The Dog Who Wouldn't Be (12 page)

Hector had no intention of interfering. With one amazingly agile motion he reached the other end of his bed. He huddled there for a moment as if uncertain what to do next, and then he made up his mind and swung both feet down to the tent floor.

The floor was of canvas, but it was old and no longer waterproof. Sufficient rain water had already seeped through to dissolve the bottom of the cardboard snake box. The snakes were probably as upset
as any of us, and when Hector stepped on one of them, the poor beast coiled convulsively around his ankle.

Hector's vocal response to this new stimulus was so impressive that it wakened my parents in the caravan. Through the drumming of the rain, and the rumble of the thunder, I could hear my father's voice crying with some asperity:

“Wake up! Wake u-u-u-u-up, Hecto-r-r-r-r! You're having a nightmare!”

And that, as Hector admitted to a mutual friend in the Albert Hotel some weeks later, “was no so verra far from the truth, if ye ken what I mean!”

That long-eared owl was the first of my owls. It was followed by many more – but of them all, by far the most memorable were the two great horned owls which joined our family in the following year. The natural-science teacher at my school was a keen wild-life photographer and it was his ambition to take a series of pictures of a great horned owl. He enlisted my aid to discover a nest. This was a mission after my own heart, and as soon as the snows passed in the following spring, I began my search, in company with Bruce Billings, a youngster of my own age and inclinations.

Every week end Bruce and I would pack our haversacks and tramp the poplar bluffs looking for owls. At night we would build a lean-to shelter, or “wickiup,” out of branches. Then we would make our supper fire and cook a meal of bacon and eggs and tea. As darkness came down we would lie on the new-greening grass and listen to the prairie sing. From far off would come the yelping of a coyote, answered and echoed by others, and dying away at last into a distance beyond hearing. From the sloughs the frogs would babble, and the shrill piping of night-migrating sandpipers would come on the dark wind. Sometimes we were stirred by the reverberating cry of sandhill cranes so high above us that when they crossed the moon's face, they were no more than midges.

But our ears were not really tuned to these voices. We were listening for the gruff “hoo-hoo-hoo” of horned owls, and when at last one of them would call, we would lay sticks upon the ground, pointing toward the sound.

With the first pallid dawn we would be awake, damp with the dew, and eager for the warmth of the breakfast fire. Later we would take our bearings from the direction the sticks pointed and, with Mutt romping ahead as an advance guard,
would begin searching every poplar bluff along the indicated line of march.

It was always a long search, but never tedious. Every bluff had its occupants and if they were not the ones we sought, they were fascinating in themselves. Along the edges of the copses, wood gophers would chuckle fearlessly at us, for they seem to have a liking for man, and do not flee him as do their saffron-colored brothers of the open plains. Within each bluff itself there would usually be at least one large nest high in the poplars. Often it was a crow's home, and the raucous scolding of the owners would follow us for miles. Sometimes it was the immense, roofed nest of a pair of magpies. Sometimes it was an old crow's nest now occupied by long-eared owls whose sly, cat faces would peer at us nervously as we walked by. Sometimes the nest would belong to a pigeon hawk, the trimmest of the little falcons; or to a pair of the great-winged hawks, Swainson's or redtails.

And between the bluffs, in the short new grass, meadowlarks and vesper sparrows would burst from underfoot, their nests hidden from us until Mutt's snuffling nose found them out. Mutt never disturbed birds' nests. He only found them for us
and then stood by while we poked and peered, and occasionally took one of the eggs.

The moment when at last we halted beneath the untidy bulk of a large nest in a high poplar and, staring upward, could identify the home of the greatest of the owls was an intensely thrilling one. It was an emotion to be matched only by the excitement of climbing the tree, with eyes cautiously averted, and yet with many a furtive glance at the huge bird above. Only once was I ever actually struck by a defending owl, and then it was a glancing blow that probably resulted from a miscalculation on the owl's part. But the wind-rushing dive of a bird with a five-foot wingspread, as it swerved to miss my head by a hand's breadth, was as thrilling to a boy as ever the charge of an attacking lion was to a grown man.

Once we had found a nest and had assured ourselves that it was occupied, we would report the news to our teacher friend, and in the days that followed we would help him build his blind. These blinds were rickety affairs of branches and canvas, tied and nailed in the treetops adjacent to the nest. The owls seldom took kindly to the arrival of neighbors and on one occasion an owl attacked the face of a newly built blind, ripping the tough
canvas to shreds with its inch-long talons. But eventually the blind would become no more than another part of the landscape and the birds would ignore it, and its occupants. For long, hot hours, I used to sit hidden from the owls, and watch their lives. I seldom used the camera that I carried, for I was too fascinated by the birds themselves. At first they seemed no more than brute beasts, bloodied with the game they brought back, yellow-eyed and savage to behold. But in time I began to see them differently – as living things whose appetites, and fears, and perhaps pleasures too were not so very different from my own.

I grew more and more enamored of them.

When we were preparing to leave the last of the three nests we had photographed that spring, I decided that I was not yet ready to sever my acquaintance with these interesting birds and so I carried one of the young ones home with me in my haversack.

The owlet was still flightless, and still possessed of much of his fledgling down. Nevertheless, he had presence, and we decided that he should be named Wol, after Christopher Robin's sage but bumbling old friend.

Later that summer I came by yet another young horned owl. I found him held prisoner in an oil
barrel where he had been placed by a bevy of youths who were intent on destroying him by inches. Bedraggled, filthy, and exhausted, he was a pitiful sight when I first beheld him. I parted with a hunting knife that was a prized possession, and found myself the owner of a second owl.

We named this one Weeps, for he never got over his oil-barrel experiences, and he never stopped keening as long as we knew him.

He and Wol were as different in character as two individuals could be. Wol was self-assured, domineering, and certain of his place in the sun. Weeps was timorous and retiring, and convinced that fate was his enemy. They differed in appearance, too, for Wol was of the arctic subspecies and his adult plumage was almost pure white, touched only lightly with black markings. Weeps, on the other hand, was a drab and sooty brown and his feathers always appeared shabby and frayed at the ends.

These two were among the most fascinating animals that I have ever known. They gave me a great deal of pleasure – but they made Mutt's life a hell on earth.

hen the owls first joined our family they were less than six weeks old, but already giving promise that their ultimate size would be impressive. My parents, who had never seen a full-grown horned owl, had no real idea as to just
how
impressive they could be, and I preserved a discreet silence on the subject. Nevertheless, Mother vetoed my plan for keeping the two newest, and youngest, members of the family in my bedroom, even though I pointed out to her that the birds might get lost, and in any case they would be in considerable danger from cats and dogs if they were kept outside.

Mother looked speculatively at the talons which the unhappy fledglings were flexing – talons already
three quarters of an inch in length – and gave it as her considered opinion that the cats and dogs would have a thin time of it in a mix-up with the owls. As to their getting lost – my mother was always an optimist.

Eventually my father solved the housing problem by helping me build a large chicken-wire enclosure in the back yard. This enclosure was used only a few months, for it soon became superfluous.

In the first place, the owls showed no disposition to stray from their new home. Each day I would take them out for a romp on the lawn and, far from attempting to return to their wild haunts, they displayed an overwhelming anxiety to avoid the uncertainties of freedom. Once or twice I accidentally left them alone in the yard and they, concluding that they had been abandoned, staged a determined retreat into the house itself. Screen doors were no barrier to them, for the copper mesh melted under the raking impact of their talons as if it had been tissue paper. Both owls would then come bursting through the shattered screen into the kitchen, breathing hard, and looking apprehensively over their shoulders at the wide outer world where their unwanted freedom lay.

Consequently the back-yard cage became not so
much a means of keeping the owls with us, as a means of keeping them from being too closely with us.

The two fledglings were utterly unlike in character. Wol, the dominant member of the pair, was a calmly arrogant extrovert who knew that he was the world's equal. Weeps, on the other hand, was a nervous, inconsequential bird of an unsettled disposition; and plagued by nebulous fears. Weeps was a true neurotic, and though his brother learned to be housebroken in a matter of a few weeks, Weeps never could be trusted on the furniture and rugs.

When they were three months old, and nearly full grown (although tufts of baby down still adhered to their feathers), Wol confirmed Mother's first impression as to his ability to defend himself. At three months of age he stood almost two feet high. His wingspread was in the neighborhood of four feet. His talons were an inch in length and needle sharp, and, combined with his hooked beak, they gave him a formidable armament.

One summer night he was in a huff as the result of a disagreement he had had with Mutt. When darkness fell he refused to come down from a high perch in a poplar tree in order to go to bed in the safe refuge of the cage. Since there was nothing we
could do to persuade him, we finally left him in his tree and went to bed ourselves.

Knowing something of the ferocity of the night-stalking cats of Saskatoon, I was uneasy for him and I slept lightly, with one ear cocked. It was just breaking dawn when I heard the sound of a muffled flurry in the back yard. I leaped from my bed, grabbed my rifle, and rushed out of the front door.

To my horror there was no sign of Wol. The poplar trees were empty. Suspecting the worst, I raced around the corner of the house, my bare feet slipping in the dew-wet grass.

Wol was sitting quietly on the back steps, his body hunched up in an attitude of somnolent comfort. The scene could hardly have been more peaceful.

It was not until I came close, and had begun to remonstrate with him for the chances he had taken, that I saw the cat.

Wol was sitting on it. His feathers were fluffed out in the manner of sleeping birds so that only the cat's head and tail were visible. Nevertheless, I saw enough to realize that the cat was beyond mortal aid.

Wol protested when I lifted him clear of his victim. I think he had been enjoying the warmth of his footrest, for the cat had been dead only a few
moments. I took it quickly to the foot of the garden and buried it circumspectly, for I recognized it as the big ginger tom from two doors down the street. It had long been the terror of birds and dogs and fellow cats throughout our neighborhood. Its owner was a big man with a loud and raucous voice who did not like small boys.

The ginger tom was the first, but not the last, feline to fall into error about Wol. In time the secret cemetery at the bottom of the garden became crowded with the remains of cats who had assumed that Wol was just another kind of chicken and therefore easy meat.

Nor were dogs much more of a problem to the owls. Rather grudgingly, for he was jealous of them, Mutt undertook to protect them from others of his own race. Several times he saved Weeps from a mauling, but Wol did not really need his protection. One evening a German shepherd – a cocksure bully if ever there was one – who lived not far from our house caught Wol on the ground and went for him with murder in his eye. It was a surprisingly one-sided battle. Wol lost a handful of feathers, but the dog went under the care of a veterinary, and for weeks afterwards he would cross the street to avoid passing too close to our house – and to Wol.

Despite his formidable fighting abilities, Wol was seldom the aggressor. Those other beasts which, like man, have developed the unnatural blood lusts that go with civilization would have found Wol's restraint rather baffling, for he used his powerful weapons only to protect himself, or to fill his belly, and never simply for the joy of killing. There was no moral or ethical philosophy behind his restraint – there was only the indisputable fact that killing, for its own sake, gave him no pleasure. Although perhaps, if he and his descendants had lived long enough in human company, he might have become as sanguinary and as cruel as we conceive all other carnivores – except ourselves – to be.

Feeding the owls was not much of a problem. Weeps ate anything that was set before him, on the theory – apparently – that each meal was his last. The future always looked black to him – such was his sad nature. Wol, on the other hand, was more demanding. Hard-boiled eggs, hamburger, cold roast beef, and fig cookies were his chosen articles of diet. Occasionally he would deign to tear apart a gopher that one of the neighborhood boys had snared on the prairie beyond the city; but on the whole he did not relish wild game – with one notable exception.

It has been said by scientists, who should know better, that the skunk has no natural enemies. It is this sort of smug generalization that gives scientists a bad name. Skunks
have
one enemy in nature – a voracious and implacable enemy – the great horned owl.

There can be few animal feuds as relentless as the one which has raged between horned owls and skunks for uncounted aeons. I have no idea how it originally started, but I know quite a lot about the tenacity with which it is still pursued.

The faintest whiff of skunk on a belated evening breeze would transform the usually calm and benign Wol into a winged fury. Unfortunately our house stood on the banks of the Saskatchewan River, and there was a belt of underbrush along the shore which provided an ideal highway for wandering skunks. Occasionally one of them would forgo the riverbank and do his arrogant promenading on the sidewalk in front of our house.

The first time this happened was in the late summer of Wol's first year. The skunk, cocksure and smug as are all the members of his species, came down the sidewalk just as dusk was falling. Some children who were playing under the poplar trees fled the approaching outcast, as did an elderly
woman who was airing her Pekinese. Swollen with his own foolish pride, the skunk strutted on until he came beneath the overhanging branches in front of the Mowat home.

Our windows were open and we were just finishing a late dinner. There was not much breeze, and by the time the first acrid warning came wafting into the dining room, Wol himself was ready to make his entrance. He came through the open window in a shallow dive and fetched up on the floor, depositing the still-quivering skunk beside my chair.

“Hoo-hoohoohoo-HOO,” he said proudly. Which, translated, probably meant “Mind if I join you? I've brought my own lunch.”

Owls are not widely renowned for their sense of humor, and Wol may have been an exception, but he, at least, possessed an almost satanic fondness for practical jokes, of which poor Mutt was usually the victim. He would steal Mutt's bones and cache them in the crotch of a tree trunk just far enough above the ground to be beyond Mutt's reach. He would join Mutt at dinner sometimes, and by dint of sheer bluff, force the hungry and unhappy dog away from the dish, and keep him away until finally the game palled. Wol never
actually
ate
Mutt's food. That would have been beneath him.

His favorite joke, though, was the tail squeeze.

During the searing heat of the summer afternoons Mutt would try to snooze the blistering hours away in a little hollow which he had excavated beneath the hedge on our front lawn. However, before withdrawing to this sanctuary he would make a careful cast about the grounds until he had located Wol, and had assured himself that the owl was either asleep or at least deep in meditation. Only then would Mutt retire to his repose, and dare to close his eyes.

Despite a hundred bitter demonstrations of the truth, Mutt never understood that Wol seldom slept. Sometimes the owl's great yellow orbs would indeed be hooded, but even then – though he might appear to be as insensible as a graven bird – he retained a delicate awareness of all that was happening around him. His eyesight was so phenomenally acute as to completely discredit the old canard that owls are blind in daylight. Often I have seen him start from what appeared to be a profound trance, if not slumber, and, half turning his head, stare full into the blaze of the noonday sky while crouching down upon his roost in an attitude of
taut belligerence. Following the direction of his gaze with my unaided eyes, I could seldom find anything threatening in the white sky; but when I brought my binoculars into play they would invariably reveal a soaring hawk or eagle so high above us that even through the glasses it seemed to be no bigger than a mote of dust.

In any event, Mutt's suspicious reconnoitering before he gave himself up to sleep was usually ineffective and, worse than that, it served to alert Wol to the fact that his quarry would soon be vulnerable.

Wol was a bird of immense patience. He would sometimes wait half an hour after Mutt had slunk away to rest before he began his stalk. He always stalked Mutt on foot, as if disdaining the advantage given him by his powers of flight.

Infinitely slowly, and with the grave solemnity of a mourner at a funeral, he would inch his way across the lawn. If Mutt stirred in his sleep, Wol would freeze and remain motionless for long minutes – his gaze fixed and unblinking on his ultimate objective – Mutt's long and silken tail.

Sometimes it took him an hour to reach his goal. But at last he would arrive within range and then, with ponderous deliberation, he would raise one foot and poise it – as if to fully savor the
delicious moment – directly over Mutt's proud plume. Then, suddenly, the outspread talons would drop, and clutch….

Invariably Mutt woke screaming. Leaping to his feet, he would spin around, intent on punishing his tormentor – and would find him not. From the branch of a poplar tree well above his head would come a sonorous and insulting “Hoo-HOO-hoo-hoo,” which, I suspect, is about as close to laughter as an owl can come.

It seemed to be inevitable that any animal which we took into our family would soon cease to consider itself anything less than human; and it was so with Wol. Very early in life he took note of the fact that we others could not, or would not, fly, and he thereupon accepted a terrestrial way of life for which he was but poorly adapted.

When I visited the little corner store, some three blocks from home, Wol would usually accompany me, and he would walk. Strangers who did not know him (and there were few such in Saskatoon) were apt to be severely startled when they encountered him during one of these promenades, for he walked with a lumbering, rolling gait that smacked of a lifetime of alcoholism. Furthermore, he gave ground to no man. If a
pedestrian bound upstream happened upon Wol going downstream, the pedestrian either moved aside or there was a collision. These collisions were not to be taken lightly. I recall all too vividly an occasion when a new postman, rapt in the perusal of the unfamiliar addresses on a bundle of letters, walked full into Wol one summer morning. The man was so completely preoccupied with his own problems that he did not even bother to glance down to ascertain the nature of the obstruction in his path, but blindly tried to kick it to one side. This, to Wol, was tantamount to deliberate assault. He rose on his dignity – which was immense – uttered a piercing hiss, and banged the offending human on the shins with his mighty wings. (Nor was this a gentle form of retaliation.) There was a sharp crack. The postman yelped in sudden pain, peered down at his feet, yelled even louder (this time on a high, keening note), and fled the neighborhood. It was left for me to collect the scattered letters and pursue him with what I hoped were appropriate apologies.