of the best friends of the farmer—and the worst treated. Given a fair chance, every week he will eat several times his weight in mice and insects. Moreover, with the muskrat he contributes divers furs to the market, whose high-sounding names disguise their lowly origin. During the coldest part of the winter he retires to his burrow and sleeps fitfully. He is the last to go to bed and the first to get up; and on any warm day in late winter you may see his close-set, alternate, stitch-like tracks in the snow. The black-and-white banner of skunk-kind is a huge bushy resplendent tail, sometimes as wide as it is long. At the very tip is set a tuft like the white plume of Henry of Navarre. When it stands straight up, the battle is on, and wise wild-folk remove themselves elsewhere with exceeding swiftness. As for the simple—they wish they had.

The armament of this Seventh Sleeper is simple but effective. It consists of two scent glands located near the base of the tail, which empty into a movable duct or pipe which can be protruded some distance. Through this duct, by means of large contractile muscles, a stream of liquid musk can be propelled with incredible accuracy, and with a range of from six to ten feet. Moreover the skunk’s accurate breech-loading and repeating weapon has one device not yet found in any man-made artillery. Each gland, besides the hole for long-range purposes, is pierced with a circle of smaller holes through which the deadly gas can be sprayed in a cloud for work at close quarters. The skunk’s battery can be operated over the bow or from port or starboard, but rarely astern.

THE SEVENTH SLEEPER—THE SKUNK

The liquid musk itself is a clear, golden-yellow fluid full of little bubbles of the devastating gas, and curiously enough is almost identical in appearance with the venom of the rattlesnake. As to its odor, it has been described feelingly as a mixture of perfume-musk, essence of garlic, burning sulphur, and sewer-gas, raised to the thousandth power. Its effect is very much like that produced by the fumes of ammonia, another animal product, or the mustard-gas of modern warfare. It may cause blindness, convulsions, and such constriction and congestion of the breathing passages as even to bring about death. Some individuals and animals, however, seem to be more or less immune to the effects of this secretion. I remember once attending by invitation a possum hunt conducted by a number of noted possumists of color. We were accompanied by a bevy of miscellaneous dogs. The possums were generally found wandering here and there among the thickets, or located in low persimmon trees. Every now and then one of the dogs would bring to bay a strolling skunk. As the skins had a considerable market value, these skunks were regarded as the special prizes of the chase. The hunters dispatched them by a quick blow across the back which broke the spine. Such a blow paralyzed the muscles and effectually prevented any further artillery practice on the part of the skunk which received it. Before it could be delivered, both the hunter and the dog were usually exposed to an unerring barrage, which however seemed to cause them no especial inconvenience. Before long every hunter, except myself, had one or more skunks tucked away in his pockets.

It was a long, strong night. Before it was over I was in some doubt as to whether I had been attending a possum hunt or had taken part in a skunk chase. My family had no doubt whatever on the subject when I reached home the next morning. I was earnestly invited to tarry in the wilderness until such time as I could obtain a complete change of raiment. Thereafter I tried to give my hunting clothes away to the worthy poor. Said poor, however, would have none of them, and they repose in a lonely grave in a Philadelphia back-yard even unto this day.

I saw him last fall sitting up like a little post in the Half-Moon Lot where the blind blue gentian grows. Every once in a while he would drop down and begin to nibble again, only to stop and sit up stiff and straight on sentry duty. For the gray, grizzled woodchuck is as wary as he is fat. Watchfulness is the price of his life.

Once I spied him far out in a clover-patch, nibbling away at the pink sweet blossoms as I passed along the road. At the bar-way a chipmunk leaped into the wall with a sharp squeak. Without even stopping to raise his head, Mr. Woodchuck scuttled through the clover, and dived into his burrow. It was a bit of animal team-work such as takes place when a[Pg 193]
[Pg 194] fox or a deer uses a far-away crow or a jay as a picket, and dashes away at its warning of the coming of an enemy.

Soon afterwards I was on my way to a spring down in the pasture. As I passed near a stone wall half hidden in a tangle of chokecherries and bittersweet, there was a piercing whistle, followed by a scrambling and a scuffling as the woodchuck dived down among the stones, and I understood why, below Mason and Dixon’s Line, he is always called the “whistlepig.” It is a good name, for he whistles, and he is certainly like a little pig in that he eats and eats and eats until he seems mostly quivering paunch. According to the farmers of Connecticut, he eats to get strength enough to dig, and then digs to get an appetite to eat, and so passes his life in a vicious circle of eating and digging and digging and eating. In spite of his unwieldy weight, the woodchuck is a bitter, brave fighter when fight he must.

I once watched a bull-terrier named Paddy tackle a big chuck near a shallow brook. Round and round the dog circled, trying for the fatal throat-hold. Round and round whirled the brave old chuck, chattering with his great chisel-like teeth, which could bite through dog-hide and dog-flesh and bone just as easily as they gnawed through stolen apples. Every once in a while Paddy would clinch, but the woodchuck saved himself every time by hunching his neck down between his round shoulders and punishing the dog so terribly with his sharp teeth that the latter would at last retreat, yelping with pain. They would whirl in circles, and roll over and over in the clinches; but always the old chuck would be found with his squat figure on its legs at the end of each round. His thick grizzled coat was more of a protection, too, than the thin skin of the short-haired terrier.

At last both of them were tired out. As if by agreement, both drew back and lay down, panting and watching each other’s every movement like two boxers. Finally, the woodchuck, who was nearer the brook, began to drag himself along until he reached the edge of the water. Then he lowered his head, still watching his opponent, and sucked in deep, cool, satisfying drinks.

It was too much for Paddy. He started for the brook also. The old chuck stopped drinking, and pulled himself together; but Paddy wanted water, not blood. In a moment he had his nose in the brook. There the two lay, not a couple of yards apart, and drank until they could drink no more.

The whistlepig was the first out. Slowly and watchfully he waddled away from the brook and toward the stone wall, that refuge of all hunted little animals. Paddy gave a fierce growl, but the water tasted too good, and he stayed for another long drink. Then he darted out after the woodchuck, barking ferociously all the time, as if he could hardly wait to begin the battle again. The woodchuck watched him steadily, ready to stop and fight at any moment.

Somehow, although Paddy barked and growled and rushed at his retreating opponent with exceeding fierceness, there were always a few yards between them, until Mr. Chuck disappeared at last down between two great stones in the wall. Then indeed Paddy dashed in, and growled, and tore up the turf, and stuck his nose deep down between the stones, and told the world all the terrible things he would do to that woodchuck if he could only catch him. From the bowels of the old wall, between barks, sounded now and then the muffled but defiant whistle of the unconquered whistlepig.

Finally, Paddy, with an air of having done all that could be expected, gave some fierce farewell barks and trotted off toward the farmhouse.

Some people claim to have dug woodchucks out of their holes. Personally I believe that it is about as easy to dig a woodchuck out of its hole as it is to catch a squirrel in its tree. They have a network of holes, and have a habit of starting digging on their own account when molested, and sealing up the new hole after them, so that they leave no trace.

Once, in company with another amateur naturalist, we tried to dig an old chuck out of its burrow. After first stopping up all the spare holes we could find, the naturalist dug and dug and dug and dug. Then we enlisted two other men, and they dug and dug and dug. After a while we came to a mass of great boulders. Then we pressed into service a yoke of oxen, and they tugged and tugged and tugged. Said digging and tugging and tugging and digging lasted the half of a long summer day. All together, it was an exceeding great digging—but we never got that woodchuck.

In September and October the woodchuck devotes all of his time to eating. The consequence is that, by the time the first frost comes, he is a big gray bag of fat. Mr. Woodchuck does not believe in storing up food in his burrow, like the chipmunk. He prefers to be the storehouse. Soon after the first frost he disappears in his hole, and far down underground, at the end of a network of intersecting passages, rolls himself up in a round, warm ball, and sleeps until spring.

According to the legend, on Candlemas, or Ground-Hog Day,—which comes on February second,—he peeps out, and, if he can see his shadow, goes in again for six more weeks of cold weather. So far this day has not yet been made a legal holiday. It probably will be some time, along with Columbus Day, Labor Day, and other equally important days. I will not vouch for the fact that the weather depends on the shadow; but there is no doubt that the woodchuck does come out of his burrow in a February thaw and looks around, as his tracks prove; but he is not interested in his shadow. No indeed! What he comes out for is to look for the future Mrs. Woodchuck, and when he finds her he goes in again.

Sometimes you read in nature-books that the woodchuck is good to eat. Don’t believe it. I ought to know. I ate one once. Anyone is welcome to my share of the world’s supply of woodchucks. When I camped out as a boy, we had to eat everything that we shot: and one summer I ate a part of a woodchuck, a crow, a green heron, and a blue jay. The chuck was about in the crow’s class.

We humans have different feelings toward the different Sleepers. One may respect the bear, and have a certain tempered regard for the coon, or even the skunk. Everyone, however, loves that confiding, gentle little Sleeper, the striped chipmunk—“Chippy Nipmunk,” as certain children of my acquaintance have named him. He is that little squirrel who lives in the ground and has two big pockets in his cheeks. Sometimes in the fall you may think that he has the mumps. Really it is only acorns. He can carry four of them in each cheek. Once I met a greedy chipmunk who had his pockets so full of nuts that he could not enter his own burrow. Although he tried with his head sideways, and even upside-down, he could not get in. When he saw me coming, he rapidly removed two hickory nuts from which he had nibbled the sharp points at each end, and popped into his hole, leaving the nuts high, but not dry, outside. When I carried them off, he stuck his head out of the hole, and shouted, “Thief! Thief!” after me in chipmunk language, so loudly that, in order not to be arrested, I carried them back again.

Almost the first wild animal of my acquaintance was the chipmunk. During one of my very early summers, probably the fourth or fifth, a wave of chipmunks swept over the old farm where I happened to be. They swarmed everywhere, and every stone wall seemed to be alive with them. It was probably one of the rare chipmunk migrations, which, although denied by some naturalists, actually do occur.

Chippy usually goes to bed in late October, and sleeps until late March. He takes with him a light lunch of nuts and seeds, in case he may wake up and be hungry during the long night. Moreover, these come in very handy along about breakfast-time, for when he gets up there is little to eat. Then, too, he is very busy during those early spring weeks. In the first place, he has to sing his spring song for hours. It is a loud, rolling “Chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck,” almost like a bird-song, and Chippy is very proud of it. Then, too, he has to find a suitable Miss Chipmunk and persuade her to become Mrs. Chipmunk, all of which takes a great deal of time. So the nuts which he stores up are probably intended rather for an early breakfast than a late supper.

An Indian writer tells how the boys of his tribe used to take advantage of the chipmunk’s spring serenade. The first warm day in March they would all start out armed with bows and arrows, and at the nearest chipmunk-hole one would imitate the loud chirrup of the chipmunk. Instantly every chipmunk within hearing would pop out of his hole and join the chorus, until sometimes as many as fifty would be singing at the same time, too busily to dodge the blunt arrows of the boy-hunters.

Besides his song the chipmunk has another high-pitched note, and an alarm-squeal which he gives as he dives into his burrow. There are two phases of Eastern chipmunks, the Northern and the Southern, besides the Oregon, the painted, and the magnificent golden chipmunk of the West. All of them have the same dear, gentle ways.

When I was a boy, a chipmunk was a favorite pet. Flying squirrels were too sleepy, red squirrels too restless, and gray squirrels too bitey for petting purposes. Chippy is easily tamed, and moreover does not have to be kept in a cage, which is no place for any wild animal. I knew one once who used to go to school in a boy’s pocket every day; and he behaved quite as well as the boy, which is not saying much. Sometimes he would come out and sit on the desk beside the boy’s book, so as to help him over the particularly hard places.

The chipmunk, like most of the Sleepers, has a varied diet. He eats all kinds of nuts and weed-seeds, and also has a pretty taste in mushrooms. It was a chipmunk who once taught me the difference between a good and a bad mushroom. I saw him sitting on a stump, nibbling what seemed to be a red russula, which tastes like red pepper and acts like an emetic if one is foolish enough to swallow much of it. When I came near, he ran away, leaving his lunch behind. On tasting the mushroom I found that, although it was a red russula, it was not the emetica, and I learned to recognize the delicious alutacea.

Sometimes, sad to say, Chippy eats forbidden food. A friend of mine found him once on a low limb, nibbling a tiny, green grass-snake. The chipmunk had eaten about half of the snake, when he suddenly stopped and let the remainder drop, and then sat and reflected for a full minute. At the end of that time he became actively ill, and after losing all of that fresh snake-lunch, scampered away, an emptier, if not a wiser, chipmunk.

In spite of his gentle ways Chippy lives in a world of enemies. Hawks, snakes, cats, boys, and dogs, all are his foes. More than all the rest put together, however, he fears the devilish red weasel, which runs him down relentlessly above and below the ground alike. Only in the water has the chipmunk a chance to escape. Although the weasel can hold him for a few yards, yet in a long swim the chipmunk will draw away so far from his pursuer that he will generally escape. Underground, if given a few seconds’ time, he also escapes by a method known to a number of the underground folk. Dashing through a series of the main burrows, he runs into a side gallery, and instantly walls himself in so neatly that his pursuer rushes past without suspecting his presence.

For many years one of the out-of-door problems to which I was unable to find the answer was how a chipmunk could dig a burrow and leave no trace of any fresh earth. I examined scores of new chipmunk-holes, but never found the least trace of fresh earth near the entrance. His secret is to start at the other end. This sounds like a joke, but it is exactly what he does. He will run a shaft for many feet, coming up in some convenient thicket or beneath the slope of an overhanging bank. All the earth will be taken out through the first hole, which is then plugged up. This accounts for the heaps of fresh earth which I have frequently seen near chipmunk colonies, but with no burrow anywhere in sight.

The Band was on the march. The evening before, at story-time, Sergeant Henny-Penny and Corporal Alice-Palace had listened spellbound while the Captain told them of the adventures of trustful Chippy-Nipmunk when he tried to get change for a horse-chestnut from Mr. G. Squirrel, who it seems was of a grasping and over-reaching disposition, and how Chippy wrote home about the transaction signing himself “Butternutly yours.” The story had made such a sensation that the flattered Captain had promised, on the next day, which was a half-holiday, to take the whole Band up to Chipmunk Hill, where old Mr. Prindle had named and tamed a chipmunk colony.

Late afternoon found them plodding up the grass-grown road which led to the lonely little house on top of the hill, where Mr. Prindle had lived since days before which the memory of the Band ran not. They found the old man seated on the porch in a great Boston rocker, and glad enough to see them all. The Captain introduced them in due form, from First Lieutenant Trottie down to Corporal Alice-Palace.

“’Tain’t everybody,” said Mr. Prindle, pulling Second Lieutenant Honey’s ear reflectively, “that would climb five miles up-hill to see an old man. How would a few fried cakes and some cider go?”

There was an instantaneous vote in favor of this resolution, in which Alice-Palace’s good-time noise easily soared like a siren-whistle above all the other expressions of assent.

“Be careful and don’t swallow the holes,” Mr. Prindle warned them a few moments later, as he brought out a big panful of brownish-red, spicy fried cakes cooked in twisted rings.

The Band promised to use every precaution, and there was an adjournment of all other business until the pan and the pitcher were alike empty.

“Are your chipmunks still alive?” queried the Captain, as they all sat down on the vast, squatty-legged settee next to Mr. Prindle’s rocker.

“Yes, indeed,” replied the latter, “they’ve been with me nigh on to four years now.”

Alice-Palace’s eyes became very big.

“Not Chippy-Nipmunk?” she whispered to the Captain.

“Exactly,” replied that official, “and then some.”

Thereafter, at Mr. Prindle’s suggestion, they all sat stony-still and mousy-quiet while he made a funny little hissing, whistling noise. From under the porch there came a scurrying rush, and the two bright eyes of a big striped chipmunk popped up over the edge of the porch-step. A minute later, from two holes in a near-by bank, two other chipmunks dashed out. They all had ashy-gray backs, with five stripes of such dark brown as to look almost like black. Their tails had a black, white-tipped fringe, while the gray color of the back changed into clear orange-brown on their flanks and legs.

“This one is James,” announced Mr. Prindle, as the first chipmunk hurried across the porch toward his chair. “His full name is James William Francis,” he explained, “after a second-cousin of mine who looked a good deal like him. I generally call him James for short. The other two are Nip and Tuck,” he went on. “Old Bill will be along in a minute. You see,” he continued, “he’s an old bachelor and lives all by himself quite a ways off.”

“What about James?” inquired Honey.

“He’s been a widower,” said Mr. Prindle, sadly, “ever since his wife stayed out one day to get a good look at a hawk.”

As he spoke, another chipmunk came around the end of the porch and hastened to join the other three.

“Here’s Bill now,” announced Mr. Prindle.

Then the old man reached into his pocket and took out a handful of butternuts and gave two to each of the Band.

“Hold one in your closed hand and the other between your thumb and finger where they can see it,” he advised them.

A moment later there was a chorus of delighted squeals. Each chipmunk had run up and taken the nut which was in sight, and was burrowing and scrabbling with soft little paws and sniffling little noses into four sets of clenched fingers, in an attempt to secure the other hidden nuts. When the last of them had disappeared, looking as if he had an attack of mumps, the Band thanked Mr. Prindle and started for home.

“Butternutly yours,” quoted Alice-Palace as they hurried down the long hill.

Have you ever dreamed of writing a wonderful poem, and then waked up and found that you had forgotten it; or, worse still, that it wasn’t wonderful at all? That is what happened to me the other night. All that was left of the lost masterpiece was the following alleged verse:—

I admit that the mystery and pathos and beauty which that verse seemed to have in dreamland have some way evaporated in daylight. So as I can’t give to the world any poetry in praise of my friend the Flittermouse, I must do what I can for him in prose. In the first place, his everyday name is Bat. Our forebears knew him as the flying or “flitter” mouse. Probably, too, he is the original of the Brownie, that ugly brown elf that used to flit about in the twilight.

He is perhaps the best equipped of all of our mammals, for he flies better than any bird, is a strong though unwilling swimmer, and is also fairly active on the ground. In addition, he has such an exquisite sense of feeling, that he is able to fly at full speed in the dark, steering his course and instantly avoiding any obstacle by the mere feel of the air-currents. In fact, the bat’s whole body, including the ribs and edges of its wings, may be said to be full of eyes. These are highly developed nerve-endings, which are so sensitive that they are instantly aware of the presence of any body met in flight, by the difference in the air-pressure.

As early as 1793 an Italian naturalist found that a blinded bat could fly as well as one with sight. They were able to avoid all parts of a room, and even to fly through silken threads stretched in such a manner as to leave just space enough for them to pass with their wings expanded. When the threads were placed closer together, the blind bats would contract their wings in order to pass between them without touching.

An English naturalist put wax over a bat’s closed eyes and then let it loose in a room. It flew under chairs, of which there were twelve in the room, without touching anything, even with the tips of its wings. When he attempted to catch it, the bat dodged; nor could it be taken even when resting, as it seemed to feel with its wings the approach of the hand stretched out to seize it.

When it comes to flying, the bat is the swallow of the night. Sometimes it may be confused with a chimney-swift at twilight, but it can always be told by its dodging, lonely flight, while the swifts fly in companies and without zigzagging through the air. It is doubtful whether even the swallow or the swiftest of the hawks, such as the sharp-shinned or the duck hawk, perhaps the fastest bird that flies, can equal the speed of the great hoary bat. Moreover, the flight of the bat is absolutely silent. He may dart and turn a foot away from you, but you will hear absolutely nothing. A hoary bat, the largest of all the family, has been seen to overtake and fly past a flock of migrating swallows, while a red bat has been watched carrying four young clinging to her, which together weighed more than she did, and yet she flew and hunted and captured insects in mid-air as usual. There is no bird which can give such an exhibition of strong flying. The hoary bat has even been found on the Bermuda Islands in autumn and early winter. As these islands are five hundred and forty storm-swept miles from the nearest land, this is evidence of an extraordinarily high grade of wing-power.

When it comes to personal habits, bats of all kinds are perhaps the most useful mammals that we have. No American bat eats anything but insects, and insects of the most disagreeable kind, such as cockroaches, mosquitoes, and June-bugs. A house-bat has been seen to eat twenty-one June-bugs in a single night; while another young bat would eat from thirty-four to thirty-seven cockroaches in the same time, beginning this commendable work before it was two months old. Moreover, bats do not bring into houses any noxious insects, like bedbugs or lice, despite their bad reputation. They are unfortunately afflicted with numerous parasites, but none of them are of a kind to attack man. All bats are great drinkers, and twice a day skim over the nearest water, drinking copiously on the wing. Sometimes, where trout are large enough, bats fall victims to their drinking habits, being seized on the wing like huge moths by leaping trout, as they approach the water to drink.

Bats also feed twice a day at regular periods, once at sundown and once at sunrise, always capturing and eating their insect food on the wing. Some of them have a curious habit of using a pouch, which is made of the membrane stretched between their hind legs, as a kind of net to hold the captured insect until it can be firmly gripped and eaten. In this same pouch the young are carried as soon as they are born, and until they are strong enough to nurse. After that, like young jumping mice, they cling to the teats of the mother bat, and are carried everywhere in this way. When they get too large to be so conveyed in comfort, the mother bat hangs them up in some secret place until her return.

Moreover a mother bat is just as devoted to her babies as any other mammal. She takes entire charge of them, with never any help from the father bat. Young bats are blind at birth, but their eyes open on the fifth day, and on the thirteenth day the baby bat no longer clings to its mother, but roosts beside her. The bat has from two to four young, depending on the species. Most young bats can fly and forage for themselves when they are about three months old, although the silvery bat begins to fly when it is three weeks old. No bat makes a nest.

Titian Peale, of Philadelphia, in an early natural history, tells a story of a boy who, in 1823, caught a young red bat and took it home. Three hours later, in the evening, he started to take it to the museum, carrying it in his hand. As he passed near the place where it was caught, the mother bat appeared and followed the boy for two squares, flying around him and finally lighting on his breast, until the boy allowed her to take charge of her little one.

The bat has but few enemies. They are occasionally caught by owls, probably taken unawares or when hanging in some dark tree. In fact, virtually the only enemies a bat has are fur-lice, which breed upon them in enormous quantities. It is this misfortune, and the fact that a bat has a strong rank smell like that of a skunk, which keep it from being popular as a pet.

A friend of mine once, however, kept a little brown bat, which had been drowned out from a tree by a thunder-storm, for a long time under a sieve as a pet. The bat became tame and would accept food, and it was most interesting to see the deft, speedy way in which he husked millers and other minute insects, rejecting their wings, skinning their bodies, and devouring the flesh only after it had been prepared entirely to its liking. He would wash himself with his tongue and his paw, like a cat, using the little thumb-nail at the bend of his wing, and stretching the rubbery membrane into all kinds of shapes, until it seemed as if he would tear it in his zeal for cleanliness.

A bat always alights first by catching the little hooks on its wings. As soon as it has a firm grip with these, it at once turns over, head downward, and hangs by the long, recurved nails of the hind feet, and in this position sleeps through the daylight. It sleeps through the winter in the top of some warm steeple or, far more often than we suspect, in dark corners of our houses, and sometimes in hollow trees and deserted buildings and caves. Only when caught by the cold does the bat hibernate. Often it migrates like the birds.

One of the strangest things about the flittermouse is its voice. It is a penetrating, shrill squeak, so high that many people cannot hear it at all. The chirp of a sparrow is about five octaves above the middle E of the piano, while the cry of the bat is a full octave above that. In England there is a saying that no person more than forty years old can hear the cry of a bat. This is founded probably on the fact that the ears of many of us, especially as we approach middle age, are unable to distinguish sounds more than four octaves above middle E. Some naturalists believe that the shrill squeak which most of us do hear is only one of many notes of the bat, and that the various species have different calls, like those of birds, and probably even have a love-song during the mating season, in late August or early September, which can never be heard by human ears.

Most bats found in the Eastern States are either large brown house-bats, one of two kinds of little brown bats, black bats, red or tree bats, pigmy bats, or, last, largest and most beautiful of all, hoary bats. The big brown bat, or house-bat, is the commonest. This is the last of the bats to come out in the evening, for each has a certain fixed hour when it begins to hunt, which varies only with the light. When the big brown bat starts, the twilight has almost turned to dark.

The two kinds of little brown bat, Leconte’s and Say’s, cannot be told apart in flight. Both of them are much smaller than the big brown bat, and the ear of a Leconte’s bat barely reaches the end of the nose, while that of a Say’s bat is considerably longer. All bats have large ears, each of which contains a curious inner ear known as the “antitragus.” Both of these little bats are country bats and prefer caves and hollow trees to houses and outbuildings.

The black bat can be told from all other American bats by its deep black-brown color touched with silvery white. This bat likes to hunt and hawk over water, skimming across ponds like swallows. Some of the black-bat colonies, or “batteries,” are very large, one by actual count including 9,640 bats.

Next comes the Georgia pigmy bat, so called to distinguish it from the very rare New York pigmy bat. This little bat can be told by its small size, for it is the smallest of all of our eastern bats, by its yellowish pale color, and especially by its flight, which is weak and fluttering, like that of a large butterfly.

The red bat is a tree bat, spending the daytime in the foliage of trees, and rarely, if ever, being found in caves or houses. It can be told at a glance by its red color. It is the greatest of all the bats except the last, the hoary bat, the largest of them all, with a wing-spread of from fifteen to seventeen inches. This great bat soars high, well above the tree-tops, where it can prey upon the high-flying great moths. It is one of the most beautiful, as well as the rarest, of our bats, being found in the East only in the spring or fall migration. It wears a magnificent furry coat as beautiful as that of the silver fox, but, like all of its race, it is cursed with the homeliest face ever worn by an animal. It is this hobgoblin face which, in spite of a blameless life and useful habits, makes the flittermouse, whatever its species, universally hated.

However, handsome is as handsome does, and the boy who kills a bat has killed one of our most useful animals and deserves to be bitten by all the mosquitoes, and bumped by all the June bugs, and crawled over by all the cockroaches, and to have his clothes corrupted by all the moths, that the dead bat would have eaten if it had been allowed to live.

After I had supposedly finished this chapter I was reading it aloud at the dinner-table to the defenceless Band, one Sunday afternoon about two o’clock, on a freezing day in December. Just as I was in the midst of the masterpiece, one of my audience suddenly woke up and said, “There’s a bat!” Sure enough, outside, in the glass-enclosed porch, was flying a large brown house-bat. Back and forth it went through the freezing air, as swiftly as if it were summer. I was much touched by this beautiful tribute to my authorship, and went out and managed to catch my visitor when he alighted. The bat however was ungrateful enough to bite the hand that had praised him, and I will end this account by writing of knowledge that a bat’s tiny teeth are as sharp as needles and that he is always willing to use them.

Not dangerous like the skunk, or brave like the raccoon, or big like the bear, the least of the Sleepers is the best-looking of them all. Shy and solitary, the gentle little jumping mouse is as dainty as he looks. His fur is lead, overlaid with gold deepening to a dark brown on the back, and like the deer-mouse he wears a snowy silk waistcoat and stockings. His strength is in his powerful crooked hind-legs, and his length in his silky tail, which occupies five of his eight inches. Given one jump ahead of any foe that runs, springs, flies, or crawls, and Mr. Jumping Mouse is safe. He patters through the grass by the edge of thickets and weed-patches, like any other mouse, until alarmed. Then with a bound he shoots high into the air, in a leap that will cover from two to twelve feet. It is in this that his long tail plays its part. In a graceful curve, with tip upturned, it balances and guides him through the air in a jump which will cover over forty times his own length, equivalent to a performance of two hundred and forty feet by a human jumper. The instant he strikes, the jumper soars away again like a bird, at right angles to his first jump, and zigzags here and there through the air, so fast and so far as to baffle even the swift hawk and the dogged weasel.

Every day Mr. Jumping Mouse washes and polishes his immaculate self, and draws his long silky tail through his mouth until every hair shines. Mrs. Jumping Mouse is a good mother, and never deserts her babies. If alarmed while feeding them, she will spring through the air with from three to five of them clinging to her for dear life, and carry them safely through all her series of lofty leaps.

The first frost rings the bed-time bell for the jumping mouse. Three feet underground he builds a round nest of dried grass, and lines it with feathers, hair, and down. Then he rolls himself into a round bundle, which he ties up with two wraps of his long tail, and goes to sleep until spring. Of all the Sleepers he is the soundest. Dig him up and he shows no sign of life; but if brought in to a fire, he wakes up and becomes his own lively self once more. Put him out in the cold, and he rolls up and falls asleep again.

One of the Band who holds high office is by way of being a naturalist instead of an explorer or an aviator, as he originally intended. Last summer, in a bit of dried-up marshland near the roadside, he heard strange rustlings. On investigating, he found a family of young jumping mice moving through the grass and feeding on the buds of alder-bushes. They were quite tame, and as they ran out on the ends of the branches, he had a good view of them and finally managed to catch one by the end of his long tail. The mouse bit the boy, but did not even draw blood. Afterwards he seemed to become tamer, although shaking continually. Given a bit of bread, he sat up and nibbled it like a little squirrel; but even as he ate he suddenly had a spasm of fright and died. This death from fright occurs among a number of the more highly strung of the mice-folk, even when they seem to have become perfectly tame. This same young naturalist observed another jumping mouse which, contrary to all the books, took to the water when pursued, and swam nearly as expertly as a muskrat.

So endeth the Chronicle of the Seven Sleepers.