Message #136452

[Mindwarp]

I took up the chip oil 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, 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
is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them.
"Aeneas Sylvius," 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, 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,
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." The battle which I
witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before
the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.

  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 mild 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.