Wilderness Ways by William Joseph Long


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Page 1

Most wild creatures have but small measure of gentleness in them,
and that only by instinct and at short stated seasons. Hence I
have given both sides and both kinds, the shadows and lights, the
savagery as well as the gentleness of the wilderness creatures.

It were pleasanter, to be sure, especially when you have been
deeply touched by some exquisite bit of animal devotion, to let
it go at that, and to carry with you henceforth an ideal
creature.

But the whole truth is better--better for you, better for
children--else personality becomes confused with mere animal
individuality, and love turns to instinct, and sentiment
vaporizes into sentimentality.

This mother fox or fish-hawk here, this strong mother loon or
lynx that to-day brings the quick moisture to your eyes by her
utter devotion to the little helpless things which great Mother
Nature gave her to care for, will to-morrow, when they are grown,
drive those same little ones with savage treatment into the world
to face its dangers alone, and will turn away from their
sufferings thereafter with astounding indifference.

It is well to remember this, and to give proper weight to the
word, when we speak of the _love_ of animals for their little
ones.

I met a bear once--but this foolish thing is not to be
imitated--with two small cubs following at her heels. The mother
fled into the brush; the cubs took to a tree. After some timorous
watching I climbed after the cubs, and shook them off, and put
them into a bag, and carried them to my canoe, squealing and
appealing to the one thing in the woods that could easily have
helped them. I was ready enough to quit all claims and to take to
the brush myself upon inducement. But the mother had found a
blueberry patch and was stuffing herself industriously.

And I have seen other mother bears since then, and foxes and deer
and ducks and sparrows, and almost all the wild creatures
between, driving their own offspring savagely away. Generally
the young go of their own accord as early as possible, knowing no
affection but only dependence, and preferring liberty to
authority; but more than once I have been touched by the sight of
a little one begging piteously to be fed or just to stay, while
the mother drove him away impatiently. Moreover, they all kill
their weaklings, as a rule, and the burdensome members of too
large a family. This is not poetry or idealization, but just
plain animal nature.

As for the male animals, little can be said truthfully for their
devotion. Father fox and wolf, instead of caring for their mates
and their offspring, as we fondly imagine, live apart by
themselves in utter selfishness. They do nothing whatever for the
support or instruction of the young, and are never suffered by
the mothers to come into the den, lest they destroy their own
little ones. One need not go to the woods to see this; his own
stable or kennel, his own dog or cat will be likely to reveal the
startling brutality at the first good opportunity.

An indiscriminate love for all animals, likewise, is not the best
sentiment to cultivate toward creation. Black snakes in a land of
birds, sharks in the bluefish rips, rabbits in Australia, and
weasels everywhere are out of place in the present economy of
nature. Big owls and hawks, representing a yearly destruction of
thousands of good game birds and of untold innocent songsters,
may also be profitably studied with a gun sometimes instead of
an opera-glass. A mink is good for nothing but his skin; a red
squirrel--I hesitate to tell his true character lest I spoil too
many tender but false ideals about him all at once.

The point is this, that sympathy is too true a thing to be
aroused falsely, and that a wise discrimination, which recognizes
good and evil in the woods, as everywhere else in the world, and
which loves the one and hates the other, is vastly better for
children, young and old, than the blind sentimentality aroused by
ideal animals with exquisite human propensities. Therefore I
wrote the story of Kagax, simply to show him as he is, and so to
make you hate him.

In this one chapter, the story of Kagax the Weasel, I have
gathered into a single animal the tricks and cruelties of a score
of vicious little brutes that I have caught red-handed at their
work. In the other chapters I have, for the most part, again
searched my old notebooks and the records of wilderness camps,
and put the individual animals down just as I found them.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 13:34