Masked Prowler: The Story of a Raccoon

by Jean Craighead George

  It was noon before the crows chased Bubo into a hollow elm. Gradually they floated off toward their nests. The tops of the trees were accentuated momentarily with their black wings dipping and lifting as two by two they departed.

  High above the April trillium, growing as dense as stars on the dark forest floor, the mother crow stood at the rim of her nest. The wind blew her feathers up from her back. They blurred the sleek outline of her body. She turned her head, looked down at her eggs and then cautiously moved over them. The eggs were cold. She drew her breast feathers close to her body and hopped back to the edge of the nest. For a moment she glanced around the ceiling of the forest. Then she flew to another tree. There she preened herself vigorously stopping now and then to peer at the cluster of black twigs in the top of the maple. At the sight of the nest she would drop her wings and start forward as if to return. Memory of the cold eggs would come to her and she would flap her wings heartlessly, turn round and round on her perch, then dip her beak into her black breast feathers and preen once more. The hatching date was already over due.

  Fifteen minutes later the mate of Corvus, the crow, flew out above the tree tops and circled to the marsh. Her cries died away across the boggy flats. The great horned owls had upset the scheme of crow life in the Strang forest and Corvus would have no offspring.

  Procyon came prowling toward the marsh that night. The sky was clear and the stars of late spring glittered richly above the forest. Spica, the flashing diamond of the east, burned coldly on the star-sketched hand of Virgo. Southwest of Virgo swung the constellation Corvus, the Crow, the bird of the field and woods, immortalized so long ago by mankind. Just rising to the northeast was the blue sapphire of the heavens, Vega. The blue gem adorned the strings of the astral lyre.

  Beneath this grand display, Procyon moved and hunted, a small shadow in the night land pattern of light and dark. When the distant stars had faded before the rising of the earth’s own star—the sun, Procyon came to the foot of the Corvus-tree. He dug his nails into the maple bark and raced up the tapered bole. Curiously he investigated the nest, first from the bottom with his inquiring paws, then from the side where he examined it with his nose, finally, from the middle where he sat casually among the eggs.

  Throwing all his weight on his hind feet and haunches, he fumbled the eggs. His busy fingers rolled them over and over. First one and then another. He picked one up, felt it and put it down. Finally he dropped one and it cracked against a second. Eagerly he lapped the oozing contents. To reach more he bit off the end and lapped hurriedly. After he had emptied the egg he broke and ate most of the shell. He set upon a second, breaking it against a twig. This one he opened with his claws carefully tearing off the thin shell. One at a time he devoured all five of the deserted eggs of Corvus and his mate. The twigs of the nest he chewed and licked clean. He ripped out the liner of binding twine as he pawed farther into the nest for a smear of yolk that had seeped away.

  He had begun to settle down in the nest for the day when a shot blasted from the ground below. Procyon cringed as the limbs above his head shook beneath a splatter of lead. He pressed down in the nest, and then the wind told him that somewhere below a man wandered.

  The poacher walked around the maple tree several times, trying to place a second shot with more accuracy. Several blasts into the nest would tear it open, kill his game and possibly bring it down to the ground, but he didn’t care to risk the noise. He would wait for the coon to peer over the edge or rush for the protection of the higher limbs.

  Procyon was lying close to the bottom of the nest. He need not move to see if his enemy was gone for his nose was more trusted than his eyes. He tucked his feet under him and dropped his nose on the platform. Procyon had infinite patience. He could wait all day, and all night if necessary. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply and dozed.

  Suddenly Procyon opened his eyes and lifted his head just high enough to scent the air, and listen. On the winds from the forest was the taste of Gib and Joe. The fence creaked as they climbed over it. Below him, the feet of the poacher stirred up the leaves in a startled scurry off toward the marsh.

  “He’s gone!” spoke Gib. Gib had been plowing the old cornfield near the woods, when the shot sounded. Calling to Joe who was sawing wood near the sugar house, he had run toward the direction of the report. Too late they had arrived on the hill above the marsh where they had placed the shot.

  “Wonder what he got this time?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know—but I don’t like that kind of hunting,” replied Gib. The two men kicked around in the flowers, and then Gib leaned down and picked up an empty cartridge shell.

  “Not many people use a long four-ten,” he said slowly.

  Joe took the shell and turned it over in his hands.

  “It won’t be long now. Someone is going to start talkin’ about their gun and their shootin’, and we’re gonna have our man.”

  “Yes,” said Gib, slowly, “Yes, that’s just what’s going to happen.”

  They turned away from the tree and went back across the hill to the fence. Gib had pocketed the shell. He would keep it until the proper time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FOR THE next month Procyon lived largely on field mice. These he found in the tangled grass of the abandoned meadow just above the deserted sugar house west of Gib’s woods. There were hundreds of mice in the field, running to and from their bunchy nests. They had gnawed tunnels through the dense mat in search of tender shoots and seeds. The stems and branches of the hawthorns were gleaming white where the mice had stripped the bark during the past winter.

  Procyon was not the only hunter. Bubo, the great horned owl, and Vulpes, the red fox joined him by night, and a pair of red-tailed marsh hawks hunted the area by day. Even Corvus, the crow, did not hesitate to take a mouse when he could.

  Although Procyon spent much of his time here, he also went to the marsh in search of frogs and snails or down to Rook’s Creek for crayfish and minnows.

  One night early in June he followed the creek back to Gib’s woods. Although there was no moon, Procyon easily made his way through the starlit woods. He dug and sniffed along the stream bed. Once he stopped his work and reached out into a motionless pool. Reflected on the water was the light from a single star. He scooped it up curiously. The still mirror shattered and the shimmering light slipped away in thousands of rippling pieces. He hunted the pool bottom, churning the water around and around. He did not see the silver light again. The next best thing was a white stone. He picked it up, tossed it around, and fell over backwards. The stone dropped into the fur on his stomach. For a moment he groped for it, found it and put it in his mouth. He grew tired of it quickly, and rolled over on his feet. Then he bounded off along the cattle trail in a frolicking gallop, head low, ears back.

  The trail skirted the loops of the meandering stream and led to the next deep pool. Procyon rushed on to this pool so swiftly and so silently that he startled Ondatra, the muskrat. Ondatra plunged from the bank where he was feeding and swept under the water. His webbed feet roiled up the pool sediment behind him. One second later he had cut across the pond diagonally and was out of the water, rushing through the rapids below the pool. The mud squeezed through Procyon’s toes as he dug in his powerful hind feet and lunged after Ondatra. He bolted along the high bank of the pool and plunged into the stream at the head of the rapids a few leaps behind the muskrat.

  The muskrat fled downstream to the next pool. With a “ka-plunk” he dived into it. The water boiled as he disappeared. He streaked off to an underwater entrance of his den in the over-hanging bank to the left. Procyon splashed up to the pool behind him, dodged the deep water, and sped around it on the shallow beach to the right, expecting to meet Ondatra as he surfaced at the next shallows. But Ondatra was safe in his den; he did not appear.

  The raccoon worked back up the left bank of the stream, probing the debris along the water’s edge. However, he couldn’t arouse the muskrat and turned to continue
his way down the stream. Where the creek turned east, he crossed to the other bank on a leaning maple and started up through the woods. He followed a wet ditch that drained the woodland marsh. Beyond the marsh he came to the grove of saplings on the higher ground.

  He wandered into a bushy thicket. Here he stopped, surprised by a rustle of sound, a hiss, and a “snap, snap, snap.” Curious, he moved closer and the snapping and hissing mounted. Peering at him through the thicket were the yellow eyes of Bubo’s crippled fledgling!

  “Ssssssssssss, snap, snap, snap.” Young Bubo was hunched close to the ground, his hooked beak almost touching the leaves of the forest floor. His wings bowed out from his body, and his feathers rose, swelling him to twice his normal size. He rocked from one powerful leg to the other, his claws spread to their widest reach. One wing arched to the ground, but the other, stunted by the beak of Corvus, the crow, reached only half way. The primaries had never grown, and the young Bubo could not fly. Close by him lay the carcass of a red squirrel, for his mother still brought him food. He spent most of his time in this dense thicket, hopping on to an old stump during the day to sleep.

  Procyon sniffed him and moved even closer. Gingerly, he circled the hissing owl, trying to come upon him from behind. But as he circled, so circled young Bubo keeping his yellow eyes with their enormous black pupils focused on the raccoon. Procyon reached out for the owl, and with a lightning stab young Bubo pecked him on the nose. Procyon lowered his head, jumped back and pranced off sideways. Bubo turned away with an off-balance hop and jumped onto the old stump. There he beat his wings a few times as he righted himself. He faced the coon, crouched and ready.

  Procyon sniffed his way to the squirrel carcass, snatched it and ran out of the thicket. At the base of a nearby tree he chewed on it. The forest was silent now, the hissing and snapping of the owl was done, and the remainder of Procyon’s trip was quiet.

  The night sky was lightening when Procyon came to the south border of the woods. The wood pewees were calling high in the tree tops. Above the thickets at the edge of the giant forest the indigo buntings joined the vocal pewees. Their loud, melodious song all but drowned out the trill of the field sparrows singing near them. In the hay field beyond the woods the bobolinks awoke. They flew out of the pink clover and stood in the air above the field on bowed fluttering wings. Hanging in the sky, they poured out their bubbling tinkling song.

  The grasshopper sparrows ran along the ground beneath the alfalfa and clover and caught young grasshopper nymphs, that were still inactive from the night. Thousands of the young nymphs lay hidden in the dense hay. Tiny and wingless now, they were destined to become a conspicuous locust plague in late summer.

  Procyon listened to the morning songs as he waddled to a giant maple. He climbed it and disappeared high above the earth where he was rocked to sleep by the weaving of the thin branches.

  June was a busy month on the farm. In the fields and in the forest birds were nesting. Gib and Joe took the mower out of the shed, oiled and sharpened it. For days on end, Procyon could look down from the high branches of the forest trees and watch the men working in the hay fields. It was long, hard work. First they cut the hay. After it had dried they would rake it. Finally one morning the wagons appeared pulled by the horses, Maud and Queen. The hay was loaded and carried off to the barn.

  The cutting of the hay fields had changed the lives of hundreds of animals. A hen pheasant and her chicks had been living and feeding in the field, sheltered by the tall hay. As the mower slashed past them, the mother hurriedly led her ten chicks to the cover of the adjacent oat field. One chick became lost from the group, got confused and ran the wrong way. Gib, who had stopped the team to swat a female horsefly on Maud’s broad haunches, heard the chick whistling loudly for his mother. He walked over toward it and discovered it was twice as far as he had thought. It was some time before he finally found the downy chick. It was crouched motionless in the stubble. Its yellow and tan coloring blended with the colors of the field. Gib picked it up and looked around. It seemed to him that the hen must have sought the cover of the oat field. He carried the chick to the fence and released it where it would be safe.

  Some of the song birds had not fared so well, and at the end of the day many parents flitted unhappily around their destroyed nests.

  As soon as the hay was in the barn the men cut and shocked the oats. It was July—threshing time. Farmer neighbors came with their wagons and tractors. They hauled the grain to the threshing machine set up in the barnyard. Corky and Fanny spent this day in the fields where the men were pitching the bundles of oats on the wagons. Under each shock mice and rats had taken shelter. The dogs knew this and watched for them as the pitch-forks took up the shocks, bundle by bundle. As the rodents were uncovered they dashed away. Then the dogs were busy catching a meadow vole here, a house mouse there and growling as they closed on a Norway rat. Their chase took them between the horses, under the wagon and around the legs of the men who shouted them encouragement.

  During the remainder of the month Gib and Joe helped their neighbors with their crops. But always at five o’clock Joe would pull out his pocket watch, shake the chaff from it and ask the time.

  “About chore time,” he would comment. Then they would return to the farm, bring in the cattle, and start the evening chores. The sun would be down before the milking was done and the cows turned out into the night pasture.

  Down by the woods, the second crop of hay was withering in the August drought. Procyon stayed high in the breezy tree tops until almost midnight before he came down to hunt food on the dry forest floor. When he came down to the ground he headed for Rook’s Creek. His prowls along the stream were cool and refreshing. The creek was low for the marshes that fed it were baked and cracked. However, just beyond Gib’s forest a series of running springs sent a constant stream of clear cold water down into the woods. The stream ran the length of Gib’s forest then soaked into the dried marsh to the east. In and around the shallow pools Procyon had no trouble catching crayfish, earthworms and snails. Occasionally he chased the minnows up into the shallow waters of the rapids where he could seize and eat them.

  Several weeks later the drought broke and days of rumbling thunder-storms freshened the earth and filled the marshes. The hay fields, however, still looked parched and brown. The grasshopper nymphs had grown to full size, and were everywhere, flying and hopping over the fields. They kept the new shoots gnawed to the ground. They were so numerous that the dry rasping sounds of their movements filled the fields with a constant hiss. The plague had materialized and Gib would have no fall hay crop.

  Bands of starlings swept down on these fields and consumed thousands of the locusts. At times there were several hundred starlings helping to check the plague. Sparrows, sparrow hawks and meadow larks also preyed on the crop of insects, and Procyon on his nightly visits to the cornfield stuffed on them.

  They were easy prey for him. The insects clung motionless at night and his busy fingers sought them along the grass blades.

  On one of these evenings, he came upon young Bubo who was there for the same purpose. This fierce, powerful bird of prey had been forced by his crippled condition to survive on locusts and frogs. He was a pitiful sight as his large beak, intended for tearing bigger game, closed awkwardly on the locusts.

  Procyon heard him hopping across the dry field, stabbing at the dead alfalfa stems, teeming with grasshoppers. The raccoon rushed toward the young owl. Insects dropped from the stems along his path. Bubo saw him and hissed. He snapped his bill and fanned out his wings as Procyon came on, galloping playfully toward him. Bubo held off his slapping paws with quick stabs of his beak and talons, and once more the raccoon turned away from this impenetrable fortress of feathered fury and might.

  Leisurely Procyon ambled along the edge of the fence. Grasshoppers were still all about him, but he was done with them. He slipped through the fence at the first break in the wire, galloped down the hill and crossed the sugar sled road. Fo
r a moment he lingered here touching the little mounds of dirt pushed up by Scalopus, the mole. The raccoon dug briefly, reached into the crumbling hole and darted on toward the indigo bunting thicket. In the morning birds would come to this mound of dry earth to bathe in the dust.

  Procyon passed under the empty nest of the bunting, now teeming with ants and other insects, and came to the base of a squirrel tree. He ran up it a few paces, sniffed, was disinterested and came down.

  On through the woods, the raccoon moved, swiftly, yet jerkily, for he stopped often to probe a hollow of a tree, or tear back the rotten wood of a stump. He had climbed up over a log and was coming down on the other side, when he halted. There in the leaves before him was a garter snake. Its disarticulated jaws were holding the hind legs of a wood frog. The frog couldn’t move but squealed its fright.

  Procyon reached down and touched the tail of the garter snake. It writhed off to the left anointing itself with a protective anal fluid. The coon batted it again, and it swished in the other direction still holding to its captive. With a scoop Procyon picked up the snake, rolled it around and around in his paws. The frog dropped to the ground, and weakly hopped a few steps away. The raccoon nipped the snake, found it bitter and went on, following a dry ravine to the hill top.