by Margi Preus
None of them seemed like they planned to try to stop me. Only Jean Gentille looked up from his book.
“If this is what it means to be a voyageur, I cannot be one,” I told him, flinging my paw to my forehead. “To profit from the skins of my animal brethren—it goes against every fiber of my being, every bit of fluff in my undercoat, every guard hair, every whisker.”
“My friend,” I said, choking a little and staggering toward him, “I have always thought you to be a man of high ideals. It does not surprise me so much that these other voyageurs would engage in such brutality—they are cretins. But you—you are kind, noble, and educated. I would have expected more of you.”
“You don’t seem quite right, little one,” Jean Gentille said gently. “Are you sick?”
“I am sick at heart,” I said, then turned and trudged away, bundle in hand.
IN THE FOREST
My paws were silent on the mossy ground.
The trees were like black ribbons against a black dress. Everything dark.
A distant hoot, perhaps an owl.
Creaking branches.
Frogs, chirruping in a swamp. As I passed by, they instantly hushed. Then, not a sound.
A step.
Crunch.
Another step.
Crack.
Was I making that sound? Or was someone following me? Maybe I should turn back, I thought.
Perhaps Jean Gentille was pacing back and forth, fretting over me. “What has happened to my Le Rouge?” he might be saying.
The thought of this made me want to weep. Alas, my hanky was in use, with all my belongings tied up inside of it.
So preoccupied with these thoughts was I that I hardly noticed the ominous swish of large wings overhead. The large wings came swooping down toward me. Wings belonging to an owl!
“You must fly!” sang a voice—a feminine voice that did not belong to those large wings.
“Fly?” I said. “But I am a squirrel, and squirrels do not fly.”
“Oh, do they not?” the voice said. And here came a squirrel flying—yes, flying!—straight toward me from the other direction. “If you cannot fly,” said the soaring squirrel, “you’d better r—”
Her words were cut off by the loud beating of wings. A dark shadow covered me. A shadow that grabbed me with its sharp talons and lifted me up…up…up into the air.
“Fight for your life!” yelled the airborne squirrel.
I did! I did! Oh, how I struggled and fought and kicked and flailed, my bundle of worldly goods falling away.
But nothing I did loosened the grip of those wicked talons on my hide.
Up, up, up I went, toward the bright stars. But what was that? A pair of eyes glistened in the branches of a pine tree.
And a tiny voice proclaimed, “Here I come!” The creature launched herself into the sky again.
“No, mademoiselle!” I shouted. “It’s too far!”
But the fragile beast stretched out her cape and soared, drawing ever closer to me.
The owl gave his wings one powerful beat, and surged ahead.
My heart sank as my rescuer sailed past.
But then—snap!—her tiny paws grasped my tiny toes.
We soared through the air with the greatest of ease….
But only for a moment, so sorry to say, and then the owl, apparently tiring, let go. With a sickening lurch of my stomach, I realized we two tiny creatures were falling…falling…(probably the fault of gravity)…falling…
WE ARE SAFE
A cozy little round room. That is where I found myself. A cozy little round room inside a tree. A sweet, piney-smelling tree.
My rescuer looked at me with enormous brown eyes set in a tiny little face.
“Mademoiselle!” I said, as soon as I regained consciousness and had taken in my surroundings. “I must thank you for saving me.”
“My name is Monique,” she said, “and you are…”
“My name is Jean Pierre Petit Le Rouge, and I am a voy—” I stopped. I was no longer a voyageur, I remembered.
“Were you going to say you are a voyageur?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I thought I wanted to be one, but…now that I know what kind of work they do, I don’t think I can.”
“Ah, you are a squirrel of ideals,” she said. “I like that.”
I’ll admit it. That made me blush a darker shade of red.
“Please,” Monique said. “You have had a most trying experience. You must be famished! Please have something to eat.” She gestured to a repast of tiny wild strawberries, plump red thimble berries, bits of bark sticky with sweet sap, glowing orange chanterelles, sponge-like morels, and tidy piles of pine seeds.
“At last!” I exclaimed. “Real food!”
I tucked in. I tried some of everything—maybe all at once. After some moments, I realized I had perhaps been quite rude.
“Pardon me,” I said, covering my mouth, which I’m afraid was rather full. “Is it your cape that allows you to soar through the air like that?”
“It is not a cape,” said she. “It is my skin.”
She demonstrated how her skin stretched between her front and hind paws, giving it a cape-like appearance.
“I am a flying squirrel,” she explained.
“I am in your debt for saving my life.” I gave a low bow and kissed her dainty paw.
“C’est rien,” she said. “It is nothing. We are lucky that we landed in the soft branches of a fir tree, otherwise things might have ended very differently.”
“This day has been a dangerous one,” I agreed. “If not owls, then it has been men chasing me.” I shuddered, remembering the incident at the trade store.
“Men!” Monique spat. “Ugh!”
“They’re not all bad,” I ventured to say.
“Thickheaded!”
“Well, yes….” I had to agree.
“Vain!”
“Yes, that, too.” I sighed. “But they are very brave.”
“If you say so.” Monique shrugged. “But really,” said she, “I pity them. They are not good at climbing trees.”
“They are not fast at running,” I added.
“Their balance is very bad,” she said.
“I have never seen one that could leap from one treetop to the next.”
“Men are so ill-suited to life on this earth,” Monique said, shaking her head. “They can’t even keep themselves warm, except by stealing other creatures’ skins.”
“I believe the voyageurs are…misguided,” I told her.
“If you say so,” Monique said, offering me some more pine seeds.
“Perhaps there is a way of showing them the error of their ways,” I suggested.
“I doubt it,” Monique said.
“But if there was a way,” I said, my mind whirring, “wouldn’t it be worth a try?”
“What are you suggesting?” Monique asked.
“I will have to think about it,” I told her, “even though thinking makes me uncomfortable. You see, I am a squirrel of action!”
“Of course,” said Monique. “But action without thought is folly.”
“I have thought about it now,” I said.
“Already!” Monique exclaimed. “You are a fast thinker.”
“Indeed I am, mademoiselle. And this is my thought: If the voyageurs really got to know the animals, they wouldn’t want to take their pelts. They would see that each creature has their own personality, own uniqueness—and each has a great need for their own skin.”
“But how would that ever happen?” Monique asked.
“What about a rendezvous with the animals?” I said. “There is nothing the voyageurs love more than a rendezvous. Singing! Dancing! Fighting! Well, maybe we will try to leave the fighting out of it. I, J
ean Pierre Petit Le Rouge, will arrange it all.”
I RALLY THE FUR-BEARERS
Thanks to my robust voice, it was not difficult to contact the animals—nocturnal or not—and invite them to gather for a tête-à-tête—a conversation, as it were—just before dawn the next morning. They were a little skeptical, but nearly all the invited guests arrived. Monique and I situated ourselves on a branch, keeping well above the heads of the predators. From there, I got their attention with a hearty cheer, or, as some call it, “chirr.”
“Gentle creatures of the forest…,” I began. (Truth to tell, some of them are not all that gentle, but it’s always best to be polite.) I went on to explain my idea in terms simple enough for even a chipmunk to follow, and ended with “We must approach the voyageurs with our concerns.”
Fox scoffed.
Bear guffawed.
Skunk laughed so hard that he let loose a little of his…er…perfume.
“How do you propose to converse with men?” Marten asked. “We understand many, many languages—we understand the crow’s caw; we know the cries of the loon. And even your incessant prattle.”
Prattle! I was about to protest when Monique laid a gentle paw upon my foreleg, reminding me to ignore any rude comments. Instead, I listened politely while Marten finished what he had to say.
“But these…these Takers,” he went on, “they do not understand our languages. Not even the simplest.”
One of the Raccoon twins picked up where Marten left off. “We have always lived in harmony with the First People, those who have lived here since the dawn of our time. Before these Takers came, the First People took only what they needed. Every creature on earth must eat and every creature must stay warm somehow. This is something we animals understand. But now the First People kill more and more and more, many more than they themselves need for food and clothing. Why? Because the Takers want more and more and more. The Takers take and take and take, and these skins go off in canoes to faraway places where the need is insatiable.”
“What does ‘insatiable’ mean?” whispered Chipmunk.
“It means never enough,” Wolf explained. “It’s never enough for the Takers. They just keep taking—maybe until we are all gone!”
I began again. “All you say is true, and that is why we must explain to the voyageurs—”
I was interrupted by Fox. “Even if they could understand us, they will not listen to us,” he said. “They do not even see us. They see only our fur.”
“There’s no reasoning with them,” called Wolverine.
“Fight! We must fight!” Mink shouted.
“Tear them to pieces!”
“Tooth and nail!”
“Claw and fang!”
“They will only get their shooting mechanisms and blow us all to smithereens,” said solemn Badger.
“True,” Monique said with a little sigh, and the others nodded.
“Man is a fickle creature,” said Porcupine, who was in little danger of having his fur taken. “Today it’s hats made of beaver fur; tomorrow it shall be—who can say? A hat made of feathers of birds, perhaps? Coats made of minks? Or a silly coat with tails, maybe. Ha ha! Wouldn’t that be ridiculous?”
“Well, we fur-bearers must do our best to stay out of reach,” Marten said as he and Fisher hustled away.
Wolf held her paw in the air. “I agree,” she said, “it is best to avoid them—to stay as far away as possible.”
Weasel and Snowshoe Hare said they planned to rely on their winter camouflage to stay safe.
“Of course I’m worried. This concerns me and my kind most of all, but I’m really too busy,” Beaver said. “I’ve got a dam to repair and a house to build and…” He started to waddle into the underbrush.
The animals were all going away! I had to do something!
I chirred with such ferocity that my whole body quivered and my tail vibrated. “Whoever has not the stomach for it can go home now!” I cried, remembering a bit of a speech from a play Jean Gentille recently recited. “But stay, and you who outlive this day and see old age yearly on this day will say, ‘Today is the day fur-bearers stood up for themselves.’ ”
I scampered up to a higher branch and called out, “And it shall never go by from this day to the ending of the world but we shall be remembered.”
Up I went a few more branches. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters,” I called out. “For those that stand with me today shall be my brothers and sisters, even if she is (gulp) wolf. And all the other creatures who spent the day in their dens shall be sorry they were not here upon this day, which shall be known from this day forth and forever more as Fur-Bearers Day.”
Not many animals can extemporize like this, but we red squirrels have a knack for it. There was a smattering of applause from those who had turned back to listen.
It had dawned a sunny day, and from my treetop perch I noticed something. The voyageurs of my canoe were in the lake, scrubbing and singing, singing and scrubbing. Meanwhile, the other canoes of the brigade were being launched.
“Are you coming along?” the voyageurs in the canoes shouted to the men in the water.
“Yes, yes!” Jean Méchant called. “We will catch up!”
Their clothes and moccasins lay scattered all about on the beach. Their shirts and trousers hung from branches or were draped over rocks. And suddenly I had a plan.
THE PLAN IS EXECUTED
As the other canoes in the brigade began paddling away, the animals who decided to stay sneaked toward the shore.
Fox, Bear, and Wolf carried away trousers and moccasins.
Beaver, Skunk, and the Raccoon twins dragged away shirts and sashes.
The little ones, Mink and Weasel, stole caps and pouches.
Monique managed a scarf.
Even Chipmunk hauled away a sock.
Raven helped, too, just because he found it fun.
Finally the men scrambled out onto the beach.
“Hey! Who took my clothes?” Jean Louis said. “I left them right here.”
“I blame the squirrel for this,” Jean Méchant cried.
“No,” said Jean Jacques. “On the portages he never carried a thing. He couldn’t carry away all our clothes.”
Jean Gentille smiled, and started to laugh. “Yes, I think this just might be his doing. That little one, he is clever. All right, Le Rouge, very funny! Bring back our clothes now.”
But of course, there was no reply. All the animals, except for me, were sneaking away, the voyageurs’ clothes in their teeth, paws and in the case of Raven, beak.
At first the other voyageurs laughed, too. Then they grew serious. Then cold. They began to shiver.
“We must go if we are to catch up with our brigade,” said Jean Méchant.
“We cannot go paddling without any clothes!” Jean Paul protested. “The mosquitoes shall make a feast of us.”
The other Jeans groaned.
“What do we do in this situation?” Jean Luc wanted to know.
“We don’t know! We’ve never been in this situation!” the other voyageurs cried.
“I would like my trousers,” said Jean Claude.
“Me too,” said Jean Louis. “We can’t go about like this. We will be laughingstocks!”
“I know where we can get something warm to cover ourselves,” said Jean Henri.
“To the trade store!” cried Jean Jacques.
And, just as I thought they would, they all minced in their bare feet down the path. Moi? I raced ahead.
* * *
As soon as the voyageurs reached the store, they burst through the door. Since the clerk was not yet on duty, they just started snatching up pelts to cover themselves. A fox fur. A wolf pelt. A mink skin.
But suddenly Jean Paul yelped. “This fox pelt…,” he cried, “she is a
live!”
“And also this mink!” wailed Jean Jacques.
“This bearskin rug is not a rug!” Jean Luc screamed.
“And this…oh, no…skunk! Aaahhhhhh!”
“Eeeeeeee!”
“Iiiiiiiiiiiiii!”
“Ohhhhhh!”
Just then Jean Méchant caught a glimpse of me sitting in the rafters.
“You!” he shouted, while all the voyageurs ran screaming out of the store and into the woods.
We animals followed out the door, calling to them.
“Come back!” we yelled, running after them with the clothes we had stolen in our paws or teeth or beak.
“We didn’t mean to frighten you,” the gentle beaver called out.
But the men continued to run away.
“What is that smell?” Chipmunk asked.
“Me?” Skunk asked.
“No, that other smell,” Chipmunk said.
We put our noses in the air and sniffed.
“Smoke!” Wolf said.
“Fire!” Mink cried.
“Oh no!’ said Monique.
“Our campfire!” I heard Jean Jacques cry out. “We left it unattended!”
“As we know we should never do!” Jean Paul wailed.
The voyageurs raced toward their campsite while animals dropped the clothes and ran the other way.
Et moi? My instinct told me to run away, but my sense of duty insisted that I stay and help. I followed the voyageurs.
When we reached the site, we saw what had happened. The good news was that the wind had shifted and blown the fire toward the lake, where it burned itself out.
The bad news was that our beautiful canoe had been reduced to a pile of ashes. At least the cargo had been stowed well away from the canoe and remained undamaged.
There was a long, dark silence.
“Mon Dieu,” whispered Jean Méchant at last.
“What will we do?” cried Jean Jacques. “How will we ever catch up with our brigade?”
