WILD ANIMALS
“Do you ever see or hear any wolves on your island?”
WE USED TO HEAR THEM a lot when we first came up, sometimes really close to our houses but mainly at night, so we rarely saw them. They haven’t been around so much in recent years. Some of them have unfortunately been shot. Wolves and cougars don’t share the same territory at the same time and their presence in any one area alternates. They both feed on deer, so the deer populations fluctuate quite dramatically in symbiosis. They all swim across the channels between the islands.
We once went to the next island to pick up a goose we had been given and were heading back home with Sheen dog, walking along an old skid road through deep second-growth forest. Laurie was carrying the goose and she had put a sock over its head to help keep it calm. Sheen was happily running along ahead as usual but suddenly she started whimpering and ran back beside us, obviously quite spooked. At the same time the goose started squirming and squawking. We looked ahead and there, only 20 feet away, right on the edge of the road and the bush, was a magnificent, huge bracken-brown wolf looking right at us. Once we had got over the shock we realized we were not afraid, though both the dog and the goose obviously were. I had time to notice how magnificently calm and dignified the wolf looked and how well it blended into the environment. It was not threatening, so we tried gingerly continuing on our way even though this meant we would have to pass closer to it. Sure enough the wolf turned away and allowed us to pass even though we could still see it in the bush alongside of us.
Then, when the dog and the goose started getting angsty again, we suddenly realized there were several wolves beside us. When we looked on the other side there were several more, and when we looked behind us we saw a single big black wolf following us along the road. Now we had no choice but to keep on going and our pace quickened up.
Trouble was, we were heading into a gully formed by erosion and wear and tear on the road by heavy logging machinery, which gave us the feeling we were being herded into a canyon trap. So we avoided it by leaving the road and following the upper rim of the trough, right on the edge of the bush. Now that we were committed, our adrenalin was really pumping as we involuntarily broke into a run. It was as if we were being escorted off the premises. We no longer looked around, just straight ahead. Sheen dog took off and sprinted ahead of us. After a while we needed to rest, and when we took another glimpse around the wolves had vanished. Once again, Sheen was waiting for us in the boat.
THERE WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO be bears on our islands, till one showed up and broke into somebody’s house. Since then we’ve had a few, mainly in the fall when they come looking for apples.
We arrived home from a town trip one evening in the fall, just before dark, to see a gap in our garden fence. Laurie was ahead of me as we came into our clearing, and she was going right for the hole in the fence to check it out. She didn’t want the chickens getting into the garden. As I arrived on the scene from a more distant viewpoint I was able to see over the fence and into the garden, where my attention was immediately distracted from the gap in the fence by a flurry of motion over in the apple tree at the far corner of the garden. As the flurry of activity emerged from the apple tree it took the unmistakable form of a bear cub right at the very top of the tree. Then a much more deliberate motion, a huge mama bear rearing up on her back legs. This mama was the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen. She must have stood at least eight feet tall. That and the brown colouring on her back made her look like a grizzly. The cub sure looked cute, I had time to notice.
Laurie was now at the fence, only the width of the garden, about 100 feet away from the bears and had evidently still not seen them, the fence itself being solid enough to obstruct her view. Suddenly mama bear set off running at great speed across the garden, directly toward the hole in the fence where she had entered, which was also right where Laurie was standing. I screamed at Laurie, “Run, there’s a bear!”
At that point, only 20 feet from Laurie, mama bear stopped dead in her tracks, evidently sensing that junior was not following her, spun around on a dime and sprinted off back toward the apple tree. Meanwhile, the cub had decided to run the opposite way and, having just broken a new hole in the fence behind the apple tree, was heading toward our house, which also happened to be where I was planning on going ASAP. Mama bear sliced smoothly through the new hole that junior had just made in the cedar picket fence, caught up with the cub and ambled off past our back deck and disappeared into the forest, heading back toward our barn.
Unfortunately, Laurie was also heading to the barn, round the opposite side of the garden, no doubt to check on the chickens. So I screamed again to tell Laurie to come back around my side of the garden so we could get safely to the house. Laurie argued that she didn’t want to go to the house. She wanted to make sure the bears didn’t get her chickens. She headed for the barn. I followed my instinct to hide in the house and wait for them to go away, which, thankfully, they did.
I had already finished my first cup of tea when Laurie finally came in from the barn, the smile on her face indicating that she and the chickens were okay but now she was worried about the apples. She didn’t want the bears getting any more apples.
“To hell with apples,” I said. “Did you see how big that mama was, and how close she was to you?”
“I don’t want the bears doing any more damage because then we’ll have to call in the Wildlife Manager to come and shoot them,” she replied, light years ahead of me in her strategic thinking as usual.
“So long as they don’t come in the house,” I thought. “I’m not going out and I don’t care what they do tonight. I’ll worry about the apples tomorrow, maybe.”
As an adjunct to this part of the story, some of our neighbours on the next island at about the same time had a bear open their kitchen window, climb right inside their house, take a good look around and exit by the same means. They were away at the time and it did not do any serious damage or steal any of the plentiful supply of food in their pantry, including pails of honey and dozens of cans of salmon. Could it possibly have been the same bears? They also swim between islands.
There’s another interesting sequel to this story too. A few days later we were having supper with some friends just about dusk when I happened to glance up from the dinner table as something caught my eye right through the back kitchen window at the far side of the house out toward the garden. It was that same damn bear cub again, right at the very top of that same apple tree. It’s a huge tree and was just loaded with apples that we still hadn’t got round to picking. Unfortunately, instead of doing the smart thing, which was to grab the camera, I ran out and shouted at them again. Sure enough they ran off and slid right through the original spot in the fence that Laurie had already repaired.
“How about cougars?”
THE FIRST MORNING BACK HOME from some travelling, Skookum was barking out by the barn. We had been missing each other, as he had been staying with Kiersten in town for the three months while we were away, and he was now keen to pick up his old routines, which included asserting control of his territory. He often barked at the ravens and blue jays. He knew we didn’t want to have them around and chasing them away made him feel important, which of course met our approval, of which he also was acutely aware. His will to please was very powerful. Sometimes he overdid it, which then became part of his entertaining act, and he barked at nothing at all just for the hell of it.
This over-enthusiastic barking was not at all unusual, then, but this time, partly because we hadn’t seen each other for months, there was something different so I went out to join him at the barn to see what was up. I thought I’d go through the motions of letting him save face before playing some other game, but somehow this time there was an urgency about his body language that really caught my attention.
“What’s up, Skook?” I asked as he came close in against my legs.
Now I was starting to get spooked by his unusual behaviour, realizing this was not just a game, and even my skeptical senses were catching on to some other presence. As we both tentatively stalked along the lane, his nose suddenly poked upward, indicating he had caught a scent of something. Sure enough, just around the corner from the barn, only 50 feet away right in the middle of the lane, there was a huge cougar, a 150-pound mountain lion that could easily tear either one of us apart in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, she wasn’t blinking, just staring, catlike and curious. Her body was facing away from us but her head was turned right around to the back of her neck the way only cats (or owls) can do. I was not afraid, nor was Skookum; there was more a feeling of mutual fascination, intense curiosity on both sides. I couldn’t help noticing what a beautiful creature she was and how well she blended into the bush while at the same time presenting a very distinctive and powerful presence, almost an aura. She was big, muscular and fit-looking, about twice as big as Skookum (and he was a big dog), tan-coloured with some tabby stripes, a very big kitty. The body language was not threatening but certainly demanding of respect, especially the intensity of that expressionless gaze.
“Better not push our luck, old chap. Let’s go back home now!” I said calmly to Skookum, and then I thought, “You are not supposed to turn your back on a predator.”
Instead, the cougar turned its back on us and slunk off into the bush. We quickly slunk off back to the house. It was all over so fast with no time to consider the what-if scenarios.
Safely back in the house, it felt good to be home. We sure had missed our animals.
When people ask why we are not afraid of the cougars on our island, we say, “They seem to know not to bother us, so long as we don’t bother them.”
Although, of course, we can’t prove it, this attitude has worked for us for 40 years of living with cougars in our neighbourhood. Although we rarely see them, we know they are there because whenever it snows we see their tracks. Furthermore, our seemingly cavalier attitude is substantiated by the local folklore passed down to us by the old-timers we have met. For instance, the daughters of August Schnarr, the local old-time pioneer homesteader, prospector and trapper living in Bute Inlet, had pet cougar kittens in their house when they were young.
When we were in Australia people asked us, “What about the bears in Canada? Aren’t you afraid of being mauled and eaten?”
“More people get killed by bees than bears,” we replied. “They are around and we see them now and again but they usually keep away. There’s no need to be afraid. How about your poisonous snakes? Aren’t you afraid of them?”
“Hell no. There’s plenty of them around and you might see the odd one but they usually keep away. No need to be afraid.”
“How about sharks and crocodiles?”
“Same thing, but you can’t help being afraid of them.”
Some people are afraid of horses, but the people who know them say that it doesn’t help to be afraid. Respect is a preferable state of mind.