BRUTE NEIGHBORS |
SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing,
who came through the village to my house from the other side of the
town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as
the eating of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing
now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these
three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts- no flutter
from them. Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond
the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and
cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that
does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who
would live there where a body can never think for the barking of
Bose? And oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's
door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better not keep a
house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and
dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is
too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water
from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.- Hark! I
hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village bound
yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said
to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on
apace; my sumachs and sweetbriers tremble.- Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you?
How do you like the world today?
Poet. See those clouds; how
they hang! That's the greatest thing I have seen today. There's
nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands-
unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That's a true
Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have
not eaten today, that I might go a-fishing. That's the true industry
for poets. It is the only trade I have learned. Come, let's
along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be
gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a
serious meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me
alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall
be digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with
in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the
race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal
to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen;
and this you may have all to yourself today. I would advise you to
set in the spade down yonder among the groundnuts, where you see the
johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every
three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the
grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it
will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be
very nearly as the squares of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let
me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the
world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If
I should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet
occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into the
essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will
not come back to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for
them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of
it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path again.
What was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will
just try these three sentences of Confut- see; they may fetch that
state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding
ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
Poet.
How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones,
beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do
for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those
village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one
without finding the skewer.
Hermit. Well, then, let's be off.
Shall we to the Concord? There's good sport there if the water be not
too high.
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make
a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors;
as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect
that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they
are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of
our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the
common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country,
but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a
distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was
building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before
I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come
out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It
probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite
familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could
readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a
squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned
with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along
my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while
I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and
when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and
finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward
cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.
A
phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine
which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao
umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows,
from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and
calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself
the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach,
at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away,
and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a
traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the
whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and
mewing, or seen her trail her mings to attract his attention, without
suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and
spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a
few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat
still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only
their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your
approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even
tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without
discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time,
and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their
instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is
this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again,
and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in
exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow
like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and
precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent
expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All
intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the
purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye
was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it
reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller
does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless
sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these
innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually
mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is
said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some
alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which
gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.
It is
remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the
woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns,
suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live
here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps
without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the
raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably
still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or
two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read
a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook,
oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The
approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy
hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a larger wood about the
swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading
white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I had dug
out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip
up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose
almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither,
too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying
but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop
beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle
round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet,
pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get
off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with
faint, wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or
I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird.
There too the turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from
bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or the red
squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar
and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some
attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit
themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less
peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or
rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the
other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely
contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go,
but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly.
Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered
with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war
between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black,
and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these
Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the
ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and
black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only
battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine
war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists
on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet
without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought
so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each
other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at
noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out.
The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his
adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never
for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root,
having already caused the other to go by the board; while the
stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on
looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.
They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested
the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their
battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there
came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently
full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet
taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none
of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield
or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his
wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He
saw this unequal combat from afar- for the blacks were nearly twice
the size of the red- he drew near with rapid pace till be stood on
his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his
opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his
operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to
select among his own members; and so there were three united for
life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all
other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this
time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed
on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to
excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited
somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the
less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in
Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will
bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged
in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and
for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two
killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here
every ant was a Buttrick- "Fire! for God's sake fire!"- and
thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one
hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought
for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on
their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and
memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker
Hill, at least.
I took up the chip oil which the three I have
particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and
placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the
issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw
that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his
enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all
torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black
warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to
pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with
ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour
longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier
had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still
living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies
at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and
he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and
with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds,
to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more,
he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the
window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that
combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des
Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not
be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious,
nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I
had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle,
the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby
and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated
and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only
modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Aeneas
Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial
account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small
species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "'this
action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the
whole, history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' A similar
engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus,
in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried
the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant
enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the
expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The
battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five
years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many
a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling
cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the
knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows
and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly
threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its
denizens;- now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull
toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then,
cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he
is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I
was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond,
for they rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual.
Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her
days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and
stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular
inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens
in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their
backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived
in the woods there was what was called a "winged cat" in
one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian
Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone
a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was
a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her
mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more
than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house;
that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her
throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that
in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides,
forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and
under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted
like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave
me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no
appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying
squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for,
according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the
union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right
kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a
poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?
In the fall the
loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the
pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had
risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the
alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with
patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling
through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon.
Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for
the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up
there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and
rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or
seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the
woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and
dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen
must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they
were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early
in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my
cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in
order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely
lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the
latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the
surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling
along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days
especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down,
having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing
out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set
up his mild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and
he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived
again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were
fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had
helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and
with more reason than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could
not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to
the surface, turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed
the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he
might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the
greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he
made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at
once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it.
While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to
divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the
smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your
adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is
to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he
would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having
apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and
so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately
plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the
deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way
like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the
pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in
the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set
for trout- though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the
fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding
his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as
surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there.
Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just
put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found
that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his
reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for
again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one
way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me.
But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray
himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white
breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I
could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so
also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever,
dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. It was
surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast
when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet
beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like
that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most
successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn
unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as
when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls.
This was his looning- perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard
here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed
in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the
sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could
see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white
breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water
were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off, he
uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of
loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and
rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I
was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his
god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the
tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the
ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far
from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise
in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes
circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height,
from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like
black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither
long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter
of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside
safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know,
unless they love its water for the same reason that I
do.
HOUSE-WARMING
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