Gordon Grice's Blog, page 38

Zoo Lions

Photography by Dee Puett

Wildlife Classics: Bhoota's Last Shikar (A Lion Hunt)

by JH Patterson


from Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907)






I lay awake listening to roar answering roar in every direction
round our camp, and realised that we were indeed in the midst of a favourite
haunt of the king of beasts. It is one thing to hear a lion in captivity, when
one knows he is safe behind iron bars; but quite another to listen to him when he
is ramping around in the vicinity of one's fragile tent, which with a single
blow he could tear to pieces. Still, all this roaring was of good omen for the
next day's sport.




According to our over-night arrangement, we were up betimes
in the morning, but as there was a great deal of work to be done before we
could get away, it was quite midday
before we made ready to start. I ought to mention before going further that as
a rule Spooner declined my company on shooting trips, as he was convinced that
I should get "scuppered" sooner or later if I persisted in going
after lions with a "popgun," as he contemptuously termed my .303.
Indeed, this was rather a bone of contention between us, he being a firm
believer (and rightly) in a heavy weapon for big and dangerous game, while I always
did my best to defend the .303 which I was in the habit of using. On this
occasion we effected a compromise for the day, I accepting the loan of his
spare 12-bore rifle as a second gun in case I should get to close quarters. But
my experience has been that it is always a very dangerous thing to rely on a
borrowed gun or rifle, unless it has precisely the same action as one's own;
and certainly in this instance it almost proved disastrous.




Having thus seen to our rifles and ammunition and taken care
also that some brandy was put in the luncheon-basket in case of an accident, we
set off early in the afternoon in Spooner's tonga, which is a two-wheeled cart
with a hood over it. The party consisted of Spooner and myself, Spooner's
Indian shikari Bhoota, my own gun-boy Mahina, and two other Indians, one of
whom, Imam Din, rode in the tonga,
while the other led a spare horse called "Blazeaway." Now it may seem
a strange plan to go lion-hunting in a tonga, but there is no better way
of getting about country like the Athi Plains, where -- so long as it is dry --
there is little or nothing to obstruct wheeled traffic. Once started, we
rattled over the smooth expanse at a good rate, and on the way bagged a hartebeeste
and a couple of gazelle, as fresh meat was badly needed in camp; besides, they
offered most tempting shots, for they stood stock-still gazing at us, struck no
doubt by the novel appearance of our conveyance. Next we came upon a herd of
wildebeeste, and here we allowed Bhoota, who was a wary shikari and an old
servant of Spooner's, to stalk a solitary bull. He was highly pleased at this
favour, and did the job admirably.




At last we reached the spot where I had seen the two lions
on the previous day -- a slight hollow, covered with long grass; but there was now
no trace of them to be discovered, so we moved further on and had another good
beat round. After some little time the excitement began by our spying the
black-tipped ears of a lioness projecting above the grass, and the next moment
a very fine lion arose from beside her and gave us a full view of his grand
head and mane. After staring fixedly at us in an inquiring sort of way as we
slowly advanced upon them, they both turned and slowly trotted off, the lion stopping
every now and again to gaze round in our direction. Very imposing and majestic
he looked, too, as he thus turned his great shaggy head defiantly towards us,
and Spooner had to admit that it was the finest sight he had ever seen. For a
while we followed them on foot; but finding at length that they were getting
away from us and would soon be lost to sight over a bit of rising ground, we
jumped quickly into the tonga and galloped round the base of the knoll so as to
cut off their retreat, the excitement of the rough and bumpy ride being
intensified a hundred-fold by the probability of our driving slap into the pair
on rounding the rise. On getting to the other side, however, they were nowhere
to be seen, so we drove on as hard as we could to the top, whence we caught
sight of them about four hundred yards away. As there seemed to be no prospect
of getting nearer we decided to open fire at this range, and at the third shot
the lioness tumbled over to my .303. At first I thought I had done for her, as
for a few minutes she lay on the ground kicking and struggling; but in the end,
although evidently badly hit, she rose to her feet and followed the lion, who
had escaped uninjured, into some long grass from which we could not hope to
dislodge them.




As it was now late in the afternoon, and as there seemed no
possibility of inducing the lions to leave the thicket in which they had
concealed themselves, we turned back towards camp, intending to come out again
the next day to track the wounded lioness. I was now riding
"Blazeaway" and was trotting along in advance of the tonga, when
suddenly he shied badly at a hyena, which sprang up out of the grass almost
from beneath his feet and quickly scampered off. I pulled up for a moment and
sat watching the hyena's ungainly bounds, wondering whether he were worth a
shot. Suddenly I felt "Blazeaway" trembling violently beneath me, and
on looking over my left shoulder to discover the reason, I was startled to see
two fine lions not more than a hundred yards away, evidently the pair which I
had seen the day before and which we had really come in search of. They looked as
if they meant to dispute our passage, for they came slowly towards me for about
ten yards or so and then lay down, watching me steadily all the time. I called
out to Spooner, "Here are the lions I told you about," and he whipped
up the ponies and in a moment or two was beside me with the tonga.




By this time I had seized my .303 and dismounted, so we at
once commenced a cautious advance on the crouching lions, the arrangement being
that Spooner was to take the right-hand one and I the other. We had got to
within sixty yards' range without incident and were just about to sit down
comfortably to "pot" them, when they suddenly surprised us by turning
and bolting off. I managed, however, to put a bullet into the one I had marked
just as he crested a bank, and he looked very grand as he reared up against the
sky and clawed the air on feeling the lead. For a second or two he gave me the
impression that he was about to charge; but luckily he changed his mind and
followed his companion, who had so far escaped scot free. I immediately mounted
"Blazeaway" and galloped off in hot pursuit, and after about half a
mile of very stiff going got up with them once more. Finding now that they
could not get away, they halted; came to bay and then charged down upon me, the
wounded lion leading. I had left my rifle behind, so all I could do was to turn
and fly as fast as "Blazeaway" could go, praying inwardly the while
that he would not put his foot into a hole. When the lions saw that they were
unable to overtake me, they gave up the chase and lay down again, the wounded
one being about two hundred yards in front of the other. At once I pulled up
too, and then went back a little way, keeping a careful eye upon them; and I
continued these tactics of riding up and down at a respectful distance until
Spooner came up with the rifles, when we renewed the attack.




As a first measure I thought it advisable to disable the
unhurt lion if possible, and, still using the .303, I got him with the second
shot at a range of about three hundred yards. He seemed badly hit, for he
sprang into the air and apparently fell heavily. I then exchanged my .303 for
Spooner's spare 12-bore rifle, and we turned our attention to the nearer lion,
who all this time had been lying perfectly still, watching our movements closely,
and evidently just waiting to be down upon us the moment we came within
charging distance. He was never given this opportunity, however, for we did not
approach nearer than ninety yards, when Spooner sat down comfortably and
knocked him over quite dead with one shot from his .577, the bullet entering
the left shoulder obliquely and passing through the heart.




It was now dusk, and there was no time to be lost if we
meant to bag the second lion as well. We therefore resumed our cautious
advance, moving to the right, as we went, so as to get behind us what light
there was remaining. The lion of course twisted round in the grass in such a
way as always to keep facing us, and looked very ferocious, so that I was
convinced that unless he were entirely disabled by the first shot he would be
down on us like a whirlwind. All the same, I felt confident that, even in this
event, one of us would succeed in stopping him before he could do any damage;
but in this I was unfortunately to be proved mistaken.




Eventually we managed to get within eighty yards of the
enraged animal, I being about five yards to the left front of Spooner, who was followed
by Bhoota at about the same distance to his right rear. By this time the lion
was beside himself with fury, growling savagely and raising quite a cloud of
dust by lashing his tail against the ground. It was clearly high time that we did
something, so asking Spooner to fire, dropped on one knee and waited. Nor was I
kept long in suspense, for the moment Spooner's shot rang out, up jumped the
lion and charged down in a bee-line for me, coming in long, low bounds at great
speed. I fired the right barrel at about fifty yards, but apparently missed;
the left at about half that range, still without stopping effect. I knew then
that there was no time reload, so remained kneeling, expecting him to be on me
the next moment. Suddenly, just as he was within a bound of me, he made a quick
turn, to my right. "Good heavens," I thought, "he is going for
Spooner." I was wrong in this, however, for like a flash he passed Spooner
also, and with a last tremendous bound seized Bhoota by the leg and rolled over
and over with him for some yards in the impetus of the rush. Finally he stood
over him and tried to seize him by the throat, which the brave fellow prevented
by courageously stuffing his left arm right into the great jaws. Poor Bhoota!
By moving at the critical moment, he had diverted the lion's attention from me
and had drawn the whole fury of the charge on to himself.




All this, of course, happened in only a second or two. In
the short instant that intervened, I felt a cartridge thrust into my hand by
Spooner's plucky servant, Imam Din, who had carried the 12-bore all day and who
had stuck to me gallantly throughout the charge; and shoving it in, I rushed as
quickly as I could to Bhoota's rescue. Meanwhile, Spooner had got there before
me and when I came up actually had his left hand on the lion's flank, in a vain
attempt to push him off Bhoota's prostrate body and so get at the heavy rifle which
the poor fellow still stoutly clutched. The lion, however, was so busily
engaged mauling Bhoota's arm that he paid not the slightest attention to
Spooner's efforts. Unfortunately, as he was facing straight in my direction, I
had to move up in full view of him, and the moment I reached his head, he
stopped chewing the arm, though still holding it in his mouth, and threw
himself back on his haunches, preparing for a spring, at the same time curling
back his lips and exposing his long tusks in a savage snarl. I knew then that I
had not a moment to spare, so I threw the rifle up to my shoulder and pulled the
trigger. Imagine my utter despair and horror when it did not go off!
"Misfire again," I thought, and my heart almost stopped beating. As took
a step backwards, I felt it was all over no for he would never give me time to
extract the cartridge and load again. Still I took another step backwards,
keeping my eyes fixed on the lion's, which were blazing with rage; and in the middle
of my third step, just as the brute was gathering himself for his spring, it
suddenly struck me that in my haste and excitement, I had forgotten that I was
using a borrowed rifle and had not pulled back the hammer (my own was hammerless).
To do this and put a bullet through the lion's brain was then the work of a
moment; and he fell dead instantly right on the top of Bhoota.




We did not lose a moment in rolling his great carcase off
Bhoota's body and quickly forced opening the jaws so as to disengage the
mangled arm which still remained in his mouth. By this time the poor shikari
was in a fainting condition, and we flew to the tonga for the brandy flask which we
had so providentially brought with us. On making a rough examination of the
wounded man, we found that his left arm and right leg were both frightfully
mauled, the latter being broken as well. He was lifted tenderly into the tonga -- how thankful
we now were to have it with us! -- and Spooner at once set off with him to camp
and the doctor.




Before following them home I made a hasty examination of the
dead lion and found him to be a very good specimen in every way. I was particularly
satisfied to see that one of the two shots I had fired as he charged down upon
me had taken effect. The bullet had entered below the right eye, and only just
missed the brain. Unfortunately it was a steel one which Spooner had unluckily
brought in his ammunition bag by mistake; still one would have thought that a shot
of this kind, even with a hard bullet, would at least have checked the lion for
the moment. As a matter of fact, however, it went clean through him without
having the slightest stopping effect. My last bullet, which was of soft lead, had
entered close to the right eye and embedded itself in the brain. By this time
it had grown almost dark, so I left the two dead lions where they lay and rode
for camp, which I was lucky enough to reach without further adventure or mishap.
I may mention here that early next morning two other lions were found devouring
the one we had first shot; but they had not had time to do much damage, and the
head, which I have had mounted, makes a very fine trophy indeed. The lion that
mauled Bhoota was untouched.




On my arrival in camp I found that everything that was
possible was being done for poor Bhoota by Dr. McCulloch, the same who had
travelled up with me to Tsavo and shot the ostrich from the train on my first
arrival in the country, and who was luckily on the spot. His wounds had been
skilfully dressed, the broken leg put in splints, and under the influence of a
soothing draught the poor fellow was soon sleeping peacefully. At first we had
great hope of saving both life and limb, and certainly for some days he seemed
to be getting on as well as could be expected. The wounds, however, were very bad
ones, especially those on the leg where the long tusks had met through and
through the flesh, leaving over a dozen deep tooth marks; the arm, though
dreadfully mauled, soon healed. It was wonderful to notice how cheerfully the
old shikari, bore it all, and a pleasure to listen to his tale of how he would
have his revenge on the whole tribe of lions as soon as he was able to get
about again. But alas, his shikar was over. The leg got rapidly worse, and
mortification setting in, it had to be amputated half way up the thigh.




Dr. Winston Waters performed the operation most skilfully,
and curiously enough the operating table was canopied with the skin of the lion
which had been responsible for the injury. Bhoota made a good recovery from the
operation, but seemed to lose heart when he found that he had only one leg
left, as according to his ideas he had now but a poor chance of being allowed
to enter Heaven. We did all that was possible for him, and Spooner especially
could not have looked after a brother more tenderly; but to our great sorrow he
sank gradually, and died on July 19.

Tracks

Along a creek bed, Parker found these tracks of deer and raccoon. The deer, with its cloven hoof, leaves a print that looks like paired half-moons. 









The raccoon's paws have five fingers. The hind pawprints generally include claw marks, but the forefoot claws may not make much of an impression. In that case, the track looks like the impress of a child's hand. 


















Creek banks are ideal for finding prints of all kinds. If you look closely, you'll see a few other kinds mixed in with the prominent coon and deer signs. 

























Photography by Parker Grice

How It Feels to Be Attacked by a Shark

What I’m Reading: 




How It Feels to Be Attacked by a Shark: 

And Other Amazing Life-or Death Situations 

edited by Michelle Hamer




Thirty-seven first-person accounts of being in difficult
situations, from weighing 500 pounds to choking on a cheeseburger. I, of
course, grabbed it for the shark attack and found several other stories from,
shall we say, the Night Side of Nature:




-attacked by a crocodile

-mauled by a Rottweiler

-debilitated by dengue fever.




These are fascinating accounts, full of details you  don’t usually hear about. The shark victim,
for instance, mentions trying to slow his heartbeat when he saw the great white
approach because he assumed the shark would sense it. The Rottweiler victim
frankly mentions having been bitten on her breast. The crocodile victim notices
the “beautiful golden-flecked eyes” of her attacker.




The stories are brief; I found myself devouring them like
potato chips. And then I took a bite that made me spit: “How It Feels to Be
Abducted by Aliens.” Surprisingly, I here encountered yet another bite on the
breast; our narrator bites in self-defense as a couple of lady aliens try to
take liberties with him, even though, as he says, one of them has hair “like
Farrah Fawcett’s when she was in Charlie’s Angels.” Having bitten off the alien’s
nipple, the gentleman is later asked “if I checked for it in my bowel
movements, but that never crossed my mind.”




It didn’t really seem worth going on after that story. I
leafed ahead and found the next story was called “How It Feels to Be an Animal
Psychic.” Yeah, I’m quitting here. 

Katydids on Lily

Photography by Dee Puett. 

Wildlife Classic: The Waters of Death

by Erckmann-Chatrian 


[Note: Like many of the classics, this is not PC.]


The warm mineral waters of
Spinbronn, situated in the Hundsrueck, several leagues from Pirmesens, formerly
enjoyed a magnificent reputation. All who were afflicted with gout or gravel in
Germany repaired thither; the savage aspect of the country did not deter them.
They lodged in pretty cottages at the head of the defile; they bathed in the
cascade, which fell in large sheets of foam from the summit of the rocks; they
drank one or two decanters of mineral water daily, and the doctor of the place,
Daniel Haselnoss, who distributed his prescriptions clad in a great wig and
chestnut coat, had an excellent practice.

To-day the waters of Spinbronn
figure no longer in the "Codex"; in this poor village one no longer
sees anyone but a few miserable woodcutters, and, sad to say, Dr. Haselnoss has
left!

All this resulted from a series
of very strange catastrophes which lawyer Bremer of Pirmesens told me about the
other day.

You should know, Master Frantz
(said he), that the spring of Spinbronn issues from a sort of cavern, about
five feet high and twelve or fifteen feet wide; the water has a warmth of
sixty-seven degrees Centigrade; it is salt. As for the cavern, entirely covered
without with moss, ivy, and brushwood, its depth is unknown because the hot
exhalations prevent all entrance.

Nevertheless, strangely enough,
it was noticed early in the last century that birds of the
neighborhood--thrushes, doves, hawks--were engulfed in it in full flight, and
it was never known to what mysterious influence to attribute this particular.

In 1801, at the height of the
season, owing to some circumstance which is still unexplained, the spring
became more abundant, and the bathers, walking below on the greensward, saw a
human skeleton as white as snow fall from the cascade.

You may judge, Master Frantz,
of the general fright; it was thought naturally that a murder had been
committed at Spinbronn in a recent year, and that the body of the victim had
been thrown in the spring. But the skeleton weighed no more than a dozen
francs, and Haselnoss concluded that it must have sojourned more than three
centuries in the sand to have become reduced to such a state of desiccation.

This very plausible reasoning
did not prevent a crowd of patrons, wild at the idea of having drunk the saline
water, from leaving before the end of the day; those worst afflicted with gout
and gravel consoled themselves. But the overflow continuing, all the rubbish,
slime, and detritus which the cavern contained was disgorged on the following
days; a veritable bone-yard came down from the mountain: skeletons of animals
of every kind--of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles--in short, all that one could
conceive as most horrible.

Haselnoss issued a pamphlet
demonstrating that all these bones were derived from an antediluvian world: that
they were fossil bones, accumulated there in a sort of funnel during the
universal flood--that is to say, four thousand years before Christ, and that,
consequently, one might consider them as nothing but stones, and that it was
needless to be disgusted. But his work had scarcely reassured the gouty when,
one fine morning, the corpse of a fox, then that of a hawk with all its
feathers, fell from the cascade.

It was impossible to establish
that these remains antedated the Flood. Anyway, the disgust was so great that
everybody tied up his bundle and went to take the waters elsewhere.

"How infamous!" cried
the beautiful ladies--"how horrible! So that's what the virtue of these
mineral waters came from! Oh, 'twere better to die of gravel than continue such
a remedy!"

At the end of a week there
remained at Spinbronn only a big Englishman who had gout in his hands as well
as in his feet, who had himself addressed as Sir Thomas Hawerburch, Commodore;
and he brought a large retinue, according to the usage of a British subject in
a foreign land.

This personage, big and fat,
with a florid complexion, but with hands simply knotted with gout, would have
drunk skeleton soup if it would have cured his infirmity. He laughed heartily
over the desertion of the other sufferers, and installed himself in the
prettiest _chalet_ at half price, announcing his design to pass the winter at
Spinbronn.

*

(Here lawyer Bremer slowly
absorbed an ample pinch of snuff as if to quicken his reminiscences; he shook
his laced ruff with his finger tips and continued:)

*

Five or six years before the
Revolution of 1789, a young doctor of Pirmesens, named Christian Weber, had
gone out to San Domingo in the hope of making his fortune. He had actually
amassed some hundred thousand francs m the exercise of his profession when the
negro revolt broke out.

I need not recall to you the
barbarous treatment to which our unfortunate fellow countrymen were subjected
at Haiti. Dr. Weber had the good luck to escape the massacre and to save part of
his fortune. Then he traveled in South America, and especially in French
Guiana. In 1801 he returned to Pirmesens, and established himself at Spinbronn,
where Dr. Haselnoss made over his house and defunct practice.

Christian Weber brought with
him an old negress called Agatha: a frightful creature, with a flat nose and
lips as large as your fist, and her head tied up in three bandanas of
razor-edged colors. This poor old woman adored red; she had earrings which hung
down to her shoulders, and the mountaineers of Hundsrueck came from six leagues
around to stare at her.

As for Dr. Weber, he was a
tall, lean man, invariably dressed in a sky-blue coat with codfish tails and
deerskin breeches. He wore a hat of flexible straw and boots with bright yellow
tops, on the front of which hung two silver tassels. He talked little; his
laugh was like a nervous attack, and his gray eyes, usually calm and
meditative, shone with singular brilliance at the least sign of contradiction.
Every morning he fetched a turn round about the mountain, letting his horse
ramble at a venture, whistling forever the same tune, some negro melody or
other. Lastly, this rum chap had brought from Haiti a lot of bandboxes filled
with queer insects--some black and reddish brown, big as eggs; others little
and shimmering like sparks. He seemed to set greater store by them than by his
patients, and, from time to time, on coming back from his rides, he brought a
quantity of butterflies pinned to his hat brim.

Scarcely was he settled in
Haselnoss's vast house when he peopled the back yard with outlandish
birds--Barbary geese with scarlet cheeks, Guinea hens, and a white peacock,
which perched habitually on the garden wall, and which divided with the negress
the admiration of the mountaineers.

If I enter into these details,
Master Frantz, it's because they recall my early youth; Dr. Christian found
himself to be at the same time my cousin and my tutor, and as early as on his
return to Germany he had come to take me and install me in his house at Spinbronn.
The black Agatha at first sight inspired me with some fright, and I only got
seasoned to that fantastic visage with considerable difficulty; but she was
such a good woman--she knew so well how to make spiced patties, she hummed such
strange songs in a guttural voice, snapping her fingers and keeping time with a
heavy shuffle, that I ended by taking her in fast friendship.

Dr. Weber was naturally thick
with Sir Thomas Hawerburch, as representing the only one of his clientele then
in evidence, and I was not slow in perceiving that these two eccentrics held
long conventicles together. They conversed on mysterious matters, on the
transmission of fluids, and indulged in certain odd signs which one or the
other had picked up in his voyages--Sir Thomas in the Orient, and my tutor in
America. This puzzled me greatly. As children will, I was always lying in wait
for what they seemed to want to conceal from me; but despairing in the end of
discovering anything, I took the course of questioning Agatha, and the poor old
woman, after making me promise to say nothing about it, admitted that my tutor
was a sorcerer.

For the rest, Dr. Weber
exercised a singular influence over the mind of this negress, and this woman,
habitually so gay and forever ready to be amused by nothing, trembled like a
leaf when her master's gray eyes chanced to alight on her.

All this, Master Frantz, seems
to have no bearing on the springs of Spinbronn. But wait, wait--you shall see
by what a singular concourse of circumstances my story is connected with it.

I told you that birds darted
into the cavern, and even other and larger creatures. After the final departure
of the patrons, some of the old inhabitants of the village recalled that a
young girl named Louise Mueller, who lived with her infirm old grandmother in a
cottage on the pitch of the slope, had suddenly disappeared half a hundred
years before. She had gone out to look for herbs in the forest, and there had
never been any more news of her afterwards, except that, three or four days
later, some woodcutters who were descending the mountain had found her sickle
and her apron a few steps from the cavern.

From that moment it was evident
to everyone that the skeleton which had fallen from the cascade, on the subject
of which Haselnoss had turned such fine phrases, was no other than that of
Louise Mueller. The poor girl had doubtless been drawn into the gulf by the
mysterious influence which almost daily overcame weaker beings!

What could this influence be?
None knew. But the inhabitants of Spinbronn, superstitious like all
mountaineers, maintained that the devil lived in the cavern, and terror spread
in the whole region.

*

Now one afternoon in the middle
of the month of July, 1802, my cousin undertook a new classification of the
insects in his bandboxes. He had secured several rather curious ones the
preceding afternoon. I was with him, holding the lighted candle with one hand
and with the other a needle which I heated red-hot.

Sir Thomas, seated, his chair
tipped back against the sill of a window, his feet on a stool, watched us work,
and smoked his cigar with a dreamy air.

I stood in with Sir Thomas
Hawerburch, and I accompanied him every day to the woods in his carriage. He
enjoyed hearing me chatter in English, and wished to make of me, as he said, a
thorough gentleman.

The butterflies labeled, Dr.
Weber at last opened the box of the largest insects, and said:

"Yesterday I secured a
magnificent horn beetle, the great _Lucanus cervus_ of the oaks of the Hartz.
It has this peculiarity--the right claw divides in five branches. It's a rare
specimen."

At the same time I offered him
the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir
Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to
examine the crab spider of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly
portrayed on his fat vermilion face.

"That is certainly,"
he cried, "the most frightful work of the creation. The mere sight of
it--it makes me shudder!"

In truth, a sudden pallor
overspread his face.

"Bah!" said my tutor,
"all that is only a prejudice from childhood--one hears his nurse cry
out--one is afraid--and the impression sticks. But if you should consider the
spider with a strong microscope, you would be astonished at the finish of his
members, at their admirable arrangement, and even at their elegance."

"It disgusts me,"
interrupted the commodore brusquely. "Pouah!"

It had turned over in his
fingers.

"Oh! I don't know
why," he declared, "spiders have always frozen my blood!"

Dr. Weber began to laugh, and
I, who shared the feelings of Sir Thomas, exclaimed:

"Yes, cousin, you ought to
take this villainous beast out of the box--it is disgusting--it spoils all the
rest."

"Little chump," he
said, his eyes sparkling, "what makes you look at it? If you don't like
it, go take yourself off somewhere."

Evidently he had taken offense;
and Sir Thomas, who was then before the window contemplating the mountain,
turned suddenly, took me by the hand, and said to me in a manner full of good
will:

"Your tutor, Frantz, sets
great store by his spider; we like the trees better--the verdure. Come, let's
go for a walk."

"Yes, go," cried the
doctor, "and come back for supper at six o'clock."

Then raising his voice:

"No hard feelings, Sir
Hawerburch."

The commodore replied
laughingly, and we got into the carriage, which was always waiting in front of
the door of the house.

Sir Thomas wanted to drive
himself and dismissed his servant. He made me sit beside him on the same seat
and we started off for Rothalps.

While the carriage was slowly
ascending the sandy path, an invincible sadness possessed itself of my spirit.
Sir Thomas, on his part, was grave. He perceived my sadness and said:

"You don't like spiders,
Frantz, nor do I either. But thank Heaven, there aren't any dangerous ones in
this country. The crab spider which your tutor has in his box comes from French
Guiana. It inhabits the great, swampy forests filled with warm vapors, with
scalding exhalations; this temperature is necessary to its life. Its web, or
rather its vast snare, envelops an entire thicket. In it it takes birds as our
spiders take flies. But drive these disgusting images from your mind, and drink
a swallow of my old Burgundy."

Then turning, he raised the
cover of the rear seat, and drew from the straw a sort of gourd from which he
poured me a full bumper in a leather goblet.

When I had drunk all my good
humor returned and I began to laugh at my fright.

The carriage was drawn by a
little Ardennes horse, thin and nervous as a goat, which clambered up the
nearly perpendicular path. Thousands of insects hummed in the bushes. At our
right, at a hundred paces or more, the somber outskirts of the Rothalp forests
extended below us, the profound shades of which, choked with briers and foul
brush, showed here and there an opening filled with light. On our left tumbled
the stream of Spinbronn, and the more we climbed the more did its silvered
sheets, floating in the abyss, grow tinged with azure and redouble their sound
of cymbals.

I was captivated by this
spectacle. Sir Thomas, leaning back in the seat, his knees as high as his chin,
abandoned himself to his habitual reveries, while the horse, laboring with his
feet and hanging his head on his chest as a counter-weight to the carriage,
held on as if suspended on the flank of the rock. Soon, however, we reached a
pitch less steep: the haunt of the roebuck, surrounded by tremulous shadows. I
always lost my head, and my eyes too, in an immense perspective. At the
apparition of the shadows I turned my head and saw the cavern of Spinbronn
close at hand. The encompassing mists were a magnificent green, and the stream
which, before falling, extends over a bed of black sand and pebbles, was so
clear that one would have thought it frozen if pale vapors did not follow its
surface.

The horse had just stopped of
his own accord to breathe; Sir Thomas, rising, cast his eye over the
countryside.

"How calm everything
is!" said he.

Then, after an instant of
silence:

"If you weren't here,
Frantz, I should certainly bathe in the basin."

"But, Commodore,"
said I, "why not bathe? I would do well to stroll around in the
neighborhood. On the next hill is a great glade filled with wild strawberries.
I'll go and pick some. I'll be back in an hour."

"Ha! I should like to,
Frantz; it's a good idea. Dr. Weber contends that I drink too much Burgundy.
It's necessary to offset wine with mineral water. This little bed of sand
pleases me."

Then, having set both feet on
the ground, he hitched the horse to the trunk of a little birch and waved his
hand as if to say:

"You may go."

I saw him sit down on the moss
and draw off his boots. As I moved away he turned and called out:

"In an hour, Frantz."

They were his last words.

An hour later I returned to the
spring. The horse, the carriage, and the clothes of Sir Thomas alone met my
eyes. The sun was setting. The shadows were getting long. Not a bird's song
under the foliage, not the hum of an insect in the tall grass. A silence like
death looked down on this solitude! The silence frightened me. I climbed up on
the rock which overlooks the cavern; I looked to the right and to the left.
Nobody! I called. No answer! The sound of my voice, repeated by the echoes,
filled me with fear. Night settled down slowly. A vague sense of horror
oppressed me. Suddenly the story of the young girl who had disappeared occurred
to me; and I began to descend on the run; but, arriving before the cavern, I
stopped, seized with unaccountable terror: in casting a glance in the deep
shadows of the spring I had caught sight of two motionless red points. Then I
saw long lines wavering in a strange manner in the midst of the darkness, and
that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my sight, and
all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several seconds I
heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the edge of the
wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my heart, compressed
for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and I no longer heard
anything!

Then uttering a horrible cry, I
fled, abandoning the horse, the carriage. In less than twenty minutes, bounding
over the rocks and brush, I reached the threshold of our house, and cried in a
stifled voice:

"Run! Run! Sir Hawerburch
is dead! Sir Hawerburch is in the cavern--!"

After these words, spoken in
the presence of my tutor, of the old woman Agatha, and of two or three people
invited in that evening by the doctor, I fainted. I have learned since that
during a whole hour I raved deliriously.

The whole village had gone in
search of the commodore. Christian Weber hurried them off. At ten o'clock in
the evening all the crowd came back, bringing the carriage, and in the carriage
the clothes of Sir Hawerburch. They had discovered nothing. It was impossible to
take ten steps in the cavern without being suffocated.

During their absence Agatha and
I waited, sitting in the chimney corner. I, howling incoherent words of terror;
she, with hands crossed on her knees, eyes wide open, going from time to time
to the window to see what was taking place, for from the foot of the mountain
one could see torches flitting in the woods. One could hear hoarse voices, in
the distance, calling to each other in the night.

At the approach of her master,
Agatha began to tremble. The doctor entered brusquely, pale, his lips
compressed, despair written on his face. A score of woodcutters followed him
tumultuously, in great felt hats with wide brims--swarthy visaged--shaking the
ash from their torches. Scarcely was he in the hall when my tutor's glittering
eyes seemed to look for something. He caught sight of the negress, and without
a word having passed between them, the poor woman began to cry:

"No! no! I don't want
to!"

"And I wish it,"
replied the doctor in a hard tone.

One would have said that the
negress had been seized by an invincible power. She shuddered from head to
foot, and Christian Weber showing her a bench, she sat down with a corpse-like
stiffness.

All the bystanders, witnesses
of this shocking spectacle, good folk with primitive and crude manners, but
full of pious sentiments, made the sign of the cross, and I who knew not then,
even by name, of the terrible magnetic power of the will, began to tremble,
believing that Agatha was dead.

Christian Weber approached the
negress, and making a rapid pass over her forehead:

"Are you there?" said
he.

"Yes, master."

"Sir Thomas
Hawerburch?"

At these words she shuddered
again.

"Do you see him?"

"Yes--yes," she
gasped in a strangling voice, "I see him."

"Where is he?"

"Up there--in the back of
the cavern--dead!"

"Dead!" said the
doctor, "how?"

"The spider--Oh! the crab
spider--Oh!--"

"Control your
agitation," said the doctor, who was quite pale, "tell us
plainly--"

"The crab spider has him
by the throat--he is there--at the back--under the rock--wound round by
webs--Ah!"

Christian Weber cast a cold
glance toward his assistants, who, crowding around, with their eyes sticking
out of their heads, were listening intently, and I heard him murmur:

"It's horrible!
horrible!"

Then he resumed:

"You see him?"

"I see him--"

"And the spider--is it
big?"

"Oh, master, never--never
have I seen such a large one--not even on the banks of the Mocaris--nor in the
lowlands of Konanama. It is as large as my head--!"

There was a long silence. All
the assistants looked at each other, their faces livid, their hair standing up.
Christian Weber alone seemed calm; having passed his hand several times over
the negress's forehead, he continued:

"Agatha, tell us how death
befell Sir Hawerburch."

"He was bathing in the
basin of the spring--the spider saw him from behind, with his bare back. It was
hungry, it had fasted for a long time; it saw him with his arms on the water.
Suddenly it came out like a flash and placed its fangs around the commodore's
neck, and he cried out: 'Oh! oh! my God!' It stung and fled. Sir Hawerburch
sank down in the water and died. Then the spider returned and surrounded him
with its web, and he floated gently, gently, to the back of the cavern. It drew
in on the web. Now he is all black."

The doctor, turning to me, who
no longer felt the shock, asked:

"Is it true, Frantz, that
the commodore went in bathing?"

"Yes, Cousin
Christian."

"At what time?"

"At four o'clock."

"At four o'clock--it was
very warm, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"It's certainly so,"
said he, striking his forehead. "The monster could come out without
fear--"

He pronounced a few
unintelligible words, and then, looking toward the mountaineers:

"My friends," he
cried, "that is where this mass of debris came from--of skeletons--which spread
terror among the bathers. That is what has ruined you all--it is the crab spider!
It is there--hidden in its web--awaiting its prey in the back of the cavern!
Who can tell the number of its victims?"

And full of fury, he led the
way, shouting:

"Firewood! Firewood!"

The woodcutters followed him,
vociferating.

Ten minutes later two large
wagons laden with fagots were slowly mounting the slope. A long file of
woodcutters, their backs bent double, followed, enveloped in the somber night.
My tutor and I walked ahead, leading the horses by their bridles, and the
melancholy moon vaguely lighted this funereal march. From time to time the
wheels grated. Then the carts, raised by the irregularities of the rocky road,
fell again in the track with a heavy jolt.

As we drew near the cavern, on
the playground of the roebucks, our cortege halted. The torches were lit, and
the crowd advanced toward the gulf. The limpid water, running over the sand,
reflected the bluish flame of the resinous torches, the rays of which revealed
the tops of the black firs leaning over the rock.

"This is the place to
unload," the doctor then said. "It's necessary to block up the mouth
of the cavern."

And it was not without a
feeling of terror that each undertook the duty of executing his orders. The
fagots fell from the top of the loads. A few stakes driven down before the
opening of the spring prevented the water from carrying them away.

Toward midnight the mouth of
the cavern was completely closed. The water running over spread to both sides on
the moss. The top fagots were perfectly dry; then Dr. Weber, supplying himself
with a torch, himself lit the fire. The flames ran from twig to twig with an
angry crackling, and soon leaped toward the sky, chasing clouds of smoke before
them.

It was a strange and savage
spectacle, the great pile with trembling shadows lit up in this way.

This cavern poured forth black
smoke, unceasingly renewed and disgorged. All around stood the woodcutters,
somber, motionless, expectant, their eyes fixed on the opening; and I, although
trembling from head to foot in fear, could not tear away my gaze.

It was a good quarter of an
hour that we waited, and Dr. Weber was beginning to grow impatient, when a
black object, with long hooked claws, appeared suddenly in the shadow and
precipitated itself toward the opening.

A cry resounded about the pyre.

The spider, driven back by the
live coals, reentered its cave. Then, smothered doubtless by the smoke, it
returned to the charge and leaped out into the midst of the flames. Its long
legs curled up. It was as large as my head, and of a violet red.

One of the woodcutters, fearing
lest it leap clear of the fire, threw his hatchet at it, and with such good aim
that on the instant the fire around it was covered with blood. But soon the flames
burst out more vigorously over it and consumed the horrible destroyer.

*

Such, Master Frantz, was the
strange event which destroyed the fine reputation which the waters of Spinbronn
formerly enjoyed. I can certify the scrupulous precision of my account. But as
for giving you an explanation, that would be impossible for me to do. At the
same time, allow me to tell you that it does not seem to me absurd to admit
that a spider, under the influence of a temperature raised by thermal waters,
which affords the same conditions of life and development as the scorching
climates of Africa and South America, should attain a fabulous size. It was
this same extreme heat which explains the prodigious exuberance of the
antediluvian creation!

However that may be, my tutor,
judging that it would be impossible after this event to reestablish the waters
of Spinbronn, sold the house back to Haselnoss, in order to return to America
with his negress and collections. I was sent to board in Strasbourg, where I
remained until 1809.

The great political events of
the epoch then absorbing the attention of Germany and France explain why the
affair I have just told you about passed completely unobserved.

Ranger vs. Leopard

Grice Yammers about Poe

Opening day: The Tell-Tale Heart



Thanks to the folks at the Selim Center in Minneapolis, who recently hosted me for a six-week series on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Luckily for me, they didn't realize I'd probably have showed up to talk about Poe for free.





Break time: Students menaced by an eerie figure.




I heard all things in the heaven and in the
earth. I heard many things in hell. 

--"The Tell-Tale Heart," 

by Edgar Allan Poe

Animal Attack Movies: Alligator

John Sayles is famous for dramas
so low-key they put me to sleep. Like, for example, Lone Star, probably the least
exciting movie about accidental incest ever made. He’s not bad; in fact, he’s
very good; it’s just that I drink coffee and demand a life full of excitement.




Long ago, however, Mr. Sayles
financed his arty efforts by writing genre pictures, like the satirical werewolf
movie The Howling and the satirical animal attack movie Piranha. This is the
stuff that makes me like him. My favorite is Alligator (1980; directed by Lewis
Teague with an admirable efficiency and a curious interest in exploding
vehicles). It’s the venerable gators-in-the-sewers legend, ramped up with
growth hormones and corporate corruption.




 




 Most filmmakers can’t do humor and horror at
the same time, not REAL horror, but Sayles and Teague manage it. There’s a night scene in which little boys are playing pirates, and one of them has to “walk
the plank” over a backyard pool, and at the last minute he sees something in
the water. . .

Hummingbird

"This was the most territorial aggressive little thing! She literally sat beneath that feeder like a guard dog within ten minutes of my hanging it. I am pretty sure this is a female ruby throat. At the neighbor's house with the eight feeders, there is only one male ruby throat. So I am guessing she is a rebel daughter or a wayward wife who decided to run away from the fray. That woman goes through a four pound bag of sugar a day keeping those feeders filled."

--Dee Puett, photographer