An old wolf's favourites, animals I have known

Contents

CHAPTER

I. About Moose Hunting

II. Wild Boar Training.

Introduction

ANIMAL FRIENDS OF MINE

In an out-of-the-way corner of my garden I have a wooden hut furnished with Camp furniture and a few trophies of hunting in far countries. Here I love to sit and read jungle stories — when I get the time for it.

On the walls of this hut are boards with lists of names on them ; they are Rolls of Honour.

But whose names do you think they are ?

They are the names of pet animals I have owned, chiefly horses, but there are also some pigs and dogs and a panther. Against the names are shown the years in which I owned them.

Here is one of the panels :

SOUTH AFRICA

TlTWILLOW . . 1887

Cigar

Lucifer .

ti

The Tart

Rosetta

Toulon .

, 1888

Bachelor

Colleen .

Mr. Brown ,

, 1889

Black Prince

, 1901

Orara .

io INTRODUCTION

In the following chapters in this book you will find stories about some of those who appear in this Roll of Honour, and you will then understand why I like to have those names set up where I can read them and remind myself of the happy times we had together.

You see, an animal has been made by God just as you have been. He is therefore a fellowcreature. He has not got the power of speaking our language, but he can feel pleasure or pain just as we can, and he can feel grateful to anyone who is kind to him.

A Scout, as you know, is always helpful to people who are crippled or blind or deaf and dumb ; so it is up to us to be good also to these dumb fellow-creatures of ours and to make them our friends by being friends to them.

And it is well worth while, because they become very true and faithful friends.

Therefore I hope that, as a Cub, you will keep pets and get to know about birds and animals so that when you become a Scout you can win the Badge of " a Friend to Animals " and will one day become a Bird or Animal " Warden."

You will be glad of it all your life, because you can always go on finding new and jolly friends among the birds and beasts around you who will love you and whom you will love.

ROBERT BADEN-POWELL.

Chapter I About Moose Hunting

In the woods of Canada live the Moose. These are great big stags, as tall as a horse and dreadfully ugly. They are great lanky animals, with big heavy horns and huge blobby noses. They are very cunning and very shy, and with their big ears they can hear the slightest sound a long way off.

Like all deer, they can smell a man far away when the wind is blowing towards them, and they can also hear the slightest foot tread or a snapped twig ; so they are very difficult to approach.

They bolt off into the forest the moment they think anybody is coming their way.

So a hunter finds the best way to get near them is not to try walking up to them, but to call them.

He does this by pretending to be a moose himself, making a noise like the moose bellowing.

ii

A MOCCASIN*

When a moose hears another one roaring it makes him angry, and he follows up the sound, eager to fight the one who is roaring. Even if he finds a river or a lake in his way it does not stop him. He plunges in and swims across in order to get at his enemy.

MOOSE-CALLING

I have often gone out moose-calling, not so much to shoot him as to have a chance of getting

him to come and show himself. The best time for doing it is at night when the forest is all still and your call travels a long way.

You cut a strip of bark off a birch-tree and roll it up in the shape of a megaphone. Through this you imitate the grunt and roar that the moose makes. It is not unlike the lowing of a bull in England.

But it does not do to stay too close to your camp to do this ; otherwise he will smell smoke, and will not come near you. But you creep out in your moccasins very quietly till you get to a nice quiet place in the woods.

Moccasins are soft leather boots which are worn by the hunter in the backwoods. They are more like big leather socks without thick soles or

CALLING THE MOOSE.

ABOUT MOOSE HUNTING nails to strike on stumps and stones and make a noise ; and you wear three or four pairs of thick socks inside them to prevent your feet from being bruised and jarred on the ground. As they are watertight, they are very warm and comfortable footgear for the hunter in Canada ; and when they are worn into holes, they can be much more easily mended than the ordinary stiff boots that you buy in a shop.

The best way to call moose is to go out in your

WAITING FOR THE MOOSE TO APPEAR.

birch-bark canoe at night, because you can move across the calm waters absolutely silently, the drip of the water off your paddle being the only sound that is heard. But even that must be very slight if you don't want to frighten the animal.

It is very hard work, sliding out over the dark water of the lake in the black shadows of the trees. When you get to a likely place you lie still, so that there is not a sound and not a ripple on the water.

The stars are all reflected on the surface so clearly that you feel as though you were somehow floating in mid-air, with sky below as well as above you.

Then, when all is still, you give out through your megaphone a gentle grunt or two which steals across the lake and echoes among the trees.

" i'll fight you ! "

Presently you let out a " moo " like a cow lowing. Then you put a bit of a snarl into it, and presently you bring out a real angry roar, as if to say : " Come on, you brute ! I'll fight you ! "

Then there may come a distant bellow in reply, from far away in the woods, and this will be repeated every now and again as the moose comes nearer, trying to find out the fellow who has challenged him ; or it may be that he won't answer by lowing, but will come silently through the forest, jolly angry, and meaning to kill his enemy when he finds him.

Then you hear every now and then the " tacktock " of his horns striking against ihe trees in passing, or the crack of sticks under his great hoofs.

You gaze out into the dark shadows of the trees, and you think you see something move. Dead silence. You scarcely dare breathe. There is no moose anywhere.

Then, again, as you strain your eyes into the darkness, you see a sort of shadowy something which certainly moves. There is a shadow on the water, and then out into the moonlight steps a great dark form.

ABOUT MOOSE HUNTING 15

Sometimes he is suspicious and shy. When he catches sight of you he springs back and lurches very heavily, but without making such a loud crashing as you might expect from him through the thick forest.

If he is in a bad temper he will go for you, plunging into the water and swimming out to try to crash your canoe down with his horns and feet. The only thing then is to paddle for your life and get out of his way. This, in your light birch-bark canoe, is not difficult, and it is great fun to watch him circling round, still eager to catch you, but unable to overtake you.

The moose often grows to a height of somewhere between seven and eight feet at the shoulder.

TIMID BY NATURE

It is a very timid animal by nature, and usually makes off at the sight of a human being, but occasionally it becomes dangerous, and can inflict a very nasty wound with its great sharp hoofs. Often wolves are killed at a single blow, in this manner, by an angry moose.

The moose travels at a trot, with immense strides, and when frightened can move at a tremendous gallop.

When passing through a thick wood the moose carries its huge horns in a horizontal position, to prevent them from becoming entangled in the tree branches.

Swamps and the margins of lakes are the favourite resorts of the moose, for the great animal is a splendid swimmer, and only good canoe paddlers are able to keep up with a moose.

AS BIG AS A HORSE, AND DREADFULLY UGLY.

In the winter the moose makes its meals from the small boughs of the birch and the willow trees.

To be a good moose hunter is looked upon by the Indians as a great achievement.

Chapter II Wild Boar Training

I will spin you a yarn about Algernon.

Algernon was very young, but a great friend of mine in India. He was an orphan ; at least, that was my notion of him. I found him away in the jungle without any parents, and, as they say in the police reports, " without any visible means of subsistence/ ' which, in other words, means he did not seem to be old enough to look after himself.

So I brought him home with me and had him properly fed and looked after, and he soon grew up a strong and healthy youngster. He was as lively a young rascal as any Wolf Cub, and as good as any Cub at practising to make himself strong and active and clever — only he wasn't a Wolf Cub. He was a pig — a little wild boar. He lived loose in my garden and made his lair in a thick bush, from which he would sally out and scamper about the place when he thought that there was no danger ; but if he heard a sound, he would stop and stare and listen and then quietly slip away into his hiding-place till the coast was clear again.

B 17

There was an old tree stump around which he used to practise galloping and twisting and turning in a figure of eight, in order to teach himself to be quick and handy.

He would come when I called him for food, but he came very shyly and suspiciously, and

IT IS NOT A NICE JOB TO FACE A WILD BOAR ON FOOT.

would never let me catch hold of him, he was much too quick. If my servant, who was a native, gave him his food, he came more boldly and, as soon as the bowl was set down near him, he would rush at the man and try to cut his bare legs with his tiny tusks — the ungrateful little beggar !

This always made the native run away, and when the little brute found it paid in this way he

WILD BOAR TRAINING

*9 went on doing it as he grew older ; and as his tusks grew bigger and more able to do harm, the natives began to grow all the more afraid of him.

BECOMES VERY DANGEROUS

When a boar is full grown he becomes very dangerous. He comes out of the jungle at night and he goes about grubbing up the crops and doing immense damage.

If a man working in the fields sees him and tries to drive him off, he very often goes for the man, knocks him down, and tries to kill him by digging his great sharp tusks into him.

So a favourite sport with the Army officers in India is to go out and help the natives by hunting the boar. They call it " pig-sticking.' '

They ride out on horseback, armed with spears, and when they find a boar they chase him and try to kill him.

But a boar is tremendously fast and active ; he can go as quickly as a horse, and he can jump almost any kind of fence. So he is not at all easy to catch, and he leads his hunters a fine dance over the country and through the jungle.

Then, if he finds the horseman overtaking him, he will often turn and charge him, throw him

AN OVERTHROW.

down and try to rip him open. I have more than once been thrown down that way.

Sometimes the old boar will get into a ravine or a difficult bit of the bush, where you cannot follow him on horseback.

WILD BOAR TRAINING 21

FOLLOWS HIM ON FOOT

Then the hunter has to get off and follow him on foot — and a nice job that is ! — scrambling about with a long spear in your hand, very often in thick reeds where you cannot see a yard in front of you, and where you know there is a savage great pig as big as a donkey waiting to rush at you.

How would you like that ? It is pretty exciting fun, I can tell you ! He is so big and heavy that, when he does charge you, he often sends you flying on your back. A boar once downed me like that, but I had my spear well into him anc was able to hold him off till other fellows came up and killed him.

My poor little friend Algernon never lived to become big and wicked. Some dogs scented him out one day in the garden and, after chasing him for some distance, they caught him and tore him so badly that the poor little chap had to be killed to put him out of his pain.

And that was the end of Algernon.

Chapter III My Friend The Panther

Who do you suppose was Squirks ?

Well, he was a particular friend of mine. It

was just as well to have him as a friend and not

as an enemy, for when he was nasty he could be

very nasty indeed.

Everybody knows who Bagheera was. He was

the Black Panther of the Jungle. Well, Squirks

was a cousin of his — that is, he was a panther, but not a black one. He was a lovely tawny yellow, dark on the back and light almost to white under-

SQUIRKS AND JACK. ,i t 1 1

neath, and he was covered with black spots, which on his back were big, black rings close together, getting smaller down his sides until they were mere black dots.

He was a very handsome and graceful animal when he had grown up, but was a jolly ugly little beggar when I first got him.

PANTHER OR LEOPARD ?

A panther is very much the same sort of animal as a leopard, and people are apt to confuse the

MY FRIEND THE PANTHER 23

two together. They really are the same animal, but when they live in the mountains and among the rocks they are generally thinner and more active than those which live in the jungles on the plains.

The latter, having less exercise, and getting their hunting easily, grow fatter and larger than the mountain kind. It is these larger ones that are called panthers, whilst the smaller ones are called leopards.

The way I remember the difference is this. The panther pants because he is fat and heavy, while the leopard leaps from rock to rock.

This is how I met Squirks. I was out shooting in the jungle one day, riding on an elephant, and was on the look out for a panther which was said to be in the neighbourhood.

As we were going along I caught a glimpse of spotted fur hiding in a tuft of jungle grass, and it looked to me as though this were the paw of a panther who was hiding there. So I fired down into the grass behind the paw ; whereupon the " paw " sat up and looked at me.

LIKE A YELLOW KITTEN

It was a baby panther, so I made the elephant kneel down, and I quickly slid to the ground and captured the little fellow. He was just like a huge yellow kitten, about the size of a full-grown cat.

I said to him, " Who are you ? " and he answered back with a sort of snarl which sounded like " Squirks ! " so Squirks became his name.

I brought Squirks back to my camp and showed him to Jack, my puppy.

Neither of them liked the other at first, but after a time they grew to be great friends and played together all day long.

After some months Squirks began to grow big, much bigger than Jack. His jaw became strong,

HE SPRANG THROUGH THE AIR LIKE AN ARROW.

and his claws became long, and in his play he rolled the poor dog over and over, and in his mouthing and clutching caused him much more pain than pleasure, and so poor Jack began to get tired of games where he always got the worst of it, and he finally gave up playing with Squirks altogether.

But Squirks was naturally gay and light-hearted, so when he found Jack no longer wanted to play

MY FRIEND THE PANTHER 25

with him, he took to playing with himself, and would chase his own tail round and round the lawn, and then dash into the house and rush over tables and chairs, upsetting everything.

He used to go for walks with me just like any dog would do.

Once, when I had been ill, I was lying out on a stretcher in the garden. Squirks was then getting nearly full-grown, and I used to love to watch him playing about, he was so active and graceful, and his glossy yellow and black hide made him very handsome.

One day as I lay there, I saw Mr. Squirks quietly creeping towards me. Nearer and nearer he came, crawling more and more slowly all the time, with his green eyes watching me, and his tail nervously twitching from side to side. It was different from his usual way, and I hardly knew whether he was coming at me in fun or in earnest.

A YELL FOR HELP

I was not able to move, so I let out a yell for help. He had now crouched down to the ground a few yards away from me, and then suddenly, like an arrow from a bow, he sprang through the air with a mighty bound and landed plump on top of me, half squashing me with his weight. There he crouched on my chest, grinning down into my face at very close quarters. Luckily, at that moment my big Afghan servant ran up and, seizing the brute, dragged him off.

He soon showed me that Squirks* roughness was all well meant, and that he merely wanted me to play with him.

But after this adventure I kept Squirks tied up by a long chain to his collar, the other end being attached to a tree.

MY AFGHAN SERVANT CARRIED SQUIRKS AWAY.

He used to love to climb up in the tree and lie flat along a big branch.

One day, when I was away, fre attempted to jump out of the tree, but unfortunately his chain caught up over a branch and hanged him, and that was the end of jolly old Squirks.

Chapter IV

You will think Fve had some funny pets in my time, since I have already told you about my tame panther, and my little wild boar, Algernon, but a pet elephant is a size larger than these, and is not a thing that you can carry about with you like a pet rat or a guinea-pig.

But, all the same, he is a very nice beast, and has the sense of all the other animals rolled into one.

An elephant is very like the little girl we read in of poetry :

When she was nice, she was very, very nice ; But when she was bad — she was horrid !

So there are elephants and elephants. Some are rippers and others are regular — Germans !

But Dandelion was of the ripping kind. Her name wasn't really Dandelion, but a native name, something like Psichkalamara, so I called her Dandelion. I don't quite know why, but I did. Well, Dandelion carried on her back a couple of pads or mattresses, and on top of these the howdah. This was a kind of box in which one could sit, only its sides, instead of being made of wood, were made of plaited cane, like the seat of a chair, so that the air could blow through. India is a hot country, you know.

KNEW EACH OTHER WELL

Then she also carried on her back — well, on the back of her neck — the mahout, that is, her driver. He was a native who had had charge of Dandelion for years, so they knew each other well.

The mahout sits astride of the elephant's neck, with a foot hanging down behind each of her ears. With his feet he guides her, urges her on, or stops her. If she doesn't obey the hint given by the feet, she gets a much stronger one on the top of her head from the driver's ankus, or hook. This is a nasty iron instrument — a short iron stick with a hook on the side of it. If the elephant gets very rampageous, as some of them do at times, and runs away, the driver can get a hold of her forehead with this hook, and, by pulling on it, can generally stop her. But it is a cruel kind of instrument, and my mahout never used his on Dandelion.

THROUGH THE JUNGLE

You use an elephant for riding on in India, because he can take you over ground where it would be impossible to go riding or even walking — through the endless jungles, where the grass is high above your head if you are walking on foot, and so thick that you cannot push your way through it. You are like a mouse in a hayfield. But an elephant runs you gaily through it, and, sitting in your howdah, you are just above the top of the grass. As you go swishing along, looking round over the wide expanse of it, with your elephant heaving and swaying along under you, you feel just as if you were in a boat at sea.

WHEN YOU SEE A TIGER.

" How do you get up there ? " you ask. Well, you can either make the elephant kneel down, so that you can clamber into the howdah, or — and this is what Dandelion used to do — she puts out her trunk with a slight curl upwards on it, so that you can step on to it and stand there. She then raises you up till you can step off on to the top of her head, and from there on to her back.

Nice and simple, isn't it ? What a pity that

3 o AN OLD WOLF'S FAVOURITES

motor-buses haven't trunks that could lift you on to the top like that !

Well, when you are sitting up aloft, you have your rifle with you, and then, if you see a tiger or a deer as you go along, you can get a shot at him.

QUICK AT SEEING GAME

Dandelion was awfully good as a shooting elephant. She was wonderfully quick at seeing, smelling, or hearing any kind of game, and the moment she did so she would stop and stand like a rock till you fired your shot or told her to go on. Very often she saw the game before I did.

I have a lovely great black bear-skin hanging in my room which she got for me.

We were climbing up out of a deep ravine, or little valley, among a few trees and bushes, when Dandelion suddenly stopped and clutched hold of a tree with her trunk in order to support herself, and there she hung on motionless.

I knew there must be game about. I looked everywhere, but could see nothing. Then suddenly I saw a big tuft of shaggy black hair moving among the bushes above me. I upped with my rifle and fired quickly at it, and out from the bushes tumbled a great black ball of fur — a fine bear, and he rolled close past us down the hill, and lay in a huddled heap below us, dead.

But it was all thanks to Dandelion that I got him.

IN THE RAVINES

I told you how clever my elephant Dandelion was at steadying herself in an awkward place when she wanted to stand still and give me the chance of a good shot at a bear. She hung on to a tree with her trunk in order to prevent herself slipping on the steep hill-side. She was equally clever whenever we had to go in

A FINE BEAR ROLLED DOWN CLOSE TO US.

and out of the many ravines and dry watercourses.

To go down into one she would put her fore-feet carefully over the edge and let them slide down while she knelt with her hind legs and so gradually reached the bottom.

Coming up again out of the bed of the stream she would clamber up the far bank and kneel with her front legs on the top until she got her hind legs up to their level.

TESTING BRIDGES

If she had to go over a small bridge she would stop and try it with her trunk and her fore-feet

DOWN THE BANK— first to see if it was strong enough to bear her weight.

When wading about in marshy ground she would be always very careful lest she should get bogged, and was continually testing the ground in front of her before she put her foot on it, for fear it should be too soft and let her down.

She was wonderfully clever, too, at picking up things if you dropped them off her back. I remember her once picking up with her trunk a cigarette which her rider had dropped, and quietly handing it back to him.

Another time when we were out pig-sticking, that is, hunting wild boar on horse-back, one of

— AND DP AGAIN.

the riders had had a bad fall in the middle of high grass jungle. He had lost his spear in the fall and we rode in on Dandelion to try and find it. Among the thick reeds and long grass it was very difficult to recognise the spear, but Dandelion found it at last and handed it up to the owner.

THE LOST SPEAR-HEAD

He then found it was broken, the spear-head had come off, just a small bit of steel about the size of a pocket-knife. Again Dandelion was told to look about in the tall grass for this, and after long searching she actually found it. It seemed to me that she had almost the sense of a human being rather than of an animal.

On more than one occasion when out tiger shooting she had been charged by a wounded tiger. The animal sprang at her head and clung there with tooth and nail until the hunters on her back managed to put more bullets into him and dropped him dead.

But Dandelion stood like a rock and never flinched or funked.

The funny thing was that although she was so brave with the tiger nothing would induce her to face a wild boar. He was a much smaller animal and could not jump up on to her, and yet if she smelt one or heard him rustling about in the jungle she was quite inclined to turn tail and bolt.

All elephants are that way. Brave at times and timid at others.

FRIGHTENED BY A TERRIER

I one day met a native prince riding along on his elephant in very grand style. I was walking on foot with my little dog. When the terrier saw the elephant he rushed out and barked at it. The elephant did not think twice about it, but swung round and dashed off down the road as hard as he could go, running away from the little terrier whom he could have squashed to a pancake had he put his foot on him. It quite upset all the dignity and swank of his owner.

I made the sketch on page 37 of a small boy (no bigger than a Wolf Cub) lambasting his father's elephant, and the elephant taking it as you might say " lying down," when with one

THE LITTLE DOG PUTS A STOP TO THE ELEPHANT'S SWANK.

swish of its trunk it could have knocked the urchin to smithereens.

And, mind you, a beating can hurt an elephant. In spite of its size and the thickness of his hide he can feel the slightest touch, and he gets driven nearly mad when flies or mosquitoes are about. He sucks up dust off the ground, for his trunk is, as you know, his nose, and he can sniff it up as a man sniffs snuff, and then he blows it out over himself and thus drives the flies away.

FOND OF HIS BATH

Or again with his trunk, which he uses as a hand, he tears down a branch off a tree and brushes the flies off with this. And how an elephant loves bathing ! No boy cou/d enjoy it more. He goes solemnly into the water and draws up any amount of it in his trunk and gives himself a real good shower-bath. Then he quietly lies down and sloshes over on his side and lets his mahout come and scrub him all over with a good rough stone.