Neighbors Unknown

The great heron eyed its approach. To the swimmer, no doubt, the blue-gray, immobile shape at the extremity of the sand-spit looked like some weather-beaten post, placed there by man for his inexplicable convenience in regard to hitching boats. But presently, something strange in the shape of the post seemed to strike the little voyager’s attention. He stopped. Perhaps he saw the menacing glitter of that yellow, unwinking stare. After a moment of wavering irresolution, he changed his course, swam straight across channel, scrambled out upon the wet mud of the farther shore, and vanished among the pale root-stalks of the sedge. The heron was savage with disappointment; but no slightest movement betrayed his anger, save that the pinkish film of the lower lid blinked up once, as it were with a snap, over each implacable eye. His time would come – which faith is that which supports all those who know how to wait. He peered upstream for the coming of another and less wary water-rat.

Instead of the expected ripple, however, he now caught sight of a shadow which flickered across the surface of the water and in an instant had vanished over the pale sea of the grass-tops. He looked up. In the blue above hung poised, his journeying flight just at that moment arrested, a wide-winged duck-hawk, boldest marauder of the air. The heron threw his head far back, till his beak pointed straight skyward. At the same time he half lifted his strong wings, poising himself to deliver a thrust with all the strength that was in him. On the instant the hawk dropped like a wedge of steel out of the sky, his rigid, half-closed pinions hissing with the speed of his descent. The heron never flinched. But within ten feet of him the hawk, having no mind to impale himself on that waiting spear-point, opened his wings, swerved upward, and went past with a harsh hum of wing-feathers. Wheeling again, almost instantly, he swooped back to the attack, buffeting the air just above the heron’s head, but taking care not to come within range of the deadly beak. The heron refused to be drawn from his position of effective defence, and made no movement except to keep the point of his lance ever toward the foe. And presently the hawk, seeing the futility of his assaults, winged off sullenly to hunt for some unwary duck or gosling.

As he went the heron stretched himself to his full gaunt height and stared after him in triumph. Then, turning his head slowly, he scanned the whole expanse of windless grass and sunlit water. One sight fixed his attention. Far up the windings of the lesser stream he marked a man in a boat. The man was not rowing, but sitting in the stern and propelling the boat noiselessly with an Indian paddle. From time to time he halted and examined the shore minutely. Once in a while, after such an examination, he would get out, kneel down, and be occupied for several minutes among the weeds of the shallows along the stream’s edge. He was looking at the musquash holes in the bank, and setting traps before those which showed signs of present occupancy. The heron watched the process, unstirring as a dead stump, till he thought the man was coming too near. Then, spreading a vast, dark pair of wings, he rose indignantly and flapped heavily away up river, trailing his length of black legs just over the sedge-tops.

Not far above the mouth of the stream the man set the last of his musquash traps. Then he paddled back leisurely by the way he had come, his dingy yellow straw hat appearing to sail close over the grass as the boat followed the windings of the stream. When the yellow hat had at length been swallowed up in the violet haze along the base of the uplands, the great blue heron reappeared, winging low along the river shore. Arriving at the sand-spit he dropped his feet to the shallow water, closed his wings, and settled abruptly into a rigid pose of watching, with his neck outstretched and his head held high in the air.

The most searching scrutiny revealed nothing in all the tranquil summer landscape to disturb him. Nevertheless, he seemed to have lost conceit of his sentry post on the tip of the sand-spit. Instead of settling down to watch for what might come to him, he decided to go and look for what he wanted. With long, ungainly, precise, but absolutely noiseless strides, he took his slow way up along the shore of the little river, walking on the narrow margin of mud between the grass-roots and the water. As he went his long neck undulated sinuously at each stride, his head was held low, and his eyes glared under every drooping leaf. The river margin, both in the water and out of it, was populous with insect life and the darting bill took toll of it at every step. But the most important game was frogs. There were plenty of them, small, greenish ochre fellows, who sat on the lily leaves and stared with foolish goggle-eyes till that stalking blue doom was almost upon them. Then they would dive head-foremost into the water, quick almost as the fleeting of a shadow. But quicker still was the stroke of the yellow beak – and the captive, pounded into limpness, would vanish down his captor’s insatiable throat. This was better hunting than he had had upon the sand-spit, and he followed it up with great satisfaction. He even had the triumph of capturing a small water-rat, which had darted out of the grass-roots just as he came by. The little beast was tenacious of life, and had to be well hammered on the mud before it would consent to lie still enough to be swallowed comfortably. This pleasant task, however, was presently accomplished; and the great bird, as he stretched his head upward to give his neck that final hitch which drove the big mouthful home, took a careless step backward into the shallow water. There was a small sinister sound, and something closed relentlessly on his leg. He had stepped into a steel trap.

Stung by the sharp pain, astounded by the strangeness of the attack, and panic-stricken, as all wild creatures are by the sudden forfeit of their freedom, the great bird lost all his dignified self-possession. First he nearly broke his beak with mad jabs at the inexplicable horror that had clutched him. Then, with a hoarse squawk of terror, he went quite wild. His huge wings flapped frantically, beating down the sedges and the blossoms of the arrow-weed, as he struggled to wrench himself free. He did succeed in lifting the trap above water; but it was securely anchored, and after a minute or two of insane, convulsive effort, it dragged him down again. Again and again he lifted it; again and yet again it dragged him down inexorably. And so the blind battle went on, with splashing of water and heavy buffeting of wings, till at last the bird fell back utterly beaten. In the last bout the trap had turned and got itself wedged in a slanting position, so that it was impossible for the captive to hold himself upright. He lay sprawling on his thighs, one wing outspread over the mud and leaves, the other on the water. His deadly beak was half open, from exhaustion. Only his indomitable eyes, still round, gold-and-black, glittering like gems, showed no sign of his weakness or his fear.

For a long time he lay there motionless, half numbed by the sense of defeat and by that gnawing anguish in his leg. Unheeded, the gleaming dragon-flies hurtled and darted, flashed and poised quivering, just above his head. Unheeded, the yellow butterflies, and the pale blue butterflies, alighted near him on the blooms of the arrow-weed. A big green bull-frog swam up and clambered out upon the mud close before him – to catch sight at once of that bright, terrible eye and fall back into the water almost paralyzed with fright; but still he made no movement. His world had fallen about him, and there was nothing for him to do but wait and see what would happen next – what shape his doom would take.

Meanwhile, down along the margin mud, still hidden from view by a bend of the stream, another stealthy hunter was approaching. The big brown mink, who lived far upstream in a muskrat hole whose occupants he had cornered and devoured, was out on one of his foraging expeditions. Nothing in the shape of flesh, fish, or insect came amiss to him; but having ever the blood-lust in his ferocious veins, so that he loved to slaughter even when his appetite was well sated, he preferred, of course, big game – something that could struggle, and suffer, and give him the sense of killing. A nesting duck or plover, for example, or a family of musquash – that was something worth while. On this day he had caught nothing but insects and a few dull frogs. He was savage for red blood.

Very short in the legs, but extraordinarily long in the body, lithe, snake-like in his swift darting movements, every inch of him a bundle of tough elastic muscles, with a sharp triangular head and incredibly malevolent eyes, the mink was a figure to be dreaded by creatures many times his size. As he came round the bend of the stream, and saw the great blue bird lying at the water’s edge with wings outstretched, the picture of helplessness, his eyes glowed suddenly like live coals blown upon. He ran forward without an instant’s hesitation, and made as if to spring straight at the captive’s throat.

This move, however, was but a feint; for the big mink, though his knowledge of herons was by no means complete, knew nevertheless that the heron’s beak was a weapon to beware of. He swerved suddenly, sprang lightly to one side, and tried to close in from the rear. But he didn’t know the flexibility of the heron’s neck. The lightning rapidity of his attack almost carried it through; but not quite. He was met by a darting stroke of the great yellow beak, which hurled him backward and ploughed a deep red furrow across his shoulder. Before he could recover himself the bird’s neck was coiled again like a set spring, the javelin beak poised for another blow.

Most of the wild creatures would have been discouraged by such a reception, and slunk away to look for easier hunting. But not so the mink. His fighting blood now well up, for him it was a battle to the death. But for all his rage he did not lose his cunning. Making as if to run away, he doubled upon himself with incredible swiftness and flew at his adversary’s neck. Quick as he was, however, he could not be so quick as that miracle of speed, which the eye can scarcely follow, the heron’s thrust. The blow caught him this time on the flank, but slantingly, leaving a terrible gash, and at the same time a lucky buffet from the elbow of one great wing dashed him into the water. With this success the heron strove to rise to his feet – a position from which he could have fought to greater advantage. But the lay of the trap pulled him down again irresistibly. As he sank back the mink clambered out upon the shore and crouched straight in front of him, just a little beyond the reach of his stroke.

The mink was now a picture of battle fury, every muscle quivering, blood pulsing from his gashes, his white teeth showing in a soundless snarl, his eyes seeming to throb with crimson fire. The heron, on the other hand, seemed absolutely composed. His head, immobile, alert, in perfect readiness, was drawn back between his shoulders. His eyes were as wide, and fixed, and clear, and glassily staring, as the jewelled eyes of an idol.

For some seconds the mink crouched, as if trying to stare his adversary out of countenance. Then he launched himself straight at the bird’s back. The movement had all the impetuosity of a genuine attack, but with marvellous control it was checked on the instant. It had been enough, however, to draw the heron’s counterstroke, which fell just short of its object. With the bird’s recovery the mink shot in to close quarters. He received a second blow, which laid open the side of his face, but it was a short stroke, with not enough force behind it to repulse him. Ignoring it, he closed, fixed his teeth in the bird’s neck, and flung his lithe length over the back, where it would be out of reach of the buffeting wings.

The battle was over; for the mink’s teeth were long and strong. They cut deep, straight into the life; and, undisturbed by the windy flopping of the great, helpless wings, the victor lay drinking the life-blood which he craved. A black whirling shadow sailed over the scene, but it passed a little behind the mink’s tail and was not noticed. It paused, seeming to hover over a patch of lily leaves. A moment more, and it vanished. There was a hiss; and the great duck-hawk, the same one whom the heron had driven off earlier in the day, dropped out of the zenith. The mink had just time to raise his snarling and dripping muzzle in angry surprise when the hawk’s talons closed upon him. One set fastened upon his throat, cutting straight through windpipe and jugular; the other set gripped and pierced his tender loins. The next moment he was jerked from the body of his prey, and carried – head, legs, and tail limply hanging – away far over the green wastes of the sedge to the great hawk’s eyrie, in the heart of the cedar-swamp beyond the purple uplands.

Some ten minutes later a splendid butterfly, all glowing orange and maroon, came and settled on the back of the dead heron, and waved its radiant wings in the tranquil light.

A TREE-TOP AERONAUT

Although in the open clearings it was full noon – the noon of early September, hot and blue and golden – here in the lofty aisles of the forest it was all cold twilight. Such light as glimmered down through the thick-leaved tree-tops was of a mellow shadowy brown and a translucent green, changing from the one tone to the other mysteriously as the eye shifted its backgrounds. One tall trunk, long ago shattered and broken off just below the crown by a stroke of lightning, stood pointing bleakly toward a round opening in the leafy roof, reaching upward a thin-foliaged, half-dead, gnarled and twisted arm.

In the outer shell and coarse strong bark of the stricken tree life lingered tenaciously, but its heart was fallen to decay. Near the base of the arm a round hole gave entrance, through the shell of live wood, to a chamber in the hollow heart. The chamber had yet another entrance, beneath a knot, higher up on the opposite side of the trunk. Through these two holes filtered a dim warm light, just strong enough to show a huddle of small, ruddy-brown, furry shapes sleeping snugly at the bottom of the chamber.

The forest was as still and soundless as a dream, under the spell of the noonday heat. But presently the silence was broken by the approach of heavy footsteps, now crackling as they crunched the dry twigs, now muffled and dull as they sank into beds of deep moss. They were plainly human footsteps, for no other creature but man would move so crudely and heedlessly through the forest quiet. Every one of the wild kindred, from the bear down to the wood-mouse, would move with a furtive wariness, desiring always to see without being seen, either intent upon some hunting or solicitous to avoid some hunter.

Down a shadowy corridor of soaring trunks came into view two figures – a tall heavy-shouldered lumberman, carrying an axe, and a slim boy with a light rifle in his hand. It was the lumberman, booted and long-striding, who made all the noise. The boy, in moccasins, stepped lightly as an Indian, his eager blue eyes searching every nook and stump and branch as he went, hoping at every step to surprise some secret of the furtive wood-folk.

Near the foot of the blasted tree he stopped, looking up.

“I wonder what lives in that hole up there, Jabe?” he said.

The lumberman peered upward critically.

“Jiminy, ef that ain’t a likely-lookin’ squir’l tree!” he answered.

“Squirrel tree!” echoed the boy. “As if every tree wasn’t a squirrel tree, wherever there’s a squirrel ’round!”

“Aye, but there’s squir’ls an’ squir’ls! You’ll see!” retorted the woodsman; and, swinging his axe, he brought the back of it down upon the trunk in three or four sounding strokes.

Straightway a dark little shape, appearing in the hole beneath the branch, launched itself into the air. It looked like a leap of desperation, as there was no tree within reach of any ordinary quadruped’s leap. Yet the daring little shape was plainly that of a quadruped, not of a bird. It was followed instantly, in lightning succession, by six or seven others equally daring; and all went sailing away, in different directions, across the mysteriously shadowed air. They sailed on long downward slants, with legs spread wide apart and connected on each side by furry membrane, so that they looked like some kind of grotesque, oblong toy umbrellas broken loose in a breeze. The boy stared after them with an exclamation of wonder and delight, trying to keep his eye on them all at once; but in a moment they had disappeared, gaining the shelter of other trees, and effacing themselves from view as if by enchantment.

All but one. As the flying squirrels came aeroplaning from their rudely assaulted citadel, the woodsman had dropped his axe, snatched up a bit of stick about a foot long, and hurled it after one of the gliding figures. Your woodsman is an unerring shot with the hurled axe, the pike-pole, or the billet of wood; but up there, in the deceitful transparency of shadow and glimmer, the little aeronaut was sailing with an elusive speed. The whirling missile almost missed its mark. It just caught the outspread furry tail, which was serving as a rudder and balancer to that adventurous flight. The tail, tough and flexible, gave way and took no injury. But the tiny aeroplanist, his balance rudely destroyed, plunged headlong to the ground.

“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed the boy, with long-drawn commiseration. But, his curiosity too strong for his pity, he raced forward with the woodsman to capture and examine their prize.

There was no prize to be found. Both had seen the flier come to earth. Both had marked, with expert eyes, the exact point of his fall. But there was nothing to be seen but a softly disappearing dent in the cushion of moss.

“Well, I’ll be – jiggered!” said the woodsman, fingering his stubbled chin and scrutinizing the nearest tree-trunks with narrowed eyes.

“Serves us right!” said the boy. “I’m glad he’s got away. I thought you’d killed him, Jabe!”

“Reckon I just blowed him over,” responded the woodsman. “But now ye know where they hang out, ye kin ketch one alive in a cage-trap, if ye want to git to know somethin’ of his manners an’ customs – eh, what? When ye’ve killed one of these wild critters, after all, to my mind he ain’t no more interestin’ than a lady’s fur boa.”

As the two man creatures disappeared down the confusing vistas of the forest, the soft dark eyes of the flying-squirrel, disproportionately large and prominent, with a vagueness of depth which made them seem all pupil, stared after them mildly from the refuge of a high crotched branch. Unhurt, even unbewildered by his dizzy plunge, he had bounced aside with a motion too swift for his enemies’ eyes to follow, and placed a tree-trunk between himself and peril. Darting up the trunk like a fleeting brown streak, he had been safely hidden before his enemies reached the tree.

In his high retreat, the flying-squirrel did not crouch as a red squirrel would have done, but lay stretched and spread out as if flattened by violence upon the bark. His color, of an obscure warm brown, faintly smudged with a darker tone, blended so perfectly with the hue of the bark that, if the eye once looked away, it could with difficulty detect him again. A member of a little-known branch of the flying-squirrel family, – the flying-squirrel of Eastern Canada, – he was nearly a foot in length, some two inches longer than the common flying-squirrel, from whom he differed also very sharply in color, his retiring brown and gray being in marked contrast to the buff and drab and pure white of his lesser but more famous cousin. Buff and white would have been so conspicuous a livery in the brown Canadian forests that his ancestors would never have survived to produce him had they not managed to change that livery in time to baffle their foes.

The flying-squirrel, unlike the impudent and irrepressible red squirrel, had a great capacity for patience, as well as for prudence. Moreover, he had no great liking for activity as long as the sun was up, his enormous eyes adapting him for the dim life of the night. For some minutes after the sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, he lay unstirring on his branch, his ears alert to the tiniest forest whisper, his nostrils quivering as they interrogated every subtlest forest scent. All at once his wide eyes grew even wider, and a sort of spasm of apprehension flitted across their liquid depths. What was that faint, dry, rustling sound – the mere ghost of a whisper – on the bark of the trunk behind him? Nervously he turned his head. There was nothing in sight, but the ghostly sound continued, so slight, so thin, that even his fine ear could hardly be sure of its reality.

The little watcher remained moveless as a knot on the bark. The creeping whisper softly mounted the tree. Then at last a flat, brownish-black, vicious head came into view around the trunk, and arrested itself, swaying softly, just over the base of the branch. It was the head of a large black snake.

The snake’s eyes, dull yet deadly, met those of the squirrel and held them. For a moment the black head was rigid. Then it began to sway again, with a slow hypnotizing motion. The eyes – shallow, opaque, venomous – seemed to draw closer together as they concentrated their energy upon the mildly glowing orbs of their intended victim. At last the waving head began to draw near, the black body undulating stealthily into view behind it. Nearer, nearer it came, the flat hard eyes never shifting, till it seemed that one lightning lunge would have enabled it to fix its fangs in the fascinated victim’s neck. But at this moment the little aeronaut whisked half round, flirted his broad fluff of a tail straight out behind him, and sailed quietly from his perch on a long gradual swoop, which brought him back to the base of the tree from which he had originally started. The hypnotizing experiment of the black snake had been, in this instance, an unqualified failure. Angry and disappointed, the snake withdrew to hunt mice or other easier game. The flying-squirrel ran cheerfully up the tree, slipped back into the hole, and curled himself up complacently to sleep away the rest of the daylight. Of his companions, two had already stealthily returned, and the others crept in soon afterwards quite unruffled.

That night moonrise came to the forest close on the vanishing trail of the sunset. A long white ray, flooding in through the tree-tops, lit up the hole beneath the branch of the blasted trunk. Without haste the flying-squirrels came one after another to their high doorway and launched themselves upon the still air. One might have thought that their first purpose would have been to forage for a meal; but, instead of that, they seemed like children just let out of school, bent on nothing so much as relieving their pent-up spirits. Probably they were not hungry. It was the season of abundance, and they had, perhaps, ample store of green nuts and tender young pine-cones within their hollow tree. In any case, they knew the forest was full of good provender for them, the forest-floor covered with berries for when they should choose to descend and gather them. There was no hurry. It was good to amuse themselves in their high and dim-lit world.

Their favorite game seemed to be to criss-cross each other, as it were, in their long gliding flights, which, beginning near the top of one tree would end generally near the foot of another, as far away as the impetus of their start and their descent would allow. Thence they would dart nimbly to the top again, sometimes with a restrained chirr of mirth, to repeat the gay adventure. Sometimes, when their descent was steep, they would rise again toward the end of it, by altering, probably, the angle of their membranes or side-planes. As they flashed spectrally past each other, touched suddenly by some white finger of moonlight, their play was like an aerial game of tag. But they never actually “tagged” each other. Most likely they took good care to avoid any approach to contact in mid flight, which might have meant a fall to the dangerous forest-floor, the haunt of prowling foxes, skunks, and weasels.

But though their chief dread seemed to be of the far dark ground and its perils, there were perils, too, for the little aeronauts even in their leafy heights. In the midst of their leaping, gliding, and sailing, there came a hollow cry across the tree-tops. It was a melancholy sound but full of menace – a whoo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo– repeated at long, uncertain, nerve-racking intervals. It sounded remote enough from the hollow tree, but at its first note the game of the furry aeroplanists came to a stop. One would have said that there were no such things as flying-squirrels in the Quah-Davic woods.