In New England Fields and Woods Part 8

x.x.x

SEPTEMBER DAYS

September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief life; the b.u.mblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath; and their shrill cry and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed.

What a little while ago they were our familiars, noted all about us in their accustomed haunts--sparrow, robin, and oriole, each trying now and then, as if to keep it in memory, a strain of his springtime love song, and the cuckoo fluting a farewell prophecy of rain. The bobolinks, in sober sameness of traveling gear, still held the meadowside thickets of weeds; and the swallows sat in sedate conclave on the barn ridge.

Then, looking and listening for them, we suddenly become aware they are gone; the adobe city of the eave-dwellers is silent and deserted; the whilom choristers of the sunny summer meadows are departed to a less hospitable welcome in more genial climes. How un.o.btrusive was their exodus. We awake and miss them, or we think of them and see them not, and then we realize that with them summer too has gone.

This also the wafted thistledown and the blooming asters tell us, and, though the woods are dark with their latest greenness, in the lowlands the gaudy standard of autumn is already displayed. In its shadow the muskrat is thatching his winter home, and on his new-shorn watery lawn the full-fledged wild duck broods disport in fullness of feather and strength of pinion. Evil days are these of September that now befall them. Alack, for the callow days of peaceful summer, when no honest gunner was abroad, and the law held the murderous gun in abeyance, and only the keel of the unarmed angler rippled the still channel.

Continual unrest and abiding fear are their lot now and henceforth, till spring brings the truce of close time to their persecuted race.

More silently than the fisher's craft the skiff of the sportsman now invades the rush-paled thoroughfares. Noiseless as ghosts, paddler and shooter glide along the even path till, alarmed by some keener sense than is given us, up rise wood duck, dusky duck, and teal from their reedy cover. Then the ready gun belches its thunder, and suddenly consternation pervades the marshes. All the world has burst forth in a burning of powder. From end to end, from border to border, the fenny expanse roars with discharge and echo, and nowhere within it is there peace or rest for the sole of a webbed foot. Even the poor bittern and heron, harmless and worthless, flap to and fro from one to another now unsafe retreat, in constant danger of death from every b.o.o.by gunner who can cover their slow flight.

The upland woods, too, are awakened from the slumber of their late summer days. How silent they had grown when their songsters had departed, rarely stirred but by the woodp.e.c.k.e.r's busy hammer, the chatter and bark of squirrels, and the crows making vociferous proclamation against some winged or furred enemy. The grouse have waxed fat among the border patches of berry bushes, rarely disturbed in the seclusion of the thickets but by the soft footfall of the fox, the fleeting shadow of a cruising hawk, and the halloo of the cowboy driving home his herd from the hillside pasture. Now come enemies more relentless than beast or bird of prey, a sound more alarming than the cowboy's distant call--man and his companion the dog, and the terrible thunder of the gun. A new terror is revealed to the young birds, a half-forgotten one brought afresh to the old. The crows have found fresh cause for clamor, and the squirrels lapse into a silence of fear.

Peace and the quietness of peace have departed from the realm of the woods, and henceforth while the green leaves grow bright as blossoms with the touch of frost, then brown and sere, and till long after they lie under the white shroud of winter, its wild denizens shall abide in constant fear and unrest.

So fares it with the wood-folk, these days of September, wherein the sportsman rejoiceth with exceeding gladness.

x.x.xI

A PLEA FOR THE UNPROTECTED

Why kill, for the mere sake of killing or the exhibition of one's skill, any wild thing that when alive harms no one and when killed is of no worth? The more happy wild life there is in the world, the pleasanter it is for all of us.

When one is duck-shooting on inland waters, sitting alert in the bow of the skiff with his gun ready for the expected gaudy wood duck, or plump mallard, or loud quacking dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with a splashing flutter out of the wild rice, and there is a sudden beating of broad wings among the sedges with a startled guttural quack, and one's heart leaps to his throat and his gun to his shoulder, and then--only an awkward bittern climbs the September breeze with a slow incline, there is a vengeful temptation to let drive at the disappointing good-for-nothing. But why not let the poor fellow go? If you dropped him back into the marsh to rot unprofitably there, disdained even by the mink, unattainable to the scavenger skunk, what good would it do you? If he disappointed you, you disturbed him in his meditations, or in the pursuit of a poor but honest living. Perhaps a great heron too intent on his fishing or frogging, or dozing in the fancied seclusion of his reedy bower, springs up within short range and goes lagging away on his broad vans. He may be taken home to show, for he is worth showing even when killed. But if you wish your friends to see him at his best, bring them to him and let them see how well he befits these sedgy levels--a goodly sight, whether he makes his lazy flight above them or stands a motionless sentinel in the oozy shallows. The marshes would be desolate without him, or if one desires the charm of loneliness, his silent presence adds to it.

A kingfisher comes clattering along the channel. As he jerks his swift way over the sluggish water he may test your marksmanship, but as he hangs with rapid wing-beats over a school of minnows, as steadfast for a minute as a star forever, needing no skill to launch him to his final unrewarded plunge, do not kill him! In such waters he takes no fish that you would, and he enlivens the scene more than almost any other frequenter of it, never skulking and hiding, but with metallic, vociferous clatter heralding his coming. One never tires of watching his still mid-air poise, the same in calm or wind, and his unerring headlong plunge.

When one wanders along a willowy stream with his gun, cautiously approaching every lily-padded pool and shadowed bend likely to harbor wood duck or teal, and finds neither, and his ears begin to ache for the sound of his gun--if a green heron flaps off a branch before him he is sorely tempted to shoot the ungainly bird, but if the gun must be heard, let it speak to a stump or a tossed chip, either as difficult a target as he, and let the poor harmless little heron live. Uncouth as he is, he comes in well in the picture of such a watercourse, which has done with the worry of turning mills, left far behind with their noise and bustle on foaming rapids among the hills, and crawls now in lazy ease through wide intervales, under elms and water maples and thickets of willows.

On the uplands, where the meadow lark starts out of the gra.s.s with a sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away on his steady game-like flight, remember before you stop it, or try to, of how little account he is when brought to bag; and how when the weary days of winter had pa.s.sed, his cheery voice welcomed the coming spring, a little later than the robin's, a little earlier than the flicker's cackle; and what an enlivening dot of color his yellow breast made where he strutted in the dun, bare meadows.

In some States the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are unprotected and are a mark for every gunner. Their galloping flight tempts the ambitious young shooter to try his skill, but they are among the best friends of the arboriculturist and the fruit-grower, for though some of them steal cherries and peck early apples, and one species sucks the sap of trees, they are the only birds that search out and kill the insidious, destructive borer.

In some States, too, the hare is unprotected by any law, and it is common custom to hunt it, even so late as April, for the mere sake of killing, apparently; or perhaps the charm of the hound's music, which makes the butchery of Adirondack deer so delightful a sport to some, adds a zest to the slaughter of these innocents--though, be it said, there is no comparison in the marksmanship required. Alive, the northern hare is one of the most harmless of animals; dead, he is, in the opinion of most people, one of the most worthless; so worthless that hunters frequently leave the result of all their day's "sport" in the woods where they were killed. Yet the hare is legitimate game, and should be hunted as such, and only in proper seasons, and not be ruthlessly exterminated. A woodland stroll is the pleasanter if one sees a hare there in his brown summer suit, or white as the snow about him in his winter furs.

Where there are no statute laws for the protection of game and harmless creatures not so cla.s.sed, an unwritten law of common sense, common decency, and common humanity should be powerful enough to protect all these. The fox is an outlaw; it is every one's legal right to kill him whenever and however he may, and yet wherever the fox is hunted with any semblance of fair play, whether in New England with gun and hound, or elsewhere with horse and hound, the man who traps a fox, or kills one unseasonably, or destroys a vixen and her cubs, bears an evil reputation. A sentiment as popular and as potent ought to prevail to protect those that, though harmless, are as unshielded by legislative enactments as the fox, and much less guarded by natural laws and inborn cunning.

x.x.xII

THE SKUNK

Always and everywhere in evil repute and bad odor, hunted, trapped, and killed, a pest and a fur-bearer, it is a wonder that the skunk is not exterminated, and that he is not even uncommon.

With an eye to the main chance, the fur-trapper spares him when fur is not prime, but when the letter "R" has become well established in the months the cruel trap gapes for him at his outgoing and incoming, at the door of every discovered burrow, while all the year round the farmer, sportsman, and poultry-grower wage truceless war against him.

Notwithstanding this general outlawry, when you go forth of a winter morning, after a night of thaw or tempered chill, you see his authentic signature on the snow, the unmistakable diagonal row of four footprints each, or short-s.p.a.ced alternate tracks, where he has sallied out for a change from the subterranean darkness of his burrow, or from his as rayless borrowed quarters beneath the barn, to the starlight or pale gloom of midnight winter landscape.

More often are you made aware of his continued survival by another sense than sight, when his far-reaching odor comes down the vernal breeze or waft of summer air, rankly overbearing all the fragrance of springing verdure, or perfume of flowers and new-mown hay, and you well know who has somewhere and somehow been forced to take most offensively the defensive.

It may be said of him that his actions speak louder than his words. Yet the voiceless creature sometimes makes known his presence by sound, and frightens the belated farm boy, whom he curiously follows with a mysterious, hollow beating of his feet upon the ground.

Patches of neatly inverted turf in a grub-infested pasture tell those who know his ways that the skunk has been doing the farmer good service here, and making amends for poultry stealing, and you are inclined to regard him with more favor. But when you come upon the empty sh.e.l.ls of a raided partridge nest, your sportsman's wrath is enkindled against him for forestalling your gun. Yet who shall say that you had a better right to the partridges than he to the eggs?

If you are so favored, you can but admire the pretty sight of the mother with her cubs basking in a sunny nook or leading them afield in single file, a black and white procession.

If by another name the rose would smell as sweet, our old acquaintance is in far better odor for change of appellation from that so suggestive of his rank offenses. What beauty of fair faces would be spoiled with scorn by a hint of the vulgar name which in unadorned truth belongs to the handsome glossy black m.u.f.f and boa that keep warm those dainty fingers and swan-like neck. Yet through the furrier's art and cunning they undergo a magic transformation into something to be worn with pride, and the every-day wear of the despised outlaw becomes the prized apparel of the fair lady.

If unto this humble night wanderer is vouchsafed a life beyond his brief earthly existence, imagine him in that unhunted, trapless paradise of uncounted eggs and callow nestlings, grinning a wide derisive smile as he beholds what fools we mortals be, so fooled by ourselves and one another.

x.x.xIII

A CAMP-FIRE RUN WILD

Some wooden tent-pins inclosing a few square yards of ground half covered with a bed of evergreen twigs, matted but still fresh and odorous, a litter of paper and powder-smirched rags, empty cans and boxes, a few sticks of fire wood, a blackened, primitive wooden crane, with its half-charred supporting crotches, and a smouldering heap of ashes and dying brands, mark the place of a camp recently deserted.

Coming upon it by chance, one could not help a feeling of loneliness, something akin to that inspired by the cold hearthstone of an empty house, or the crumbling foundations of a dwelling long since fallen to ruin. What days and nights of healthful life have been spent here. What happy hours, never to return, have been pa.s.sed here. What jokes have flashed about, what merry tales have been told, what joyous peals of laughter rung, where now all is silence. But no one is there to see it.

A crow peers down from a treetop to discover what pickings he may glean, and a mink steals up from the landing, which bears the keelmarks of lately departed boats, both distrustful of the old silence which the place has so suddenly resumed; and a company of jays flit silently about, wondering that there are no intruders to a.s.sail with their inexhaustible vocabulary.

A puff of wind rustles among the treetops, disturbing the balance of the crow, then plunges downward and sets aflight a scurry of dry leaves, and out of the gray ashes uncoils a thread of smoke and spins it off into the haze of leaves and shadows. The crow flaps in sudden alarm, the mink takes shelter in his coign of vantage among the driftwood, and the jays raise a mult.i.tudinous clamor of discordant outcry. The dry leaves alight as if by mischievous guidance of evil purpose upon the dormant embers, another puff of wind arouses a flame that first tastes them, then licks them with an eager tongue, then with the next eddying breath scatters its crumbs of sparks into the verge of the forest. These the rising breeze fans till it loads itself with a light burden of smoke, shifted now here, now there, as it is trailed along the forest floor, now climbing among the branches, then soaring skyward.

Little flames creep along the bodies of fallen trees and fluffy windrows of dry leaves, toying like panther kittens with their a.s.sured prey, and then, grown hungry with such dainty tasting, the flames upburst in a mad fury of devouring. They climb swifter than panthers to treetops, falling back they gnaw savagely at tree roots, till the ancient lords of the forest reel and topple and fall before the gathering wind, and bear their destroyer still onward.

The leeward woods are thick with a blinding, stifling smoke, through which all the wild creatures of the forest flee in terror, whither they know not--by chance to safety, by equal chance perhaps to a terrible death in the surging deluge of fire. The billows of flame heave and dash with a constant insatiate roar, tossing ever onward a red foam of sparks and casting a jetsam of lurid brands upon the ever-retreating strand that is but touched with the wash of enkindling, when it is overrun by the sea of fire.

The ice-cold springs grow hot in its fierce overwhelming wave, the purling rills hiss and boil and shrink before it, then vanish from their seared beds. All the living greenness of the forest is utterly consumed--great trees that have stood like towers, defying the centuries, with the ephemeral verdure of the woodland undergrowth; and to mark the place of all this recent majesty and beauty, there is but smouldering ruin and black and ashen waste. Little farms but lately uncovered to the sun out of the wilderness, cosy homesteads but newly builded, are swept away, and with them cherished hopes and perhaps precious lives. What irreparable devastation has been wrought by the camp-fire run wild!

Meanwhile the careless begetters of this havoc are making their leisurely way toward the outer world of civilization, serenely noting that the woods are on fire, and complacently congratulating themselves that the disaster did not come to spoil their outing; never once thinking that by a slight exercise of that care which all men owe the world, this calamity, which a century cannot repair, might have been avoided.

x.x.xIV