Watched by Wild Animals Part 12

Wolves within the bounds of the United States are not ferocious; they do not attack human beings. That they were once ferocious is probable; but years ago they learned the folly of exposing themselves to human beings.

Notwithstanding all this, the wolf is not a coward. He is brave enough when anything is to be gained by being brave. The spectacular, reckless, grand-stand bravery that is pretty certain to be accompanied by death does not appeal to the wolf. Instances are on record, however, where numbers of wolves have risked their lives in order to save or to try to save a wounded companion, either from men or from animals.

A man captured and brought home a number of wolf puppies and placed them in a box inside a high picket fence. He thought the mother might come to their rescue and prepared to entrap her. He took off a picket of the fence, and placed steel traps inside and outside the fence and in the gap. On the first night the mother did bravely come to the rescue; but she avoided all dangers and carried off her puppies.

CHAPTER XII

WINTER WAYS OF ANIMALS

On the way home one winter afternoon I came upon a beaver colony a little below timberline. In the edge of the woods I stood for a time looking out on the white smooth pond. Lines of tracks crossed it from every point of the compa.s.s. Two camp birds alighted on a tree within a few feet and looked me over. I heard a flock of chickadees going through the woods.

A lynx came out of the willow clumps on the opposite sh.o.r.e. He walked out on the snowy pond and headed straight for the house. He was in no hurry and stepped slowly along and climbed on top of the house. Here he sniffed a time or two, then raked the house with right forepaw. He sniffed again. Nothing in reach for him.

Climbing down off the beaver house the lynx walked around it and started for the woods near me. Catching my scent he stopped, took a look, then went full speed into the Engelmann spruce forest. Other lynx had visited the top of the beaver house and also prowled along the bottom of the dam. A number of mountain sheep had crossed the pond a day or two before.

The pond was in a deep gulch and a goodly stream of water out of sight beneath the ice and snow was running into it. The concentrated outflow burst out over the top of the south end of the dam through an eighteen-inch opening. This pond was frozen over for five months. For these five months the beaver each day had a swim or two in the water under the ice. When hungry he took a section of an aspen from the pile on the bottom of the pond. This was dragged under the ice up into the house, where it afforded a meal of canned green bark.

Most summer birds fly away from winter. Other birds and a few animals travel a short distance--go to a place where food is more abundant although the winter there may not be any milder than in the locality in which they summered. Birds that remain to winter in the locality in which they summered, and most of the animals, too, go about their affairs as usual. They do not store food for the winter or even for the following day. The getting of food in the land of snows does not appear to trouble them.

But a number of animals--squirrels, chipmunks, conies, and beavers--store food for the winter. Generally these supplies are placed where they are at all times readily reached by the owners; on the earth, in it, in the water; the place depending on the taste and the habits of the fellow.

Upon the mountain tops the cony, or Little Chief Hare, stacks hay each autumn. This tiny stack is placed in the shelter of a big boulder or by a big rock, close to the entrance of his den. While the beaver is eating green canned bark the cony is contentedly chewing dry, cured hay.

The beaver is one of the animals which solves the winter food and cold problem by storing a harvest of green aspen, birch, and willow. This is made during the autumn and is stored on the bottom of the pond below the ice-line. Being canned in cold water the bark remains fresh for months.

Squirrels store nuts and cones for winter food. Most squirrels have a regular storing place. This covers only a few square yards or less and usually is within fifty or sixty feet of the base of the tree in which the squirrel has a hole and a winter home.

Commonly, when dining, the squirrel goes to his granary or storage place and uses this for a dining room. A squirrel in a grove near my cabin sat on the same limb during each meal. He would take a cone, climb up to this limb, about six feet above the snow, back up against the tree and begin eating. One day an owl flew into the woods. The squirrel dropped his cone and scampered up into the treetop without a chirp.

Another day a coyote came walking through the grove without a sound.

He had not seen me and I did not see him until the squirrel suddenly exploded with a sputtering rush of squirrel words. He denounced the coyote, called him a number of names. The coyote did not like it, but what could he do? He took one look at the squirrel and walked on. The squirrel, hanging to the cone in his right hand, waved it about and cussed the coyote as far as he could see him.

A number of species of chipmunks store quant.i.ties of food, mostly weed seed. But no one appears to know much of the winter life of chipmunks.

Chipmunks around my home remain under ground more than half of the year. Two near my cabin were out of their holes only four months one year. They were busy these four months gathering seeds and peanuts which they stored underground in their tunnels. Twice by digging I found the chipmunks in a sleep so heavy that I could not awaken them, and I believe they spend much of the eight months underground sleeping. Digging also revealed that they had eaten but little of their stored supplies.

When food becomes scarce and the weather cold and snowy, a number of animals hole up--go into a den. By hibernating, sleeping away the weeks the earth is barren and white, they triumph over the ways of winter. Bears and ground-hogs are famous hibernators. Many chipmunks and some species of squirrels hibernate for indefinite periods.

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 Racc.o.o.n, who hates the moon, Have found for cold the cure.

--SAMUEL SCOVILLE, JR., in _Everyday Adventures_.

Animals which hibernate, fast and sleep through much or all of the winter, are not harmed and possibly are benefitted by the fasting and sleeping. Bears and ground-hogs are fat when they go to bed in the autumn and fat and strong when they come out in the spring.

A snowy winter gives a bear den a cold-excluding outer covering--closes the entrance and the airholes. Most bears and ground-hogs appear to remain in the den all winter. I have known an occasional ground-hog to thrust out his head for a few minutes now and then during the winter, and bears may come forth and wander about for a time, especially if not quite comfortable. I have known a number of bears to come out toward spring for brief airings and sunnings.

Mid-winter a bear wanted more bedding. In fact, he did not have any, which was unusual. But the winter was cold, no snow had fallen, and the frigid wind was whistling through his poorly built den house. The usual snow would have closed the airholes and shut out the cold. He was carrying cedar bark and mouthfuls of dried gra.s.s into the den.

This same winter I came upon another bear. Cold or something else had driven him from his den. When I saw him he was trying to reopen an old den which was back in a bank under the roots of a spruce. He may have tried to dig a den elsewhere, but the ground was frozen almost as hard as stone. While he was working a bob-cat came snarling out. The bear struck at it. It backed off sputtering then ran away. In tearing out a root the bear slipped and rolled down the bank. He went off through the woods.

Late one February I came upon a well-worn bear trail between the sunny side of a cliff and an open den. In this trail there were tracks fresh and tracks two or more weeks old. Elsewhere I have seen many evidences that bears toward spring come out briefly to sun themselves and to have an airing. But never a sign of their eating or drinking anything.

Near my cabin I marked four ground-hog holes after the fat fellows went in. On September tenth I stuffed a bundle of gra.s.s in the entrance of each den. Sometime during the winter one of them had disturbed the gra.s.s and thrust out his head. Whether this was on Ground-hog Day or not, I cannot say. The other ground-hogs remained below until between April seventh and twelfth, about seven months. And these seven months were months of fast, and possibly without water.

The racc.o.o.n, who ever seems a bright, original fellow, appears to have a hibernating system of his own. Many a racc.o.o.n takes a series of short hibernating sleeps each winter, and between these sleeps he is about hunting food, eating and living as usual. But I believe these periods of hibernating often correspond to stormy or snowy periods.

While trying to see a flock of wild turkeys in Missouri one winter day I had a surprise. The snow showed that they had come out of the woods and eaten corn from a corn shock. I hoped to see them by using a near-by shock for a blind and walked around the shock. The snow over and around it showed only an outgoing mouse track. No snow had fallen for two days.

I had gotten into the centre of the shock when I stepped on something that felt like a big dog. But a few seconds later, when it lunged against me, trying blindly to get out, it felt as big as a bear. I overturned the shock in escaping. A blinking racc.o.o.n looked at me for a few seconds, then took to the woods.

Deep snow rarely troubles wild life who lay up food for winter. And snow sometimes is even helpful to food storers and also to the bears and ground-hogs who hibernate, and even to a number of small folk who neither hibernate nor lay up supplies.

One winter afternoon I followed down the brook which flows past my cabin. The last wind had blown from an unusual quarter, the northeast.

It made hay-stack drifts in a number of small aspen groves. One of these drifts was perhaps twenty feet across and about as high. The treetops were sticking out of it.

On the top of the snowdrift a cotton-tail was feeding happily off the bark of the small limbs. This raised platform had given him a good opportunity to get at a convenient food supply. He was making the most of this. At the bottom he had bored a hole in the snow pile and apparently planned to live there.

While peeping into this hole two mice scampered along it. This snow would protect them against coyotes. Safe under the snow they could make their little tunnels, eat gra.s.s and gnaw bark, without the fear of a coyote jumping upon them.

Tracks and records in the snow showed that for two days a coyote did not capture a thing to eat. During this time he had travelled miles.

He had closely covered a territory about three miles in diameter.

There was game in it, but his luck was against him. He was close to a rabbit, grabbed a mouthful of feathers--but the grouse escaped, and even looked at a number of deer. At last, after more than two days, and possibly longer, he caught a mouse or two.

Antelope in the plains appear to live in the same territory the year round. Many times in winter I have been out on the plains and found a flock feeding where I had seen it in summer. But one snowy time they were gone. I found them about fifteen miles to the west, where either less snow had fallen or the wind had partly swept it away. The antelope were in good condition. While I watched them a number started a race.

The wolves had also moved. A number of these big gray fellows were near the antelope. Just what the other antelope and the other wolves who used this locality did about these new folks, I cannot guess.

Mountain deer and elk who usually range high during the summer go to the lowlands or several miles down the mountains for the winter. They may thus be said to migrate vertically. One thousand feet of descent equals, approximately, the climatic changes of a thousand-mile southward journey. They may thus winter from five to twenty-five miles from where they summered, from one thousand to several thousand feet lower. The elk that winter in the Jackson Hole region have a summer range on the mountains forty or fifty miles away. But elk and deer that have a home territory in the lowlands are likely to be found summer after summer in the same small, unfenced pasture.

Moose, caribou, deer, and elk during heavy snows often resort to yarding. Moose and caribou are experts in taking care of themselves during long winters of deep snows. They select a yard which offers the maximum food supply and other winter opportunities.

One snowy winter I visited a number of elk that were yarding. High peaks rose snowy and treeless above the home in the forest. The ragged-edged yard was about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. About one half the yard was a swamp covered with birch and willow and a scattering of fir. The remainder was a combination of open s.p.a.ces, aspen groves, and a thick growth of spruce.

Constant trampling compressed the snow and enabled the elk readily to move about. Outside the yard they would have bogged in deep snow. In the swamp the elk reached the moss, weeds, and other growths. But toward spring the gra.s.s and weeds had either been eaten or were buried beneath icy snow. The elk then ate aspen twigs and the tops and limbs and bark of birch and willow.

Ease of movement in this area enabled the elk to keep enemies at bay.

Several times I saw from tracks that lion had entered this selfmade wild life reservation, and on two occasions a number of wolves invaded it. But each time the elk had bunched in a pocket of a trampled s.p.a.ce and effectively fought off the wolves.

One day late in February I visited the yard. The elk plainly had lost weight but were not in bad condition. While I lingered near the entire herd joined merrily in chase and tag, often racing then wheeling to rear high and fence with heads. If I counted correctly this herd went through the entire winter without the loss of an elk.

But the caribou appears to be the only animal which migrates between summer and winter ranges, that is, which makes a long journey of hundreds of miles; as much change of place as made by many species of migrating birds. The main cause for this migration is the food supply, but myriads of mosquitoes in the woods may be one cause of the moose moving each summer far into the north where there are gra.s.sy prairies and large openings in the woods. But for winter they seek food and shelter in a yard in the forest.

While snowshoeing in the forested mountains to the southeast of Long's Peak I came upon a mountain lion track startlingly fresh. I followed it to a den beneath a rock pile at the bottom of a cliff. Evidently the lion was in. Seeing older tracks which he had made on leaving the den, I trailed these. After zigzagging through the woods he had set off in a bee-line for the top of a cliff. From this point he evidently saw a number of deer. He had crawled forward, then back-tracked and turned to the right, then made round to the left. The snow was somewhat packed and his big feet held him on the surface. The deer broke through.