Savannah Township

Savannah Township

June 5th. 1906. The beavers are at work again on the Dinner Creek dam. It is becoming a serious problem as to whether the beaver had best be trapped, the (lam blown ont, or the game and fish commission pay for the flowage. They work in a very wary manner and the person who gets sight of them must be skillful and patient. This family is supposed to be a part of flie state park tribe and we are loth to destroy them. - Detroit Record.

There are but few farms, or but few quarter sections of land in the country, that have not within their borders one or more "rat" ponds or lakes, or are in close proximity to them, some localities in the Shell Prairie country, alone, excepted.

One of the dreams and hopes of the boy of ordinary ambition is to become a trapper and a hunter, and where is the boy born and reared in Becker County who has not had the opportunity to realize those dreams? As a general thing" they have had a chance to trap muskrats to their heart's content, provided, of course, that they could procure the traps, and many an honest dollar they have earned that way. On more than one occassion, also, the rats have been a godsend to a large part of the population, particularly in 1872-73-74-75 when the grasshoppers were devastating" the country, as I have related in another article.

Nearly everybody knows as much about these animals as I do, as to how they live both in the water and out, and how they build their houses, and obtain their food at the bottom of ponds and lakes. They always breed and rear their young on dry land. In the winter and spring of 1890, I had a lot of railroad ties piled u]) at dififerent places on the shores of Height of Land Lake. In the spring, when removing one of these piles of ties into the lake, preparatory to floating them down the river, we found a mtiskrat nest under the ties. There were five yoimg rats in the nest, al^out the size of chipmunks, and I gathered up a handful, four I think, and ptit them into the pocket of my rubber raincoat and buttoned them in. I then went up to the house of Mr. Simon ^^^aite, where I was boarding, and began to take the rats out of my pocket to show them to the old lady. By this time however, the youngsters were not so docile as thev were when 1 picked them up, for as soon as I put iii}' hand in my pocket, the young rascals grabbed me by the fingers with their teeth and hung on for dear life. I pulled ni}- hand out with rats lianging to three fingers and a thumb, and I could not shake them ofif, but they kept on biting. Finally with the assistance of Airs. AA^aite, I chocked the little villains, one at a time, until they let go. I then told her she might ha\'e the rats for ])ets, but she fired them out of the house and told me I ought to have known l)ettcr than to have had an}'thing to do with them. A\'ith the exception of shooting a few, this is all the experience I ever had with muskrats.

The porcupine is occasionally found in Becker County. It is a good, solid, plump animal, a little larger than a raccoon, and will measure about three feet long from tip to tip, of which the tail is about six inches. They do not belong to the same natural famil\- as the raccoon, skunk, badger, opossum and the bear, but, rather, are allied to the squirrel and the woodchuck, the muskrat and the beaver ; having teeth of the rodent or adz-shaped order for gnawing hard, tough substances. It is an easy matter in the woods to determine when you are in the vicinity of porcupines, especially in the winter, for they will take the bark slick and clean from the tops and upper limbs of trees down, half way to the ground. They generally select maple and poplar or tamarack, taking trees from fifteen to thirtv feet high. Most people know what the quills of the porcupine are like. About three inches in length with very sharp points, with barbs of a fine texture pointing backwards, that permit the quills to work inwards, but they are extremely difificult to extricate.

When 1 lived on my homestead at ( )ak Lake, in Detroit Township, my dog tackled a porcupine one day and got decidedly the worst of it. He came home with his mouth full of quills, some of them were run through his tongue, others were run through his nose and the ends were sticking out on each side, and some were stuck completely through his under jaw. He was a large, powerful Xewfoundland dog, and was decidedly opposed to allowing me to meddle with the quills. 1 finally got him down on his back and pinned him down by running a pitchfork into the ground with the tines astraddle his neck, in which position he w^as held while I extracted the quills with a pair of pincers.

I have had cattle that had taken a fancy to smell of a hedgehog, and would come home with six or eight quills sticking more than half their length in the pad of their nose. These too had to be pulled out with pincers.

The porcupine is clad, in addition to his quills, with a short, thin growth of hair, much shorter than the quills in the summer, but in winter the quills are outgrown with a luxuriant growth of long black hair, somewhat on the furry order, that completely hides the quills. It is a mistaken idea that porcupines can throw their quills, particularly those of the body. It is possible that by giving the proper shake to the tail, a few quills growing on that appendage might be thrown for a distance of a foot or two, at the season of the year when they are shedding heir quills.

They are expert climbers, and they invariably live in hollow trees. Many a time I have tracked them to a hollow tree when a boy, on a thawing day, in the winter, and would cut the tree down and drive them up some other tree that had no hole for them to get into, and then shoot them on i)urpose to see them fall and tumble to the ground.

In the summer of 1893, I was looking over Section i. Town of Grand Park, with a view to cutting off the pine timber the ensuing winter. I was traveling along the road cut out for hauling hay, when I came across a porcupine that was traveling along the road in the same way that I was going. He was quite tame, in fact a little too tame to suit my fancy, but I did not wish to kill him, as I felt interested in seeing all such harmless animals thrive in the country. At the same time, he was so tame and friendly that I was not inclined to go off and leave him. I drove him along the trail ahead of me for awhile guiding him with a pole. He finally got so that he wanted to keep close to me, but he went too slow, and I did not fancy his quills, so I went off and left him.

This animal is quite common in Becker County. In some parts of the United States it is called the ground-hog. It is a burrowing animal, digging its own hole and hibernating during the winter and coming out fat in the spring. This is a coarsehaired animal, having no fur in its covering to tempt the trapper, but is sometimes caught for its hide, of which whip lashes are made of a superior quality. A single hide will make a good lash six feet in length. Nearly everybody in Becker County has seen a woodchuck either here or in some other part of the United States. A full grown animal is twenty inches or more in length, of which the tail is four or five inches. They are usually of a brown color, but occasionally one is found of a jet black. In western New York, where they are much more numerous than here, about one in every twenty or thirty is black. I once found a woodchuck on Section 26, in Lake V^iew Township, as black as a coal. It ran into the hollow of a standing oak tree, and I fastened it in by blocking up the entrance with chunks of wood and limbs of trees, intending to take it home with me when I came back, but I did not come back that way. The woodchuck is a poor climber, and is never known to go far up a tree, but can easily climb a fence or a wood-pile.

For many years after Becker County began to settle up, we congratulated ourselves over the fact that we had, as we believed, made our everlasting escape from those pests of the barn and farm house, that had made life a burden during our younger days in some of the older states.

We were free to admit that our lot had been cast in a cold country, in a country where winter reigned supreme five months in the vear, more or less, but we felt that we had left behind us enough that was disagreeable and annoying, to offset the discomforts or our winter chmate to a great extent and in various ways. The ground was covered with snow in the winter which afforded us good sleighing on which to do the heavy work, instead of being obliged to plod around in the mud. The extreme cold killed all the malaria in the air and the water, so that we were not subject to fevers or chills, it also killed the germs of the little bug or worm that invariably infected the peas and sometimes the beans, making them wormy in the states farther south, and last but not least, we had left the old gray rat so far behind us that he could never overtake us during our lifetime, and if he did, he could never withstand the rigors of our northern climate, but would invariably perish during the first winter season.

But woe to our dreams of fancied security and delight ; it is true that we enjoyed twenty-five years of immunity from their annoyance, but an evil day finally dawned upon us. Our fond hopes proved after all to be but empty dreams, for slowly but surely the rats have been on our trail during all these long years, following us up with an unerring instinct and have overtaken us at last.

A\'hen they first put in an appearance in the county it is difficult to say, but the first time I remember seeing them was about the year 1897. They were quite numerous and aggressive around Frazee about that time. How they came, whether by rail, by wagon or on foot, is a matter of uncertainty ; we only know they came. They do not appear quite so numerous in 1905, as they were at first. It has been intimated that the extremely cold winter of 1903 and 1904 reduced them to some extent.

An ordinary barn rat is about eight inches in length, exclusive of the tail, which is six inches long and about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and entirely naked. Their color is a dark blue when young, but they become gray with age.

In some of the older states, fifty or sixty years ago, manv of the barns were literally overrun with rats. We killed scores of them every year, but they did not appear to get anv less in numl^ers. They may have found some way by which they have been able to diminish their numbers since, but if they have, I never heard of it. My father had a barn thirty by forty feet in extent, and in one corner of the barn was a granary about twelve feet square, which he kept well filled with wheat and oats during the winter season. The rats would gnaw a hole into this granary every winter and help themselves to the grain. During the winter of 1849-50 they became unusually numerous and troublesome, and my brother, C. P. Wilcox and myself decided to make war on this community of rats. We accordingly provided ourselves with a lantern, and each armed with a club we proceeded to the barn about nine o'clock one evening. They had gnawed a hole through a corner of the granary door at the top, and the noise from the inside denoted considerable activity among the animals within.

We quietly opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door behind us as quicklv as possible and plugged up the hole in the door. We then went after the rats with our clubs, hitting them right and left with telling effect. There must have been about forty of them in that little room and when they found their onl\- avenue of escape was cut off, they became desperate and began to show fight. They came at us half a dozen at a time, and after being bitten several times we were glad to open the door and get out. We killed fourteen rats that evening and about as many more the two nights following. After that they would invariably make a rush for the door as soon as it was opened and rush out.

They burrowed in tlie hay-mow during the winter months. cutting tunnels through the solid hay. twenty or more feet in length, with chambers leading in various directions, insuring warm and comfortable quarters for themselves during the winter.

I am not aware that there were any black or gray squirrels in Becker Count}- before the coming of the white settlers. I believe that zoologists have decided that the gray and black squirrels are one and the same species, but I am hardly reconciled to the theory.

According to the best of my knowledge, they have been coming to Becker County in about equal numbers, the first coming about 1878. Unfortunately, however, they manage to get killed off about as fast as they come, so I am afraid they will never become very numerous.

These squirrels are certainly very interesting and beautiful animals, and it is a pity, they cannot be let alone a few years, and given a chance to get a foothold in the county.

Fifty years ago black squirrels were very plentiful in Western New York, and there would usually be about twenty black squirrels to one gray one. During those same times, in Ohio, the conditions were reversed, and there would be about twenty gray squirrels to one black one, while in Michigan they were about equally divided.

Once in Western New York when they were very abundant, I saw a black squirrel, a grey squirrel and a white squirrel, all up in the same tree and they were all about the same size. It was the only white squirrel I ever saw or heard of. I could easily have killed it, but only tried to catch it alive and failed. As would naturally be supposed, it was a shining mark for the men and boys with guns in the neighborhood, and was shot a day or two after I saw it.

Occasionally there would be a year when squirrels would pass through those states in large numbers. They never appeared to be in a hurry and generally would linger through the entire season. They would climb the houses, the barns, the shade trees in the dooryards and along the highways, and the fruit trees in the orchards. They were killed by both men and boys in large numbers, and thev were considered the best eating of any game in the country.

There was some excuse for killing squirrels, for they were a pest in early times, being great thieves of seed corn and green corn. More than a dozen different varieties were indigenous to the United States, but the best known was the common gray or migratory squirrel. It was called migratory on account of the long journeys it sometimes made. Occasionally, for reasons of their own, probably in search of food, these squirrels used to migrate from one part of the country to another in great numbers. Once started on one of these migrations, neither mountains nor rivers could stop them, and they devoured ever3'thing eatable that came in their wav.

Audubon describes one which he witnessed: "It was in 1819, when we were descending the Ohio river in a flatboat, chiefly with the intention of seeking for birds then unknown to us. About 100 miles below Cincinnati, as we were floating down the stream, we observed a large number of squirrels swimming across the river, and we continued to see them at various places until we had nearly reached Sniithland, a town about 100 miles above the mouth of the Ohio. At times they were strewn, as it were, over the surface of the water, and some of them, being fatigued, sought a few moments' rest on our long steering oar, which hung into the water in a slanting direction over the stern of our boat. The boys along the shores and in boats were killing the squirrels in great numbers, although most of them got across."

They were very numerous in the primitive forests of Indiana and their depredations were a serious matter for the pioneers. They hid near the cornfields, and as soon as the seed corn was covered they began to dig for it. Old farmers used to tell how accurately a squirrel would follow the row and dig into a hill of corn till he found the grains. Later, when the cars began to form, the squirrels attacked them. Some years they were worse than others, and the years 1824, 1834 and 1836 are numbered as especially bad ones.

During the squirrel visitation the farmer put forth his utmost efforts to protect his crop. The best marksman in the family took the gun, and the rest, women and children, rang bells, rattled "horse-fiddles," pounded on dead trees and made all sorts of noises. Sometimes a man was paid to work one half of the day and shoot squirrels the other half.

A local historican of Johnson County says: "Mrs. Mollie Owens says there were seasons when she could stand in her door and see fifteen or twenty squirrels on the fence at any morning hour. James Owens, her husband, killed 200 in one day. Jacob Bower shot twenty-six on one occasion without moving out of his tracks. William Freeman, without rising from his chair at the breakfast table, shot nine from a hill of ripening corn in the garden in the front of his cabin door. Thomas Patterson shot two from a neighbor's chimney and they fell into the fireplace within."

The small, red, timber squirrel is found in considerable numbers in Becker County, and is more widely distributed throug-hout the northern part of the United States than any other animal, being found in every state from Maine to Washington, wherever there are any groves or forests of timber. It is so well known that it is useless to undertake to say anything about the interesting little animal, that is not known to people in general. It is bright, cheerful and harmless, building its habitations, and rearing its young in the trees near our homes whenever it can find a hollow large enough

When we lived on our homestead at Oak Lake, one of them made a nest in an old vinegar keg that stood at the end of our house, and that reminds me that once Mrs. Wilcox set a hot custard pie on a stump near the house to cool, and before she was fairly back in the house, a red squirrel landed on top of the pie with all four of his feet. It gave three or four squeals and ran up a tree, jumping around among the limbs, chattering, and holding up and shaking first one foot, then another, for the space of three or four minutes.

This animal is occasionally found in Becker County. It is a little larger than the common red squirrel and resembles it in general appearance, except that it is provided with a membrane or skin, connecting and filling the intermediate space between the fore leg and the hind leg on each side of the body. This web or membrane is an extension of the skin covering the body, and is about an inch in width. It cannot be said exactly to fly, but with help of its extended legs and the consequent spreading of the membrane connecting the fore legs with the hind legs, it can sail from the top of one tree to another tree at a considerable distance, rising slightly above its starting point at the first leap and then gradually inclining downwards, using its tail as a rudder, it can land on the ground or on the branch of another tree at a distance of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet from the place of starting. There was a family of flying squirrels in the grove of timber surrounding my house at Oak Lake, in the summer of 1873. They appeared to be easy prey to my old cat. When sailing overhead they more resemble the outstretched skin or pelt of some small animal than a squirrel. The flying squirrel is provided with a fine soft fur, of much finer quality than that of any other specie of squirrel in this part of the county. It is an expert climber always nesting in hollow trees.

inches in length and a tail half as long. At lumber camps and at houses newly erected in the woods they are quite neighborly, coming in and making themselves at home, and one time in the fall of the year they came near taking possession of my camp. When unmolested they become quite tame about a camp, and more than once I have had them eat out of my hand.

The pocket gopher, as its name indicates, is pro\ided with hirge pouches or pockets connecting with its mouth, on each side of its head and neck. It has long been a matter of dispute as to wliat the gopher carries in its pockets, some people believing that they carry the dirt of which the mounds are made that dot the prairies. This I believe to be a mistake, as' nothing is ever found in their pockets but food. They have enormously large fore parts, and in working under ground, after they have loosened the earth, they push it ahead, propelhng themselves along by their hind legs, with their head quite buried in the mass of soil. Coming as they do up the slanting passage, when they reach the surface they give the load of dirt a quick and vigorous flirt, which throws the dirt at some distance. The method may be compared to a snow plow, only the dirt is pushed ahead instead of being dumped to either side.

The pocket gopher is a very common animal in l^eckcr County, but is the most secretive, and less is known of its domestic affairs than of any animal in the country. Kverbody knows a gopher knoll when he sees it, and when the farmer comes to a shock of wheat with the inside all gone, and a stack of loose soil nearly as high as the original shock built up in its place, or when he comes to six or eight hills in a row of potatoes in which the bottom has dropped out, potatoes and all, he knows that a pocket gopher has been operating a mine in the neighborhood.

On the 28th of July, 1886. the Board of Count}- Commissioners of Becker County passed a resolution to pay a bounty on gopheis and blackbirds, the price set on the heads of gophers being two dollars per himdred.

were four farmers on the board at that time, and all four of them were unanimous in the opinion that all burrowing animals of the squirrel tribe should be considered as gophers, and although this decision was not placed on record it w^as the understanding that the scalps of all pocket gophers, gray gophers, speckled gophers and chipmunks should be paid for at the rate of $2.00 a hundred. Whether this ruling was adhered to, for any length of time or not. I do not know, as I left the auditor's office at the close of the year, but judging from the amount of money recpiired to pay the subsequent bounties, there must have been a general slaughter of all four of the species of animals named above.

The county commissioners yesterday voted to discontinue the payment of gopher and blackljird bounties in this county. The effort to exterminate these Httle pests has thus far cost the county about $5,000, and a decrease in the number is scarcely perceptible.

Of the $5,000 referred to about $2,500 was paid out for gopher bounties, which means that about 125,000 of these little animals must have been slaughtered in less than three years in this county.

^^^ J. ]\lorrow, who was count}- auditor during nearly all of this bounty paying period, estimates that the above figures are approximately correct and that at least 125,000 animals belonging to the gopher family were slaughtered during that time.

The gray gopher, or ground squirrel, as it is sometimes called, is very common in 15ecker County. They are nearly as plentiful now as they were when the country first began to settle up. They are not as destructive to grain fields and gardens as the pocket gopher, and when given a chance the}- l)ecome (piite tame.

In the month of September, 1871, I was camped at the north end of the lake that reaches up across Section 6, in Lake Park Township, and for several days I was there all alone, doing m\- own cooking. Among other things I used considerable corn starch which I made into a kind of pudding.

A gray gopher was living in a hole only a few feet frt)m my tent and it was not long before he began to show a disposition to get acquainted, and to pick up the bits of corn starch pudding that fell from the table. In a da}^ or two he became so tame that he would take lumps of pudding from my hand the same as a kitten, only with this difference, that as soon as he had swallowed two or three mouthfuls, he would invariably break and run for his hole. He would never stay under ground however more than a minute, when he would come back and hunt around for more pudding. On one occasion he w^ent through the rounds of swallowing the pudding, running into his hole and back to the tent again, five or six times, until he finally got so full that he could squeeze himself into the ground no longer, but stuck fast in the hole. I pulled him out and let him go. He was aroimd again the next day, when I made a noose on the end of a string, which I placed over the hole, and when he came out I pulled on the string and caught him around the body and pulled him out, and kept him tied up for a few hours. This however did not affect his appetite in the least, for he ate all the pudding he could find during his confinement. I moved away that day and turned him loose, but he was still hunting the ground over for something to eat when I came awav.

The speckled gopher is very common on all the prairies of Becker County. Every school-boy on the prairie knows the little animal that stands by its hole on its hind feet as straight as a picket, with its fore legs hanging by its side, and when alarmed, or its curiosity satisfied drops into its burrow so quickly and silently you hardly miss him, and in less than a minute bobs up again almost as suddenly as he disappeared.

Everybody knows the common field mouse. It is an irritable, pugnacious little creature, standing up on its hind legs and fighting for itself against its enemies at great odds.

The wood mouse is a pretty little animal, three or four inches in leno-th, with a tail a little less. It is of a buff' or fawn color, darker along- its back, with its under parts pure white. It is sometimes called the deer mouse or white-footed mouse. Their natural home is in hollow trees, where thev store away acorns and hazel nuts for the winter, divesting them of the shuck or shell before putting them away. Many a time in the older states I have cut down trees in which I found two or three quarts of beech nuts already peeled by these little creatures, and which we always greedily appropriated to our own use. They frequently make their nests in the house of some settler, where they make bad work destroying clothing, as they never discriminate between your old clothes and your Sunday suit, being equally as liable to chew up and appropriate one as the other, when it comes to making their nest. We had a family of them in the grove on our homestead at Oak Lake, and they made us a lot of trouble.

This little rodent, with a head and body not much larger than your thumb, is quite a factor in the animal kingdom. It is said to be a foreigner, smuggling itself into this country on shipboard from Europe, nearly two hundred years ago. It certainly has improved its time and opportunities, for it has kept pace with civilization, and there is scarcely a family household in America that has not its quota of these little "varmints." It is the pest of housewives and housemaids, who keep up a constant warfare against it with a hostile array of cats, traps, brooms and rat poison. Yet it does not seem to diminish in numbers. It is a terror to them, whether dead or alive, for a single mouse running across the floor will stampede a whole roomful of women as effectually as if a coyote or a wild-cat had been turned loose in the room. Some of them are brave and skillful trappers of the little beast, but their trouble only just begins when he is caught, for they generally have to call one of the boys to take the mouse out of the trap. There is no danger of the species ever becoming extinct.

It has some of the characteristics of the kangaroo ; inasmuch as it travels by jumping with its hind feet. When alarmed it starts off in a succession of astonishing leaps, making eight or ten feet at a jump, using only its hind legs, but when not in a hurry it walks on all fours like any other animal.

This tiny creature is about three inches long, head and body, and its tail is nearly twice as long as both. It has light fore-quarters, strong hind-quarters, and very long hind legs.

The mole is too well known to require an extensive description. It is about two and a half inches long, with a short tail and powerful fore parts especially adapted to digging.

The eyes are very small and covered with a membrane, and investigation shows that the eye is much degenerated, and of but little use as an organ of sight. Moles are subterranean in their habits, and live exclusively on animal food. All kinds of worms, grubs and caterpillars are readily eaten, and in captivity, meat, small birds and even other moles are greedily devoured. Their limbs, although short, are capable of very rapid movements, and wdien in quest of their food, moles frequentl}- travel long distances underground so near the surface that the earth becomes raised u]:» above the tunnel which it makes.

Moles generally dwell in underground encampments built by themselves of mud and clay, which, when c()m])lete(l and dried out, become hard and water-proof. These little camps arc usuall\- called mole hills.