A Watcher in The Woods

RABBIT ROADS

In your woods walks did you ever notice a little furrow or tunnel through the underbrush, a tiny roadway in the briers and huckleberry-bushes? Did you ever try to follow this path to its beginning or end, wondering who traveled it? You have, doubtless. But the woods must be wild and the undergrowth thick and you must be as much at home among the trees as you are in your own dooryard, else this slight mark will make no impression upon you.

But enter any wild tract of wood or high swamp along the creek, and look sharp as you cut across the undergrowth. You will not go far before finding a narrow runway under your feet. It is about five inches wide, leading in no particular direction, and is evidently made by cutting off the small stems of vines and bushes at an inch or more from the ground. The work looks as if it had been laid out by rule and done with a sharp knife, it is so regular and clean.

This is a rabbit road. Follow it a few rods and you will find it crossed by another road, exactly similar. Take this new path now, and soon you are branching off, turning, and joining other roads. You are in rabbit-land, traveling its highways – the most complicated and entangling system of thoroughfares that was ever constructed. The individual roads are straight and plain enough, but at a glance one can see that the plan of the system is intended to bewilder and lead astray all who trespass here. Without a map and directions no one could hope to arrive at any definite point through such a snarl.

There often comes along with the circus a building called the "Moorish Maze," over whose entrance is this invitation:

COME IN AND GET LOST!

This is what one reads at the cross-roads in rabbit-land. There are finger-boards and milestones along the way; but they point nowhere and mark no distances except to the rabbits.

An animal's strong points usually supplement each other; its well-developed powers are in line with its needs and mode of life. So, by the very demands of his peculiar life, the beaver has become chief among all the animal engineers, his specialty being dams. He can make a good slide for logging, but of the construction of speedways he knows absolutely nothing. The rabbit, on the other hand, is a runner. He can swim if he is obliged to. His interests, however, lie mostly in his heels, and hence in his highways. So Bunny has become an expert road-maker. He cannot build a house, nor dig even a respectable den; he is unable to climb, and his face is too flat for hole-gnawing: but turn him loose in a brambly, briery wilderness, and he will soon thread the trackless waste with a network of roads, and lay it open to his nimble feet as the sky lies open to the swallow's wings.

But how maddening these roads are to the dogs and foxes! In the first place, they have a peculiar way of beginning nowhere in particular, and of vanishing all at once, in the same blind fashion. I am not sure that I ever found a satisfactory end to a rabbit's road – that is, a nest, a playground, or even a feeding-place. Old Calamity, the hound, is always tormented and undone whenever she runs foul of a rabbit road.

She will start Bunny in the open field, and trail away after him in full tongue as fast as her fat bow-legs will carry her. The rabbit makes for the woods. Calamity is hot on his track, going down toward the creek. Suddenly she finds herself plunging along a rabbit road, breaking her way through by sheer force where the rabbit slipped along with perfect ease. She is following the path now rather than the scent, and, all at once, discovers that she is off the trail. She turns and goes back. Yes, here the rabbit made a sharp break to the right by a side-path; the track is fresh and warm, and the old hound sings in her eager delight. On she goes with more haste, running the path again instead of the trail, and – there is no path! It is gone. This bothers the old dog; but her nose is keen and she has picked up the course again. Here it goes into another road. She gives tongue again, and rushes on, when —Wow! she has plunged into a thick and thorny tangle of greenbrier.

That is where the torment comes in. These roads have a habit of taking in the brier-patches. Calamity will go round a patch if she can; she will work her way through if she must – but it is at the cost of bloody ears and a thousand smarting pricks. Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the next brier-patch, counting the digs of his clumsy pursuer.

I suppose that this "blind alley" kind of road is due to the fact that the rabbits have no regular homes. They make a nest for the young; but they never have dens, like minks and coons. In New England they often live in holes and among the crannies of the stone walls; and there, as far as I have seen, they rarely or never make roads. Farther south, where the winters are less severe, they dig no holes, for they prefer an open, even an exposed, bed to any sort of shelter.

Shelters are dangerous. Bunny cannot back into a burrow and bare his teeth to his enemy; he is not a fighter. He can run, and he knows it; legs are his salvation, and he must have room to limber them. If he has to fight, then give him the open, not a hole; for it is to be a kangaroo kicking match, and a large ring is needed. He had as well surrender himself at once as to run into a hole that has only one opening.

During the cold, snowy weather the rabbits usually leave the bare fields for the woods, though the older and wiser ones more frequently suffer the storms than risk the greater danger of such a move. When pressed by hunger or hounded hard, they often take to a rail-pile, and sometimes they grow so bold as to seek hiding under a barn or house. One young buck lived all winter in the wood-pile of one of my neighbors, becoming so tame that he fed with the chickens.

The nearest approach that a rabbit makes to a house is his "squat," or form. This is simply a sitting-place in the fields or along the woods, that he will change every time he is thoroughly frightened out of it. Undisturbed he will stay in this squat for months at a time. Occasionally a rabbit will have two or three squats located over his range, each one so placed that a wide view on every side may be had. If it is along the woods, then he sits facing the open fields, with his ears laid back toward the trees. He can hear as far as he can see, and his nose tells him who is coming up the wind sooner than either eyes or ears.

It is cold, lonely living here in the winter. But everybody, except the mice and little birds, are enemies, his only friends being his wits and legs. In the long run, wits and legs are pretty safe insurance. "He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day," is Bunny's precept – and it works well; he still thrives.

The squat is a cold place. The sky is its roof, and its only protection is the tuft of grass, the stone, or the stump beside which it is placed. Bunny may change to the lee or windward side, as suits him, during a storm; but usually he keeps his place and lies close to the ground, no matter how the wind blows, or how fiercely falls the rain and snow. I have frequently started them from their squats in bleak, wind-swept fields, when the little brown things were completely snowed under.

There is great individuality among all animals, and though the rabbits look as much alike as peas, they are no exception to the rule. This personality is especially shown in their whimsical fancies for certain squats. Here, within sight of the house and the dog, an old rabbit took up her abode on a big, flat rail in the corner of the fence. Of course no hawk or owl could touch her here, for they dared not swoop between the rails; the dog and cat could scent her, but she had already whipped the cat, and she had given Calamity so many long runs that the hound was weary of her. The strategic value of such a situation is plain: she was thus raised just above the level of the field and commanded every approach. Perhaps it was not whim, but wisdom, that led to this selection.

I knew another, a dwarf rabbit, that always got into a bare or plowed field and squatted beside a brown stone or clod of earth. Experience had taught him that he looked like a clod, and that no enemy ever plagued him when he lay low in the brown soil.

One summer I stumbled upon a squat close along the public road. Cart-loads of trash had been dumped there, and among the debris was a bottomless coal-scuttle. In the coal-scuttle a rabbit made his squat. Being open at both ends, it sheltered him beautifully from sun and rain. Here he sat, napping through the day, watching the interesting stream of passers-by, himself hidden by the rank weeds and grass. When discovered by a dog or boy, he tripped out of one of his open doors and led the intruder a useless run into the swamp.

At one time my home was separated from the woods by only a clover-field. This clover-field was a favorite feeding-ground for the rabbits of the vicinity. Here, in the early evening, they would gather to feed and frolic; and, not content with clover, they sometimes went into the garden for a dessert of growing corn and young cabbage.

Take a moonlight night in autumn and hide in the edge of these woods. There is to be a rabbit party in the clover-field. The grass has long been cut and the field is clean and shining; but still there is plenty to eat. The rabbits from both sides of the woods are coming. The full moon rises above the trees, and the cottontails start over. Now, of course, they use the paths which they cut so carefully the longest possible way round. They hop leisurely along, stopping now and then to nibble the sassafras bark or to get a bite of wintergreen, even quitting the path, here and there, for a berry or a bunch of sweet wood-grass.

"Stop a moment; this won't do! Here is a side-path where the briers have grown three inches since they were last cut off. This path must be cleared out at once," and the old buck falls to cutting. By the time he has finished the path a dozen rabbits have assembled in the clover-field. When he appears there is a thump, and all look up; some one runs to greet the new-comer; they touch whiskers and smell, then turn to their eating.

The feast is finished, and the games are on. Four or five of the rabbits have come together for a turn at hop-skip-and-jump. And such hop-skip-and-jump! They are professionals at this sport, every one of them. There is not a rabbit in the game that cannot leap five times higher than he can reach on his tiptoes, and hop a clean ten feet.

Over and over they go, bounding and bouncing, snapping from their marvelous hind legs as if shot from a spring-trap. It is the greatest jumping exhibition that you will ever see. To have such legs as these is the next best thing to having wings.

Right in the thick of the fun sounds a sharp thump! thump! Every rabbit "freezes." It is the stamp of an old buck, the call, Danger! danger! He has heard a twig break in the woods, or has seen a soft, shadowy thing cross the moon.

As motionless as stumps squat the rabbits, stiff with the tenseness of every ready muscle. They listen. But it was only a dropping nut or a restless bird; and the play continues.

They are chasing each other over the grass in a game of tag. There go two, round and round, tagging and re-tagging, first one being "it" and then the other. Their circle widens all the time and draws nearer to the woods. This time round they will touch the bush behind which we are watching. Here they come – there they go; they will leap the log yonder. Flash! squeak! scurry! Not a rabbit in the field! Yes; one rabbit – the limp, lifeless one hanging over the neck of that fox trotting off yonder in the shadows, along the border of the woods!

The picnic is over for this night, and it will be some time before the cottontails so far forget themselves as to play in this place again.

It is small wonder that animals do not laugh. They have so little play. The savage seldom laughs, for he hunts and is hunted like a wild animal, and is allowed so scant opportunity to be off guard that he cannot develop the power to laugh. Much more is this true of the animals. From the day an animal is born, instinct and training are bent toward the circumvention of enemies. There is no time to play, no chance, no cause for laughter.

The little brown rabbit has least reason of all to be glad. He is utterly inoffensive, the enemy of none, but the victim of many. Before he knows his mother he understands the meaning of Be ready! Watch! He drinks these words in with his milk. The winds whisper them; the birds call them; every leaf, every twig, every shadow and sound, says: Be ready! Watch! Life is but a series of escapes, little else than vigilance and flight. He must sleep with eyes open, feed with ears up, move with muffled feet, and, at short stages, he must stop, rise on his long hind legs, and listen and look. If he ever forgets, if he pauses one moment for a wordless, noiseless game with his fellows, he dies. For safety's sake he lives alone; but even a rabbit has fits of sociability, and gives way at times to his feelings. The owl and the fox know this, and they watch the open glades and field-edges. They must surprise him.

The barred owl is quick at dodging, but Bunny is quicker. It is the owl's soft, shadow-silent wings that are dreaded. They spirit him through the dusk like a huge moth, wavering and aimless, with dangling dragon-claws. But his drop is swift and certain, and the grip of those loosely hanging legs is the very grip of death. There is no terror like the ghost-terror of the owl.

The fox is feared; but then, he is on legs, not wings, and there are telltale winds that fly before him, far ahead, whispering, Fox, fox, fox! The owl, remember, like the wind, has wings – wings that are faster than the wind's, and the latter cannot get ahead to tell of his coming. Reynard is cunning. Bunny is fore-sighted, wide awake, and fleet of foot. Sometimes he is caught napping – so are we all; but if in wits he is not always Reynard's equal, in speed he holds his own very well with his enemy. Reynard is nimble, but give the little cottontail a few feet handicap in a race for life, and he stands a fair chance of escape, especially in the summer woods.

When the hounds are on his trail the rabbit saves his legs by outwitting his pursuers. He will win a long distance ahead of them, and before they overtake him he will double on his track, approaching as near as he dare to the dogs, then leap far aside upon a log, into a stream, or among the bushes, and strike out in a new direction, gradually making back toward the starting-place. He rises on his haunches to listen, as he goes along, and before the dogs have again picked up the trail, he has perhaps had time to rest and lunch.

If it were a matter of dogs only, life would be just full enough of excitement to be interesting. He can double, balk, and mix trails on them, and enjoy it. They are nothing to fool. But the gun! Ah, that's a foe which he cannot get up with. He may double and confuse the dogs; but as he comes back along a side-road, with them yelping far in the rear, he often hops right into a game-bag.

To do justice to the intelligence of the dog, and to be truthful about the rabbit, it must be remembered that, in the chase, Bunny usually has the advantage of knowing the lay of the land. The short cuts, streams, logs, briers, and roads are all in mind before he takes a jump. The dog is often on strange ground. Free the rabbit for the hunt, as you do the fox, on unknown territory, and the dogs will soon take the frightened, bewildered little creature.

There is no braver or more devoted mother in all the wilds than Molly Cottontail. She has a mother's cunning and a mother's resourcefulness, also. But this is to be expected. If number of children count for experience, then, surely, Molly ought to be resourceful. There are seasons when she will raise as many as three families – and old-fashioned families for size, too. It is not uncommon to find ten young rabbits in a nest. Five times twins! And all to be fed, washed, and kept covered up in bed together! But animal children, as a rule, behave better than human children, so we may not measure the task of Mother Molly by any standard of our own. It is task enough, however, since you can scarcely count the creatures that eat young rabbits, nor the enemies that unwittingly destroy them. A heavy rain may drown them, cattle may crush them, mowing-machines may cut them to pieces, and boys who are starting menageries may carry them away to starve.

Molly's mother-wit and craft are sufficient for most of these things. She picks out a sunny hillside among high grasses and bushes for the nest, so that the rain will flow off and not flood it, and because that here the cows are not so likely to trample, nor the plow and mowing-machine to come. She must also have ready and hidden access to the nest, which the grass and bushes afford.

She digs a little hollow in the sand about a foot deep and as big around as a duck's nest, lines it first with coarse grasses and leaves, then with a layer of finer grass, and fills the whole with warm, downy fur plucked from her own sides and breast. This nest, not being situated at the end of an inaccessible burrow, like the tame rabbit's or woodchuck's, requires that all care be taken to conceal every sign of it. The raw sand that is thrown out is artfully covered with leaves and grass to blend with the surrounding ground; and over the nest itself I have seen the old rabbit pull vines and leaves until the inquisitive, nosing skunk would have passed it by.

Molly keeps the young ones in this bed for about two weeks, after which time, if frightened, they will take to their heels. They are exceedingly tender at this age and ought not to be allowed to run out. They do not know what a man is, and hardly understand what their hind legs are. I saw one that was at least a month old jump up before a mowing-machine and bolt across the field. It was his first real scare, and the first time that he had been called upon to test his legs. It was funny. He didn't know how to use them. He made some tremendous leaps, and was so unused to the powerful spring in his hind feet that he turned several complete somersaults in the air.

Molly feeds the family shortly after nightfall, and always tucks them in when leaving, with the caution to lie quiet and still. She is not often surprised with her young, but lingers near on guard. You can easily tell if you are in the neighborhood of her nest by the way she thumps and watches you, and refuses to be driven off. Here she waits, and if anything smaller than a dog appears she rushes to meet it, stamping the ground in fury. A dog she will intercept by leaving a warm trail across his path, or, in case the brute has no nose for her scent, by throwing herself in front of him and drawing him off on a long chase.

One day, as I was quietly picking wild strawberries on a hill, I heard a curious grunting down the side below me, then the quick thud! thud! of an angry rabbit. Among the bushes I caught a glimpse of rabbit ears. A fight was on.

Crouching beside a bluish spot, which I knew to be a rabbit's nest, was a big yellow cat. He had discovered the young ones, and was making mouths at the thought of how they would taste, when the mother's thump startled him. He squatted flat, with ears back, tail swelled, and hair standing up along his back, as the rabbit leaped over him. It was a glimpse of Molly's ears, as she made the jump, that I had caught. It was the beginning of the bout – only a feint by the rabbit, just to try the mettle of her antagonist.

The cat was scared, and before he got himself together, Molly, with a mighty bound, was in the air again, and, as she flashed over him, she fetched him a stunning whack on the head that knocked him endwise. He was on his feet in an instant, but just in time to receive a stinging blow on the ear that sent him sprawling several feet down the hill. The rabbit seemed constantly in the air. Back and forth, over and over the cat she flew, and with every bound landed a terrific kick with her powerful hind feet, that was followed by a puff of yellow fur.

The cat could not stand up to this. Every particle of breath and fight was knocked out of him at about the third kick. The green light in his eyes was the light of terror. He got quickly to a bush, and ran away, else I believe that the old rabbit would have beaten him to death.

The seven young ones in the nest were unharmed. Molly grunted and stamped at me for looking at them; but I was too big to kick as she had just kicked the cat, and I could not be led away to chase her, as she would have led a dog. The little fellows were nearly ready to leave the nest. A few weeks later, when the wheat was cut in the field above, one of the seven was killed by the long, fearful knife of the reaper.

Perhaps the other six survived until November, the beginning of the gunning season. But when the slaughter was past, if one lived, he remembered more than once the cry of the hounds, the crack of the gun, and the sting of shot. He has won a few months' respite from his human enemies; but this is not peace. There is no peace for him. He may escape a long time yet; but his foes are too many for him. He fights a good fight, but must lose at last.