Meph, the Pet Skunk (American Woodland Tales) Read online

  Sycamore crossed the swamp on earth that was readied to burst. Beneath him the chemicals lay inert, waiting for the jolt that would explode them. He walked carefully, looking over the swamp and meadow to make sure no one was around, then ran up the hill. He found Mr. Crocket and his father standing over the battery. They were making a last check and watching the wind.

  “Everything’s all right along the creek,” said Sycamore.

  “Just as soon as a good gust comes from the west, we’ll let ’er go,” replied Mr. Crocket. “A gust from the west will carry the dirt away from the house.” Now he, too, was almost as excited as Sycamore. Seed wet his finger and held it in the air.

  “It’s a soft westerly,” he said. Mr. Crocket got up from his knees and looked across the swamp once more. There was nothing in sight. His perceptive eyes swung across the grasses. Something other than the wind was stirring the bulrushes near the spring. He looked closer. Sycamore followed his gaze.

  “Do you see something?” asked Sycamore.

  “I thought I did, but I guess not.”

  “The wind’s coming,” Seed cried. “It’s stiff in the apple tree. Fire!”

  “Wait! Wait!” shouted Sycamore. The bulrushes moved again and the shaking motion looked familiar to the boy. He had seen that trembling before. Then he remembered:

  “Wait, wait, it’s Meph!” He started down the hill at a dead run. Mr. Crocket stopped his impulse to move the two wires toward the battery, and dropped back on his heels. As he saw the boy sprint toward the swamp, he perspired with fear, for he had almost followed through at Seed’s word. He held the wires very carefully, so that there would be no chance for error and called to the boy.

  “Go, slowly; don’t run too hard! I won’t blow it.”

  Sycamore didn’t hear. He was too intent on his mission. He ran over the brink of the swamp, crashed through the sedges, and jumped into the seepage ditch.

  “Sycamore walk!” The boy heard. The ground jolted under his leap. For a second he stood still, paralyzed, remembering that one jolt could set off the whole line. He stared at the swamp for a brief, frightened second. The westerly wind from the apple tree blew strong and swift across the yellow and gold sea of grasses. The last of the migrating red-winged blackbirds fluttered silently on the dipping crest of a bulrush. There was not a sound. The earth remained quiet and unchanged. Carefully he picked up the skunk and turned back to the hill. He walked gently, nervously rubbing the sleek black fur of the animal. He returned to the battery site without speaking.

  Mr. Crocket looked up at him and a strange smile crossed his face. It was a smile of relief and reprimand. Sycamore saw and winked.

  “That was pretty close.”

  “Here comes another gust,” cried Seed. Once more they scanned the swamp and the margin of the creek. The scene looked right and the wires touched the battery. Instantaneously the earth moaned, growled, and rose as if a great creature were pushing up the swamp with its back. Then the sound of the explosion reached them, and a black shower of muck was in the sky, shooting up, up, up beyond the tops of the elms. There it stood a split second; then the rocks and mud fell back to the ground slowly, then swiftly. They rumbled and splatted as they hit.

  “Watch the falling stones,” Mr. Crocket shouted. He laughed as stray pieces of earth hit the bottom of the hill. For almost half a minute the splattering thuds continued until the last of the chunks had settled back. Then there was a dead silence, and Sycamore was looking at the deep gap in the swamp. Still smoking, it lay in a neat line to the creek. He started off at a run, followed by his father and Mr. Crocket. They walked along the new ditch to the stream.

  Meph came down the hill to the water willow, climbed over it, and started into the swamp again. He looked into the yawning gap and backed up. His life had been one abrupt change after another since the bulldozers had come to the farm. He tried once more to orient himself in the swamp and account for the sudden appearance of the ditch, but ceased to worry about it as the smell of earthworms, grub, and dead mice came to him from the turned earth. Eagerly, he climbed into the great burrow and clawed at this new food supply. He stuffed as he waddled down the ditch, eating a grub here, a stunned frog there. He even chewed on the tender roots of the cattails left bare by the blast. He heard the men at the far end of the swamp and was working toward them, when he felt a throb in his head, and he suddenly owned a banging headache. Blinking and shaking his head, he climbed out of the ditch and made his way across the swamp to the log in the wood lot. He laid his sick head on his feet and tried to sleep, but the throb, throb, throb, wouldn’t let him rest. He felt nauseated and ill. The grubs and worms sat heavily on his stomach. He rubbed his head miserably against the wall of the log, as across the swamp Mr. Crocket said to Sycamore:

  “Be careful to keep up wind, so as not to breathe the fumes of the dynamite. It’ll give you an awful headache.”

  That night water from the springs bubbled and slipped down the new ditch. It was joined by water from other parts of the swamp, running toward the creek. The swamp was draining, and the water that had stood so many years along the south edge of the marsh gradually disappeared.

  Meph recovered from his headache, but remained in the woods along the creek for several nights, not even coming to the house for food. He had caught what he could in his little area, moving up the creek toward the Toy farm rather than down toward the swamp. Life was too uncertain in that direction. He had seen Sycamore only twice during the week, for the boy had been working at the back of the farm after school. Even when he saw Sycamore, however, he did not respond as he had once done, for he was older and his need for companionship was less. He followed Sycamore as he might his mother all through the summer months, but now in autumn he was led, like all young wild things, to find his own home. He had chosen the creek wood lot, for there he had found warm shelter in the old log. Mice came to the woods for the corn which Sycamore scattered over the ground once a week.

  But wildlife in the creek wood lot was sparse. Of the many skunks that had been there in spring, only Meph remained. The old male of the sumac clump had succumbed to the disease of his lungs. The kits of the fence row had moved to the base of the mountains, tracking down what food they could find. Meph’s mother had wandered down the creek, and Meph would come upon her from time to time, searching the marsh in her constant quest for food. Occasionally she would return to the summer kitchen and attack the rats there, but she was not strong and a rat was no easy prey. She moved down to the farm east of the Lites where refuse and garbage was available and often raided the dumps in broad daylight. She had absolutely no fear of man now and even circled the houses looking for food.

  The white-footed one took what food he could from the Toy’s barn, and that section of the creek that flowed by it. His appearance did not improve, for his constant fight with fleas, straw, and burrs got ahead of him. By the time his night prowls were over he was too tired to clean himself well. As the season advanced he became more unsightly. Just before winter set in, he had had to move from his den because the fleas in his nest had become too many. He moved out under the haystack, but was restless there, for the cattle were constantly eating into his den, or knocking down his tunnels.

  From time to time he would encounter Meph along the stream, but he did not try to bully him; rather, he stepped back and let Meph have what hunting grounds he wished; for now Meph was a good pound heavier than he. His movements were swifter and his morale higher. A skunk could not be much of an animal when it had to stop every yard or so and bite the vermin that lived with him.

  The old barn owl had left for better hunting grounds. He had moved to a hollow basswood at the foot of the mountains where the mousing was better and the rabbits more abundant. His family had also left, one to the mountains, one to the church steeple in Boiling Springs, and one to a barn near Mt. Holly.

  The foxes were gone. The fox of the field was dead from rabies, and with him his young of the year. The buzzards had come in a
nd cleaned up the valley and no trace remained of those animals that had not survived. It had been a bad year for wildlife, but the elements were balanced now. Populations had dwindled to match the scanty food supply. The woods and fields seemed sterile. No longer did well-worn animal trails weave through the brush of the boundary fence line. Even the hayfields were grazed so heavily as to leave no cover or food.

  Through the autumn the swamp drained until it was hard and dry. It was scooped out according to the plans, and the dam was built. When it was complete the drain pipe was closed and the pond began to rise. It filled slowly. One night Meph found that he could no longer wander over the earthen bottom of the pond. A few feet down the embankment he found cold, clear spring water. He sniffed it. It did not smell of fish and snails and snakes like the creek, but of the salts and minerals of the earth, for it was void of life.

  The snows fell and the winds blew. Sycamore was in school all day, and the work on the farm slowed down. Only the cattle were fed and milked, and wood chopped for the fires. Seed spent his free hours worrying over the pamphlets Mr. Crocket had left. He tried to understand this new farming, the chemical fertilizers, the grasses, and the circular fields.

  During the inactive hours he brooded a lot. He resented the things he did not understand and decided to leave the farm in the spring. This was a crazy way to farm. He couldn’t graze the fields beyond a certain point, he couldn’t plant lots of corn. He could only keep a certain number of cows. At times he would push the reading matter aside and go for long walks across the fields or along the creek. Everything seemed to irritate him: Molly singing in the kitchen with all her new electric gadgets; Sycamore telling him about the new seeds they were going to put in—orchard grass that could withstand the dry days of August, reed canary grass that would grow well in wet spots; Sycamore running to the pond every day The pond—a waste of money and time. A waste of field that the cattle could graze. Granted it was poor pasture, but in August every blade of grass was needed including the grasses of the swamp. And Mr. Crocket telling him he could not graze the wood lots. He wanted the saplings to come up. Saplings that took years and years to grow. What good would they do him?

  Then Seed would figure that Mr. Crocket didn’t care about the cows. After all, they didn’t belong to him. Why wouldn’t Mr. Crocket try to starve them? Why wouldn’t he cut down on the number of fields he could till? And Sycamore trying to tell him that the new grasses would give him more feed than the cattle could eat. He didn’t like Sycamore’s telling him how to farm. He had been taken in by the man from the city, and was learning all kinds of crazy new things. It would lead to no good. Maybe he just didn’t like someone else running his farm, but he was unhappy and ready to move. He had heard about another farm that needed a farmer in April. He would look into it.

  GREEN STRIPS

  MEPH PULLED HIS TAIL close to his nose and rolled up tighter. For almost a week now he had not left his snowbound home, even to go abroad for food. He was well protected with fat, and the cold made him very sleepy. The snow had fallen over his log sealing it from drafts and winds and insulating it so that the heat from his body did not escape, but warmed his den. He was snug and did not worry about food. He slept and slept.

  In the treetops above him the titmice worked in bands along the creek as far as the bridge. They called to each other as they moved. Occasionally they hissed warnings when the sparrow hawk passed. When he had gone they went back to feeding, searching fallen logs and brush piles until they found new patches of food. At night they dispersed to their snug hideouts in the hollows of trees. There they puffed out their feathers and settled down to sleep. Like Meph, they heated their hollows with their bodies and slept warmly. In the morning they called their band together and hunted food again. Some arrived in the treetops with tails bent by the cramped walls of their cavities.

  The cold wave broke in February and Meph tunneled out of his log to prowl the wood lot. His moist black nose gathered the scents of the woodland. A deer, forced out of the mountains by lack of browse and deep snow, had passed over his log earlier in the evening. She had lingered by his den to graze the moss. The snow was pawed back by her cloven hoofs. Her trail led around the pond, that was now frozen level with its earthen brink. They disappeared across the fields.

  The raccoon of the hollow elm was abroad, his tracks pressed into the mud at the edge of the pond.

  Meph lifted his nose and twitched it in the current of air that wafted up from the fallen sycamore log. It smelled of freshly killed meat. Keeping his angular head in the current, he followed the scent to a rabbit killed by a red-tailed hawk. As he came closer to it, the aroma was mixed with the scent of raccoon. Meph peered into the darkness and saw the big male raccoon tearing at the rabbit with his hands and teeth.

  Meph came closer. The raccoon snarled and spat at him, but the skunk was not alarmed. He lifted his tail, stamped his warning, and came forward to take his share of this meal. But the raccoon held his position and Meph stopped ten feet away. Meph knew the powerful, hungry Procyon might attack if pressed too close. Finally Procyon clutched a leg and walked away with it. Meph approached the rabbit, sniffed it, and ground off a piece with his rear molars. He chewed and gulped.

  As he ate, a circular eddy brought another scent of the night. It spiraled by him, laden with scents from the creek. Then it was gone. Meph lifted his head and stopped chewing, for there was one of the borne odors he knew. The white-footed one was coming to the fallen sycamore, too. Again a trace of scent came to Meph. This time it was stronger. Finally Meph saw the white-footed one standing just beyond the log. He was ratty. His eyes seemed to bulge from his head, for there was no fat on his skull at all, only the dusty fur pulled taut over his face. He stared at Meph, then came on, for he was too hungry to care. Meph reared and hissed, his black fur rippling and shining as he moved. The white-footed one stepped back; then darted for the carcass. Meph charged him. He chased him along the sycamore log. The raccoon swallowed his last bite and looked up to watch the chase. Procyon growled and returned to the rabbit. Before Meph could get back, the raccoon had a sizeable piece in his mouth and was climbing a black locust with it. He cached it in the fork of the first limb, and returned to the ground.

  The white-footed one stood on the log, watching Meph. Slowly he inched forward, his mouth dripping, his stomach pulsing from hunger. Meph heard the snow crunch and saw the raccoon at the foot of the tree. He moved forward. Meph snarled and growled, eating between threats. The white-footed one rushed at Meph. Meph snarled and bit him behind the head, then clutched the remains of the rabbit and bounded toward the log. The white-footed one clutched a piece of the food and pulled. Meph’s weight was greater and he dragged the white-footed one with him, yanking and pulling as he went. Then Procyon bounded in, took a firm grip on the center of the carcass and yanked. He was heavier than either Meph or the white-footed one, and his vigorous pull threw them off balance. Then he gave a mighty shake and both skunks let go of the food and tumbled backwards. The rabbit now his, the raccoon made a flip and loped toward the locust. The two skunks rose and sent their spumes squirting toward Procyon. The scent raced through the air, but too late. Procyon had bounded out of range, taking the food with him.

  Now the angered Meph turned on the white-footed one, not only because of the food, but also because the white-footed one was trespassing. He reared and snarled, he slashed with his long front claws. Fighting to defend himself, the white-footed one crossed the sycamore log to the other side of the stream. Meph, crossing the log behind him, bit at his feet. On the other side, the white-footed one dived into the greenbrier tangles and disappeared in the underbrush. Meph shook his body, circled, and stamped. The white-footed one was far away when Meph stopped his dance. His tail rose and dropped over his back like a mantle. His whole body glittered and shone and without fully knowing why, he strutted down the stream bank, thumping the snow grandly as he went. He seemed to move without effort, flowing along with his beautiful plume drif
ting behind him. It scintillated and glittered as the black and white hairs tumbled over one another with the motion of his step.

  Meph stopped at the twisted roots of the white oak and sat down. He was alert and poised as he watched the den beneath the roots. His neck arched forward as it tapered to the small pointed head. He heard the leaves rustle far down under the ground and waited patiently for the little female to emerge.

  Cautiously her nose appeared in the entrance. It twitched and moved. Her head darted to the wind that was bringing her the scent of Meph. She came out into the night light and Meph saw that she was not as fortunate as he. She was thin and her face was pointed and drawn like that of the white-footed one. Her fur clung close to her small body, and the bones that thrust apart the fur at her shoulders showed that she had fought hard to live through the winter. She came forward slowly. Meph danced lightly from one side to the other. She watched him, sniffing and sniffing, for there was an odor about Meph that perplexed her. She saw his great stature and rich, lustrous fur. She sensed his alertness, but she was disturbed by him. She turned away and walked toward the springs where the swamp holly grew. Meph followed her. She looked back at him, then sauntered down the well-trodden trail. As she approached the cluster of swamp hollies with their bright berries, warm and red against the cold landscape, she turned and scented Meph once more. He seemed strange to her. His body was fat, and the odor from it smelled of milk and strange foods. He moved along the avenues skunklike enough, but there was no desperation in his movements. He did not tear at the exposed roots of the saplings and eat the cold bark. He did not dig hungrily at the base of trees, searching for sleeping cocoons and larvae. He had lived among men. He was a wrong note in this environment. Suddenly she turned on him and drove him up the avenue. Meph ran a few steps, stopped, and came toward her, for her anger interested him. She leaped at him again, turned, and walked out into the thawing swamp. Carefully she stepped from one patch of still frosted earth to the next, digging into the swamp as she searched for buried snakes and frogs; all the while she eyed the exquisite Meph. When he came too close she turned on him. He would stop and wait on a spongy hummock, then follow her on her search again.