Part 12 (1/2)
III. HEADS AND TAILS
I have heard a story of a young artist who, after painting a picture of a horse facing a storm, was not satisfied with it, and, feeling that something was wrong, asked Landseer to look at it. Instantly the great artist said to him, ”Turn the horse around.”
The cow turns her head to the storm, the horse turns his tail. Why this difference? Because each adopts the plan best suited to its needs and its anatomy. How much better suited is the broad, square head of the cow, with its heavy coating of hair and its ridge of bone that supports its horns, to face the storm than is the smooth, more nervous and sensitive head of the horse! What a contrast between their noses and their mode of grazing! The cow has no upper front teeth; she reaps the gra.s.s with the scythe of her tongue, while the horse bites it off and loves to bite the turf with it. The lip of the horse is mobile and sensitive. Then the bovine animals fight with their heads, and the equine with their heels. The horse is a hard and high kicker, the cow a feeble one in comparison. The horse will kick with both hind feet, the cow with only one. In fact, there is not much ”kick” in her kind. The tail of the cow is of less protection to her than is that of the horse to him. Her great need of it is to fight flies, and, if attacked in the rear, it furnishes a good hold for her enemies. Then her bony stern, with its ridges and depressions and thin flanks, is less fit in any encounter with storm or with beast than is her head. On the other hand, the round, smooth, solid b.u.t.tocks of the horse, with their huge ma.s.ses of muscles, his smooth flanks, and his tail--an ap.r.o.n of long, straight, strong hair--are well designed to resist storm and cold. What animal is it in Job whose neck is clothed with thunder? With the horse, it is the hips that are so clothed. His tremendous drive is in his hips.
IV. AN UNSAVORY SUBJECT
If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, I suppose the breath of the obscene fungus by any other name would smell as rank. The defensive weapon of our black-and-white wood p.u.s.s.y would probably not be less offensive if we called him by that name alone, instead of the common one by which he is universally known.
While in southern California last winter I heard of one that took up his abode in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a house that stood on the side of a hill in the edge of the country. It was in a sort of lumber-room where all sorts of odds and ends had acc.u.mulated. On some shelves was a box of miscellaneous articles, such as lids to tin cans, bed castors, old toothbrushes, bits of broken crockery, pieces of wire, chips of wood, and the dried foot and leg of a hen. One morning, on opening the door of the bas.e.m.e.nt, the mistress of the house was surprised to see the whole collection of trash laid out in a line across the floor. The articles were placed with some degree of regularity covering a s.p.a.ce about fifteen inches wide and ten feet in length. There were sixty-one articles in the row.
Having such an unsavory creature in the bas.e.m.e.nt of one's house is rather ticklish business; not so perilous as a stick of dynamite, yet fraught with unpleasant possibilities. They cleared away the exhibit and left the door open, hoping their uninvited guest would take his departure. But he did not. A few nights later he began another collection, finding a lot of new material--among other things a box with old atomizer bulbs, four of which bulbs he arranged here and there, in the row--a motley array.
What is his object? I confess I do not know. No one has seen him do it, as he works at night, but there is little doubt that it is his work.[3]
The Western skunk is a small creature, not much bigger than a gray squirrel. He can hide behind a dustpan.
[3] Later investigations point to this having been the work of a wood rat instead of a skunk.--C. B.
I wish some one would tell me why this night prowler so often seems to spray the midnight air with his essence which leaves no trace by day. He never taints his own fur with it. In the wilds our Eastern species is as free from odor as a squirrel or a woodchuck. Kill or disturb one by day or night in his haunts, and he leaves an odor on the ground that lasts for months. While at a friend's house in the Catskills last August a wood p.u.s.s.y came up behind the kitchen and dug in the garbage-heap. We saw him from the window in the early evening, and we smelled him. For some reason he betrayed his presence. Late that night I was awakened by a wave of his pungent odor; it fairly made my nose smart, yet in the morning no odor could be detected anywhere about the place. Of course the smell is much more p.r.o.nounced in the damp night air than by day, yet this does not seem an adequate explanation. Does he signal at night to his fellows by his odor? He has no voice, so far as I know. I have never heard him make a vocal sound. When caught in a trap, or besieged by dogs in a stone wall, he manifests his displeasure by stamping his feet. He is the one American who does not hurry through life. I have no proof that he ever moves faster than a walk, or that by any sign, he ever experiences the feeling of fear, so common to nearly all our smaller animals. His track upon the snow is that of a creature at peace with all the world.
V. CHANCE IN ANIMAL LIFE
Chance plays a much larger part in the lives of some animals than of others. The frog and the toad lay hundreds of eggs, the fishes sp.a.w.n thousands, but most birds lay only five or six eggs.
A spendthrift with one hand, Nature is often a miser with the other. She lets loose an army of worms upon the forests, and then sends an ichneumon-fly to check them. She wastes no perfume or color upon the flowers which depend upon the wind to scatter their pollen.
Cross-fertilization is dear to her, and she invents many ingenious ways to bring it about, as in certain orchids. She will rob the bones of the fowl of their lime to perfect the sh.e.l.l of the egg. She wastes no wit or cunning on the porcupine or on the skunk, because she has already endowed each of them with a perfect means of defense.
Two things Nature is not chary of--fear and pain. She heaps the measure here because fear puts her creatures on the safe side; it saves them from many real dangers. What dangers have lurked for man and for most wild things in the dark! How silly seems the fear of the horse! a fluttering piece of paper may throw him in a panic. Pain, too, safeguards us; it s.h.i.+elds us against real dangers. The pains of childbirth are probably no check upon offspring, because the ecstasy of procreation, especially on the part of the male, overcomes all other considerations.
VI. MOSQUITOES AND FLEAS
Mosquitoes for the North and mainly fleas and ticks for the South--this seems to be Nature's decree, at least in this country. The mosquitoes of the Far North pounce upon one suddenly and ferociously, while our Jersey mosquitoes hesitate and parley and make exasperating feints and pa.s.ses.
On the tundra of Alaska, if I stopped for a moment a swarm of these insects rose out of the gra.s.s as if they had been waiting for me all the years (as they had) and were so hungry that they could not stand upon the order of their proceeding, but came headlong.
In Jamaica the dogs were persecuted almost to death by the fleas. They were the most sorry, forlorn, and emaciated dogs I ever saw. Life was evidently a burden to them. I remember that Lewis and Clark, in their journey across the continent, were greatly pestered by fleas. I have found that our woodchucks, when they ”hole up” in the fall, are full of fleas.