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 hound 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 to-day?
Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest thing I have
seen to-day. 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 to-day, 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
ground-nuts, 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 phœbe 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 wings 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 wood-yard, 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 he 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 on 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. "Æneas
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 wild 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.
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