The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers Part 1

The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers.

by John Burroughs.

JOHN BURROUGHS

John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, in a little farmhouse among the Catskill Mountains. He was, like most other country boys, acquainted with all the hard work of farm life and enjoyed all the pleasures of the woods and streams. His family was poor, and he was forced at an early date to earn his own living, which he did by teaching school. At the age of twenty-five he chanced to read a volume of Audubon, and this proved the turning-point in his life, inspiring a new zeal for the study of birds and enabling him to see with keener eyes not only the birds themselves, but their nests and surroundings, and to hear with more discernment the peculiar calls and songs of each.

About the time of the Civil War he accepted a clerkship in the Treasury Department at Washington, where he remained nine years.

It was here that he wrote his first book, "Wake-Robin," and a part of the second, "Winter Sunshine." He says: "It enabled me to live over again the days I had pa.s.sed with the birds and in the scenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting at a desk in front of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many millions of banknotes were stored. During my long periods of leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of summer fields and woods!" In 1873 he exchanged the iron wall in front of his desk for a large window overlooking the Hudson, and the vault for a vineyard. Since then he has lived on the banks of the Hudson in the midst of the woods and fields which he most enjoys, adding daily to his fund of information regarding the ways of nature. His close habit of observation, coupled with his rare gift of imparting to the reader something of his own interest and enthusiasm, has enabled him to interpret nature in a most delightfully fascinating way. He gives the key to his own success when he says, "If I name every bird I see in my walk, describe its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is interested. But if I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own life,--show what it is to me and what it is in the landscape and the season,--then do I give my reader a live bird and not a labeled specimen."

Mr. Burroughs thoroughly enjoys the country life, and in his strolls through the woods or in the fields he is always ready to stop and investigate anything new or interesting that he may chance to see among the birds, or squirrels, or bees, or insects.

His long life of observation and study has developed remarkably quick eyesight and a keen sense of hearing, which enable him to detect all the activities of nature and to place a correct interpretation upon them to an extent that few other naturalists have realized.

When he writes he is simply living over again the experiences which have delighted him, and the best explanation of the rare pleasure that is imparted by his writings to every reader is given in his own words: "I cannot bring myself to think of my books as 'works,' because so little 'work' has gone to the making of them. It has all been play. I have gone a-fishing or camping or canoeing, and new literary material has been the result....

The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment of my holiday in the fields or woods; not till the writing did it really seem to strike in and become part of me"; and so the reader seems to partic.i.p.ate in this "finer enjoyment" of a holiday in the fields or woods, walking arm-in-arm with the naturalist, feeling the influence of his poetic temperament, learning something new at every turn, and sharing the master's enthusiasm.

I

THE WIT OF A DUCK

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense--the home sense--which operates unerringly. I saw this ill.u.s.trated one spring in the case of a mallard drake.

My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drake of a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought the drake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road along which it was carried, or to get the general direction, except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a few rods openly.

He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in a secluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from the highway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was easy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, and he soon left the presence of the scornful ducks.

Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them there a day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducks and the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left to himself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and started up the hill for the highway.

Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, but with the same results as before. There seemed to be but one thought in the mind of the drake, and that was home.

Several times we headed him off and brought him back, till finally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If that drake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity to make the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up through the currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highway which he had never seen.

When he reached the fence, he followed it south till he came to the open gate, where he took to the road as confidently as if he knew for a certainty that it would lead him straight to his mate.

How eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left, and increasing his speed at every step! I kept about fifty yards behind him. Presently he met a dog; he paused and eyed the animal for a moment, and then turned to the right along a road which diverged just at that point, and which led to the railroad station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose his bearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads that converged at the station.

But he seemed to have an exact map of the country in his mind; he soon left the station road, went around a house, through a vineyard, till he struck a stone fence that crossed his course at right angles; this he followed eastward till it was joined by a barbed wire fence, under which he pa.s.sed and again entered the highway he had first taken. Then down the road he paddled with renewed confidence: under the trees, down a hill, through a grove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home.

Presently he found his clue cut in two by the railroad track; this was something he had never before seen; he paused, glanced up it, then down it, then at the highway across it, and quickly concluded this last was his course. On he went again, faster and faster.

He had now gone half the distance, and was getting tired. A little pool of water by the roadside caught his eye. Into it he plunged, bathed, drank, preened his plumage for a few moments, and then started homeward again. He knew his home was on the upper side of the road, for he kept his eye bent in that direction, scanning the fields. Twice he stopped, stretched himself up, and scanned the landscape intently; then on again. It seemed as if an invisible cord was attached to him, and he was being pulled down the road.

Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group of farm buildings, and which did indeed look like his home lane, he paused and seemed to be debating with himself. Two women just then came along; they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it was raining, and this disturbed him again and decided him to take to the farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather doubtingly, I thought.

In a few moments it brought him into a barnyard, where a group of hens caught his eye. Evidently he was on good terms with hens at home, for he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them his troubles; but the hens knew not ducks; they withdrew suspiciously, then a.s.sumed a threatening att.i.tude, till one old "dominic" put up her feathers and charged upon him viciously.

Again he tried to make up to them, quacking softly, and again he was repulsed. Then the cattle in the yard spied this strange creature and came sniffing toward it, full of curiosity.

The drake quickly concluded he had got into the wrong place, and turned his face southward again. Through the fence he went into a plowed field. Presently another stone fence crossed his path; along this he again turned toward the highway. In a few minutes he found himself in a corner formed by the meeting of two stone fences. Then he turned appealingly to me, uttering the soft note of the mallard. To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind.

Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the drake over the wall, but I sat him down in the road as impartially as I could.

How well his pink feet knew the course! How they flew up the road! His green head and white throat fairly twinkled under the long avenue of oaks and chestnuts.

At last we came in sight of the home lane, which led up to the farmhouse one hundred or more yards from the road. I was curious to see if he would recognize the place. At the gate leading into the lane he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked like that and had been disappointed. What should he do now? Truth compels me to say that he overshot the mark: he kept on hesitatingly along the highway.

It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck would soon discover his mistake, but I had not time to watch the experiment further.

I went around the drake and turned him back. As he neared the lane this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar landmark, and he rushed up it at the top of his speed. His joy and eagerness were almost pathetic.

I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed with uplifted wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A half hour later the two were nipping the gra.s.s together in the pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the story of his adventures.

II

AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE

One summer, while three young people and I were spending an afternoon upon a mountaintop, our dogs treed a porcupine. At my suggestion the young man climbed the tree--not a large one--to shake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would do with him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As the climber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clung to was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized and shook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupine drop, but he did not. He only tightened his hold. The climber tightened his hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundle of quills did not come down, and no amount of shaking could bring it down. Then I handed a long pole up to the climber, and he tried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear was evidently a surprise; it produced an impression different from that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail, put up the shield of quills upon his back, and a.s.sumed his best att.i.tude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution, regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: he had never had an experience like this before; he had now met a foe that despised his terrible quills. Then he began to back rapidly down the tree in the face of his enemy. The young man's sweetheart stood below, a highly interested spectator. "Look out, Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's gaining on you!" "Hurry, Sam!" Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out for his footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It looked as if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless against a foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him." But, of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, and formed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and his instinct now was to get to the ground as quickly as possible and take refuge among the rocks. As he came down I hit him a slight blow over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to confuse him a little, but much to my surprise and mortification he dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill dead, having succ.u.mbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a c.o.o.n would hardly have regarded at all. Thus does the easy, pa.s.sive mode of defense of the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail and brittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles or battles to harden and toughen him.

That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with a price.

Certain of our natural history romancers have taken liberties with the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged ma.s.s of leaves which his quills have impaled--an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it performing a feat like this!

Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ball when attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemy roll down a snowy incline into the water. I believe the little European hedgehog can roll itself up into something like a ball, but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with him, and made all sorts of a.s.saults upon him, at different times, and I have never yet seen him a.s.sume the globular form. It would not be the best form for him to a.s.sume, because it would partly expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupine seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up with care. His att.i.tude of defense is crouching close to the ground, head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of large quills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, and the tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the ground.

"Now come on," he says, "if you want to." The tail is his weapon of active defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, and drives the quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called "In Panoply of Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine without taking any liberties with the creature's known habits. He portrays one characteristic of the porcupine very felicitously: "As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the manner of his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world."

III

HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS

That there is a deal of human nature in the lower animals is a very obvious fact; or we may turn the proposition around and say, with equal truth, that there is a deal of animal nature in us humans. If man is of animal origin, as we are now all coming to believe, how could this be otherwise? We are all made of one stuff, the functions of our bodies are practically the same, and the workings of our instincts and our emotional and involuntary natures are in many ways identical. I am not now thinking of any part or lot which the lower orders may have in our intellectual or moral life, a point upon which, as my reader may know, I diverge from the popular conception of these matters, but of the extent in which they share with us the ground or bas.e.m.e.nt story of the house of life--certain fundamental traits, instincts, and blind gropings.

Man is a bundle of instincts, impulses, predilections, race and family affinities, and antagonisms, supplemented by the gift of reason--a gift of which he sometimes makes use. The animal is a bundle of instincts, impulses, affinities, appet.i.tes, and race traits, without the extra gift of reason.

The animal has sensation, perception, and power of a.s.sociation, and these suffice it. Man has sensation, perception, memory, comparison, ideality, judgment, and the like, which suffice him.

There can be no dispute, I suppose, as to certain emotions and impulses being exclusively human, such as awe, veneration, humility, reverence, self-sacrifice, shame, modesty, and many others that are characteristic of what we call our moral nature.

Then there are certain others that we share with our dumb neighbors--curiosity, jealousy, joy, anger, s.e.x love, the maternal and paternal instinct, the instinct of fear, of self-preservation, and so forth.