Wood Folk at School — Unk Wunk the Porcupine, part 1

[Illustration] A rustling in the brakes just outside my little tent roused me from a light slumber.

There it was again!

the push of some heavy animal trying to move noiselessly through the tangle close at hand; while from the old lumber camp in the midst of the clearing a low gnawing sound floated up through the still night.

I sat up quickly to listen; but at the slight movement all was quiet again.

The night prowlers had heard me and were on their guard.

One need have no fear of things that come round in the night.

They are much shyer than you are, and can see you better; so that, if you blunder towards them, they mistake your blindness for courage, and take to their heels promptly.

As I stepped out there was a double rush in some bushes behind my tent, and by the light of a half-moon I caught one glimpse of a bear and her cub jumping away for the shelter of the woods.

The gnawing still went on behind the old shanty by the river.

"Another cub!"

I thought--for I was new to the big woods--and stole down to peek by the corner of the camp, in whose yard I had pitched my tent the first night out in the wilderness.

There was an old molasses hogshead lying just beyond the log camp, its mouth looking black as ink in the moonlight, and the scratching-gnawing sounds went on steadily within its shadow.

"He's inside," I thought with elation, "scraping off the crusted sugar.

Now to catch him!"

I stole round the camp, so as to bring the closed end of the hogshead between me and the prize, crept up breathlessly, and with a quick jerk hove the old tub up on end, trapping the creature inside.

There was a thump, a startled scratching and rustling, a violent rocking of the hogshead, which I tried to hold down; then all was silent in the trap.

"I've got him!"

I thought, forgetting all about the old she-bear, and shouted for Simmo to wake up and bring the ax.

We drove a ring of stakes close about the hogshead, weighted it down with heavy logs, and turned in to sleep.

In the morning, with cooler judgment, we decided that a bear cub was too troublesome a pet to keep in a tent; so I stood by with a rifle while Simmo hove off the logs and cut the stakes, keeping a wary eye on me, meanwhile, to see how far he might trust his life to my nerve in case the cub should be big and troublesome; for an Indian takes no chances.

A stake fell; the hogshead toppled over by a push from within; Simmo sprang away with a yell; and out wobbled a big porcupine, the biggest I ever saw, and tumbled away straight towards my tent.

After him went the Indian, making sweeping cuts at the stupid thing with his ax, and grunting his derision at my bear cub.

Halfway to the tent Unk Wunk stumbled across a bit of pork rind, and stopped to nose it daintily.

I caught Simmo's arm and stayed the blow that would have made an end of my catch.

Then, between us, Unk Wunk sat up on his haunches, took the pork in his fore paws and sucked the salt out of it, as if he had never a concern and never an enemy in the wide world.

A half hour later he loafed into my tent, where I sat repairing a favorite salmon fly that some hungry sea-trout had torn to tatters, and drove me unceremoniously out of my own bailiwick in his search for more salt.

Such a philosopher, whom no prison can dispossess of his peace of mind, and whom no danger can deprive of his simple pleasures, deserves more consideration than the naturalists have ever given him.

I resolved on the spot to study him more carefully.

As if to discourage all such attempts and make himself a target for my rifle, he nearly spoiled my canoe the next night by gnawing a hole through the bark and ribs for some suggestion of salt that only his greedy nose could possibly have found.

Once I found him on the trail, some distance from camp, and, having nothing better to do, I attempted to drive him home.

My intention was to share hospitality; to give him a bit of bacon, and then study him as I ate my own dinner.

He turned at the first suggestion of being driven, came straight at my legs, and by a vicious slap of his tail left some of his quills in me before I could escape.

Then I drove him in the opposite direction, whereupon he turned and bolted past me; and when I arrived at camp he was busily engaged in gnawing the end from Simmo's ax handle.

However you take him, Unk Wunk is one of the mysteries.

He is a perpetual question scrawled across the forest floor, which nobody pretends to answer; a problem that grows only more puzzling as you study to solve it.

Of all the wild creatures he is the only one that has no intelligent fear of man, and that never learns, either by instinct or experience, to avoid man's presence.

He is everywhere in the wilderness, until he changes what he would call his mind; and then he is nowhere, and you cannot find him.

He delights in solitude, and cares not for his own kind; yet now and then you will stumble upon a whole convention of porcupines at the base of some rocky hill, each one loafing around, rattling his quills, grunting his name _Unk Wunk!

Unk Wunk!

_ and doing nothing else all day long.

You meet him to-day, and he is timid as a rabbit; to-morrow he comes boldly into your tent and drives you out, if you happen to be caught without a club handy.

He never has anything definite to do, nor any place to go to; yet stop him at any moment and he will risk his life to go just a foot farther.

Now try to drive or lead him another foot in the same direction, and he will bolt back, as full of contrariness as two pigs on a road, and let himself be killed rather than go where he was heading a moment before.

He is perfectly harmless to every creature; yet he lies still and kills the savage fisher that attacks him, or even the big Canada lynx, that no other creature in the woods would dare to tackle.

Above all these puzzling contradictions is the prime question of how Nature ever produced such a creature, and what she intended doing with him; for he seems to have no place nor use in the natural economy of things.

Recently the Maine legislature has passed a bill forbidding the shooting of porcupines, on the curious ground that he is the only wild animal that can easily be caught and killed without a gun; so that a man lost in the woods need not starve to death but may feed on porcupine, as the Indians sometimes do.

This is the only suggestion thus far, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, that Unk Wunk is no mistake, but may have his uses.

Once, to test the law and to provide for possible future contingencies, I added Unk Wunk to my bill of fare--a vile, malodorous suffix that might delight a lover of strong cheese.

It is undoubtedly a good law;

but I cannot now imagine any one being grateful for it, unless the stern alternative were death or porcupine.

The prowlers of the woods would eat him gladly enough, but that they are sternly forbidden.

They cannot even touch him without suffering the consequences.

It would seem as if Nature, when she made this block of stupidity in a world of wits, provided for him tenderly, as she would for a half-witted or idiot child.

He is the only wild creature for whom starvation has no terrors.

All the forest is his storehouse.

Buds and tender shoots delight him in their season; and when the cold becomes bitter in its intensity, and the snow packs deep, and all other creatures grow gaunt and savage in their hunger, Unk Wunk has only to climb the nearest tree, chisel off the rough, outer shell with his powerful teeth, and then feed full on the soft inner layer of bark, which satisfies him perfectly and leaves him as fat as an alderman.