Remember this: Wild creatures have no thought of the future only NOW.
"Perhaps there is no aspect of wild nature more fascinating than a consideration of the artful ways in which birds and animals meet their emergencies. Our human emergencies are of various kinds--social, financial, psychological, physical. But in nature, crises are always associated with physical peril. We are often trying to escape debt, ennui, loneliness, crowds, vauge but mastering fears of the future. Wild creatures probably have no thought of the future; what they try to escape is immediate danger, fraught with the possibility of death.
In my long life in the wilderness woods, in a country especially rich in wild life, I always took an especial interest in watching how children of Nature met their trials; for in their doing so, they often manifested a poise and an ingenuity that disclosed not only a high intelligence, but what appeared to me to be spiritual quality--a ready dauntlessness that is nowise short of valor.
One day I was walking through a stretch of bulrushes. My setter dog had ranged on ahead of me. Suddenly I heard him begin to bark excitedly. Knowing that he had encountered some kind of wild animal. I hurried forward, soon coming to a break in the marsh where there was a deep brackish pond, perhaps an acre in area. Almost halfway across this stretch of placid water an old raccoon was swimming fast. My dog was also swimming, bent on catching the coon. A raccoon, gentle and ingratiating by nature, can be a valiant fighter; and in shallow water he can often defend himself against an ordinary dog. In deep water the coon's chances are not so good.
Just beyond the halfway mark in the pond, to my surprise the raccoon stopped swimming. He had come on a submerged stump or log, the top of which was almost flush with the level of the water. The coon clambered up on this support, shook the water from his coat, turned, crouched, and so waited, facing my setter, that now, with rising hope, appeared to be certain of seizing his prey.
All about me stretched the great lonely marsh. Here before me was this land-locked lagoon. And in the middle of this arena I was about to see enacted a little drama of the wilds. Here two natural enemies were about to meet, one much stronger than the other. Could sagacity, some form of unpredictable strategy, save the day for the weaker of the two antagonists?
When the dog was within three feet of his wary prey, crouching there, as I thought defenseless, the raccoon suddenly thrust forward his little black hands, remarkably human in their shape and in their suggestion of sensitiveness. As soon as the dog was within reach, these hands gently but firmly took hold of my setter's ears, pushed his head under the water, and held him there. My dog made a wild struggle, as I could tell from the way in which his hind legs and tail frantically threshed the water. Just as I was about to wade in to save my setter from being drowned, the raccoon, with a look on his face that seemed to express contempt for inferiority, thrust the dog's head violently downward and away from him. Gasping pitifully, my setter swam painfully back to me, where he lay down on the edge of the pond and whined, confessing failure, and a dread of a further attempt. He was really more disheveled in spirit than in body. We left the wily old raccoon master of that field of honor. He was not smiling sardonically, but his aspect indicated that such was his feeling over my champion's inglorious discomfiture.
It seems to be a law of nature that anything (even a butterfly) will fight as a last resort. But an older law of nature enjoins wild things to evade trouble. After more than half a century of observing American wild life in its native haunts, I should say that we do not have a single bird, animal, or reptile that will normally take an aggressive attitude toward man unless it is cornered, or thinks it is. An exception perhaps should be made of mothers with their young; yet even they will move off into secrecy and hiding if they are not molested. Another exception is the individual, whose behaviour may be abnormal and therefore dangerous, because it is unexpected.
It is amazing how close wild things will lie or crouch, in the hope of being passed by completely. I remember scores of examples of this, but none more surprising than the case of an old turkey gobbler, a superb veteran, I knew, of many narrow escapes.
I had dried and burned off the stubble in one of my big rice fields. There I had turned in a drove of hogs to root it up. All this was to attract Wilson snipe that delight in such softened ground as they bore in the soil for their food. My sons were coming home for the winter holidays, and snipe shooting was a sport they enjoyed.
When the four of us went to the field, the fire and the hogs had done their work well. No cover of any kind remained except a stubborn solitary tussock or marsh near the center of the field. It was hardly big enough to hide a rabbit.
Approaching the field from different sides, two of us began a bombardment on the east, and two on the west. We kept following the snipe. We crossed and recrossed the field, passing many times near the small tuft of marsh, and shooting all around it. Finally, discovering that we had run completely out of shells, we started for the house. Near the middle of the field we came right to the lone tussock. All of us were within ten feet of it, when, to our amazement, a huge wild gobbler suddenly rose from his scant shelter, ran a few paces, and then took flight. Ponderous yet graceful, that flight took him to safety deep in the distant pine forest. For thrilling moments we watched his lessening black bulk against the pale blue sky.
In this case, as in practically all others that have come under my observation, a wild thing in a tight spot always asks, What's safest to do now? And very often the life saving artifice is to do nothing. We had come up to this open field from two sides. The wild turkey had seen us (he always will see a man before the man sees him), and he had forthwith decided to hide where he was. He crouched low by the little tussock; nor did all our fusillade of shots, and our calling to one another make him budge. His strategy was to wait it out. It was only when he saw that we were about to step on him that he moved.
In dangerous straits wild creatures may by no means resort to flight. They dread revealment. They know that an enemy is innocous if they remain unseen. They therefore cultivate silence, skulking, lurking, shadowy avoidance. Assuming a statuesque pose, a deer or a wild turkey will hold it so long that the eyes of a human watcher may grow weary. By doing nothing when they are startled, they appear to be nothing. I remember one day watching the dead top of a fallen tree. I was sure I saw the horns of a deer amid the dry branches, but could not quite distinguish them. After full twenty minutes, during which time the buck had not moved at all, this wary strategist stepped forth. I believe that many intelligent wild things, as this deer did, select cover favorable to camouflage. Thus I have long noticed that wild turkeys, in selecting roosting trees, invariably choose those that have mistletoe in them, or big bunches of moss, or squirrel nests."
Written by: Archibald Rutledge, deceased.
~Courtesy of AOFH~
