12.
Brute Neighbors
Sometimes I had a companion
(1) 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?(2)
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 Confutsee;(3)
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.(4)
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 (Mus leucopus) 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 phoebe 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,(5)
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 (6) 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 be 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.(7) Concord Fight! Two
killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded!(8)
Why here every ant was a Buttrick (9)--"Fire!
for God's sake fire!"--and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.(10)
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,(11)
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 (12)
is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Æneas
Sylvius,"(13) 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,(14)
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,(15)
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."(16)
The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five
years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.(17)
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.
Notes
- more information
1. Thoreau's friend, Ellery Channing - back
2. a common dog's name - back
3. Confucius - back
4. men known for fables (Pilpai, Æsop, etc.) - back
5. not a duel, but a war - back
6. in Greek legend, troops who fought with Achilles in the Trojan War
- back
7. battles of Napoleon - back
8. American fifer at the battle of Concord, died from battle injury
- back
9. John Buttrick, American commander at Concord - back
10. two Americans killed at Concord - back
11. Paris old soldiers's home built for Louis XIV - back
12. Francois Huber (1750-1831) blind Swiss entomologist - back
13. Æneas Sylvius (1405-1464), Pope Pius II 1458-1464 -
back
14. Eugenius IV (1383-1447), Pope 1431-1437 - back
15. Olaus Magnus (1490-1558) Swedish historian - back
16. Christian II (1481-1589), Danish king deposed in 1532 - back
17. The Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1850, placing the ant battle in
1845. - back
[ 홈 ] [ 위로 ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-A ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-B ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-C ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-D ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-E ] [ Walden - Chapter 2 ] [ Walden - Chapter 3 ] [ Walden - Chapter 4 ] [ Walden - Chapter 5 ] [ Walden - Chapter 6 ] [ Walden - Chapter 7 ] [ Walden - Chapter 8 ] [ Walden - Chapter 9-A ] [ Walden - Chapter 9-B ] [ Walden - Chapter 10 ] [ Walden - Chapter 11 ] [ Walden - Chapter 12 ] [ Walden - Chapter 13 ] [ Walden - Chapter 14 ] [ Walden - Chapter 15 ] [ Walden - Chapter 16 ] [ Walden - Chapter 17 ] [ Walden - Chapter 18 ] [ The Walden Express ]
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