Music; all ages enjoy fireworks; camp fires and
meals over a raw blaze are popular and produce a
peculiar contentment ; candle light is used at dinners
and meals on special occasions ; church services em-
ploy incense, altar lights, prayer candles ; even the
birthday cake and the Christmas tree are small fire-
festivals in themselves. And there is always the open
fireplace.
Tonight as we gaze into the flickering fire — raw,
pagan flame burning within a few feet of beautiful
upholstering, a painting or two, electric lamps, a
modern radio, a grand piano — it seems strange that
such a thing should be in our midst. We sit in con-
tentment before the hearth and muse on how out
of place yet how fitting it is that the fire which the
Zoroastrians worshiped, into which the children of
Israel were hurled, and which for centuries has lived
in the primitive hut and on the altar, or burned great
cities — that such a thing live innocently at home in
the modern fireplace. It is something of the past
which is perhaps unwittingly brought again into hu-
man contact.
The benediction which the fire gives out to all
who gather near is something which modern man
craves. It is a link with the forgotten past, a touch
of security symbolized in the home. Yet it is indeed
a far cast back to the time when home was truly
where the hearth was, when fire was the protector,
the comforter, the magician. Men, women, and chil-
dren today gaze into flames and coals, and think
these strange, unlinked thoughts which they do not
exactly understand. They are thoughts dwelling in a
niche of the mind not often explored. It is the in-
fluence of the past, that inescapable thing which
makes modern man kin to his ancestors ; and though
he does not quite understand his feeling, it makes
him look upon fire with a tinge of the old worship.
It is still the same primitive blaze ; still the fire that
once enveloped the world ; still the elemental flame
whose charm is as compelling and mysterious as
when it provoked an unreasoning worship.
Drawn by Gustav Wolf
THE STORY OF FIRE
Photo by H. B. Kane
'W's the Woodchuck
Whose life's spent in clover" From The Alphabet
BIOGRAPHY OF A WHISTLEPIG-7^ animal that is sup-
posed to look for his shadow on Groundhog Day was a curious pet
and one that required no care while he hibernated in the home
By Roy L. Abbott
Professor of Biology,
Iowa State Teachers College
I KNEW "Chuckie," the woodchuck or whistlepig,
long before he was born. Or perhaps it would
be better to say that I knew of his coming, for
it was my good fortune to see his parents at their
September courtship which led to his birth along
with five other brother and sister chucklings about
the first of the following May.
I was out tramping that morning and had just
sat down to rest momentarily on the rim of the bluff
when my attention was caught by a commotion in
a smartweed patch a few yards below my feet. Pres-
ently two large and enormously fat woodchucks
came waddling into view, one seemingly in pursuit
of the other. The rear one was larger and darker
than the leader, and I learned afterward that this
was Mr. Woodchuck. Neither seemed in any par-
ticular hurry, so round and round they went in a
kind of endless "follow the leader" game and with
that peculiar flowing gait that only woodchucks
have, keeping up a low whimpering chuckle or half-
whistle all the while.
I didn't see the finish of this courtship, if that is
what it was, for Mrs. Woodchuck happened to see
me, whereupon she at once led the way up the
bluff to a deep burrow under the rocks at the base
of a tree, where both promptly disappeared. But
many subsequent visits to the den showed me that
the two "chucks" holed up there for the winter
early in October, never showing themselves again
until the middle of February.
Woodchucks at home
There are those who believe that woodchucks
mate in the early spring, and possibly they do, for
the males, especially, are known to make long and
mysterious trips about that time, but at any rate,
Chuckie was one of a litter born to that pair of
woodchucks about the first of May. But not having
met him personally as yet, he was only one of that
brood of six that I first saw through my telescope
BIOGRAPHY OF A WHISTLEPIG
from behind some nearby boulders about a month
later, as they played about their door in the June
sun.
The den was under a big elm, and a two-inch
root running horizontally across the entrance a foot
or so high made a convenient bar upon which the
youngsters could play. Minutes on end they would
jump up and grab the root with a kind of chin-
yourself action, often swinging backward and for-
ward several times before dropping to the ground
to tumble over each other and romp like kittens.
Old Mother Woodchuck, however, took no part in
these activities, contenting herself in looking on,
rising to her haunches every now and then to search
the landscape for a possible enemy. But watchful
as she was, tragedy stalked her family. I didn't see
that goshawk myself until he swooped. There was
a sudden whirr of stiff wing feathers, a loud warn-
ing whistle from the mother as she and the rest
tumbled out of sight into their cellar, and then I
saw the hawk who, finding his victim heavier than
he had expected, slithered off sidewise to land on
top of a fence post. In sheer exasperation, I shot
the bird, but too late to save the chuckling, who had
only a wiggle or two left in him when I unhooked
the hawk's talons.
Chuckie becomes a pet
Fear kept them hidden the rest of that day, but
next morning as I watched, the old female collected
the remaining five and led them through a tunnel
she had dug under the woven wire fence into an
alfalfa field, each infant whimpering anxiously at
her heels as if afraid of being left behind. This was
the opportunity I had been waiting for, so backing
off cautiously, I went around the fence and belly-
crawled my way until I was between the wood-
chucks and their den. Then after catching my
breath, I stood up suddenly and with a loud yell
rushed straight at the astonished brood. Not mak-
ing the slightest effort to protect her offspring,
Madam Woodchuck circled me on a dead run|
plunging headlong into the den without even the
ceremony of a final whistle. But the chucklings,
113
true to the pattern of many another young animal,
their eyes fairly popping, "froze" to the ground,
seemingly too paralyzed to run. I could have my
choice for the taking so, picking out the biggest and
fattest, I clapped my hat down on him, and that
was "Chuckie."
Except for a few surprised squeals and grunts
and a quick snap or two of his white chisel teeth
aimed in my direction, he seemed fairly content to
hide in my hunting coat pocket until I got home
with him. By nightfall he was drinking milk greed-
ily from a medicine dropper and in a day or so was
grabbing a milk bottle from my fingers, holding it
comically in his black, glovelike hands as he sucked
loudly at the rubber nipple.
And how he grew ! He seemed to swell visibly
overnight, but that was not surprising from the way
he ate. He wanted milk about as often as he could
get it, and his belly, when he had finished drinking,
stood out round and nearly as hard as a baseball.
In fact, he appeared to exist largely for the purpose
of turning food of various kinds into woodchuck,
for after his first few weeks of milk-drinking, he
became largely a vegetable feeder. He liked nothing
better than to make himself at home in the kitchen
garden, often gnawing the center out of a prize head
of cabbage or stripping a row of peas closer to the
ground than a cottontail could do it. Ripe water-
melon, too, was a special delicacy, and as I watched
him eat a piece of this, seeds and all, I recalled my
father's vexation when he found many fine melons
ruined by the woodchucks from a nearby hedge
fence. My neighbor complained that woodchucks
sometimes killed his young chickens, but Chuckie
never paid the slightest attention to them, and I
suspect that it is only an occasional depraved wood-
chuck that has this habit. In fact, maybe the wood-
chuck that he caught in a trap near his chicken coop
and which he proudly exhibited to prove his point
was not the real killer at all.
His table manners
But, although I watched Chuckie's diet closely
for a long time, even trying him out on various
foods such as a young dead sparrow, which he
nibbled but didn't seem to enjoy, I believe he liked
corn bread and molasses best of all. At breakfast
time he would come shuffling with a sort of low
whistle out of a little back room from his bed in a
box, climb up into a child's high chair, and eat this
sticky stuff from a tin plate, smearing his face and
chuckle head in amazing fashion and nibbling at
his black paws in a way that never failed to get a
laugh from his watchers. Usually my dogs watched
these eating antics with jealous eyes, but they never
bothered the little woodchuck even from the first,
and he always treated them with a sort of cool in-
difference, as he did also the cats. Indeed, although
he would crawl up my pants leg, always hurting me
with his sharp claws, when he did so, I could see
no affection in his black, hatpin-head eyes, and I
suspect I was never more than a bit of animated but
harmless landscape to him.
Two of my dogs were great woodchuck hunters,
often digging for hours at a single den, at which
game they always worked in relays, one digging
while the other remained outside and watched. But
they never made the mistake with Chuckie that a
friend told me his dogs did with a woodchuck. He,
too, had a pet 'chuck and one early spring morning
he noticed his dogs working industriously far up the
hillside. Curious to know what they were after, he
went up to see, and just as he looked into the hole,
his dog came out with his tail between his legs,
closely followed by the pet woodchuck who whistled
ingratiatingly as he climbed. My friend gleefully
described the discomfiture of his dogs who had made
the strange mistake of digging out their fellow
boarder.
An ardent sun-bather
After a full meal he would retire to his box to
sleep for an hour or two, but he always spent a
great deal of time in the sun, liking nothing better
than to bask on the back door step or sit for an hour
at the entrance of one of the several shallow holes
he had dug in the yard. While thus perched on his
lookout, anyone of our family could walk right up
to him, but let a stranger, man or dog, appear and
with a defiant whistle he would plunge into his
hole, usually, however, popping his head out again
in a few minutes just like a groundsquirrel.
There is something uncanny about this first out-
poking of his head. I have watched any number of
woodchucks do this, but I always get a thrill from
it. One moment I am gazing fixedly past the open
mouth of the tunnel, the next the picture has dis-
solved into the grizzled round head, with its black
eyes and nose and twitching whiskers. Save for a
few flies shooed out ahead of him, no notice is given
of his coming — one instant empty space, then warm,
pulsating individuality. I chuckle involuntarily, then
the head vanishes as it came.
Scientists have given Chuckie and his kind the
name monax, which means monk, possibly be-
cause of his habit of being alone. But aside from
this liking for his own company, there is little of
the monk about a woodchuck. Certainly there was
nothing spiritual or monkish in Chuckie unless sheer
enjoyment of the feel of mother earth and sun-
114
NATURAL HISTORY, FEBRUARY, 1 939
shine, and taste of good food in plenty are spiritual
things. For as Burroughs so well said of a wood-
chuck, "he is of the earth, earthy." In fact, I never
saw that little fellow, lying full-bellied flat upon his
mound and soaking up the sunshine, that I did not
think that here was a true child of Nature, a crea-
ture fairly steeped in contentment.
I never could decide whether he was more a
gourmand or an epicure. There were times when
he would fairly gorge himself, and then hide away
— I suspect in a kind of gluttonous stupor. At
others, he would nibble daintily at this or that, a
seemingly delicate creature who would never over-
indulge.
Also, left to his own choice, he would invariably
dive into his den when danger threatened, but when
cut off from retreat he would fight savagely what-
ever attacked him, a goose, an old hen with chickens,
a stray cat or dog. I saw more than one dog retreat
ignominiously from the sharp rip of his teeth. Lazy
and slow and easy-going a woodchuck may well be,
but when danger threatens, or necessity demands,
he can put his back to the wall and fight and die
like a Spartan.
Do woodchucks climb trees?
There has been endless argument among sports-
men concerning whether woodchucks climb trees,
but Chuckie would climb low trees and seemed to
enjoy sprawling with hanging legs like a fox-squir-
rel on a wide limb. More than once I have also seen
a woodchuck treed by dogs, but these were emer-
gency cases; Chuckie apparently climbed just for
fun.
But aside from these rather rare departures from
the easy life, Chuckie now and then went in for
digging in a big way. I have already said that he
dug a number of shallow holes in the yard, but his
first major excavation, a real woodchuck den with a
huge lookout mound in front and a concealed back-
door, was an achievement of the next spring follow-
ing his birth. This den was on the steep sidehill
back of the barn, but woodchucks do not always dig
their dens in such locations as has been asserted by
such a great naturalist as John Burroughs. I have
found them often along hedge fences in perfectly
level fields, sometimes even in bottom lands subject
to overflow. Moreover, I have often seen drowned-
out woodchucks swimming desperately or sitting
anxiously on floating driftwood.
I couldn't see Chuckie's architectural plan, of
course, save only the foot-wide entrance, but the
size of the mound told me that it was a deep hole,
probably 30 feet or more, with several side pockets,
and the inner end running upward to above the
level of the door. I know this because I have dug
out many a den, but I never found the owner even
though I had just chased him in before I began dig-
ging. The next day after such a misadventure al-
ways showed me where the rascal had dug out from
some side pocket in which by counter digging he
had walled himself off from my probing spade. For
a woodchuck can seemingly bore like a mole into
the side of his tunnel and pack the dirt so hard in
behind him as to defy detection. Foxes are said to
be able to dig out woodchucks although I don't see
how they can do it, and I suspect that the old ex-
pression of desperation, "it's a groundhog case," was
born of the futility and exasperation of some New
Englander trying to unearth a woodchuck.
When Chuckie was about four months old and
perhaps two-thirds grown, I captured his mother in
a box-trap and put her in a large cage made of
hardware cloth. The rest of her brood had disap-
peared by this time ; possibly one or two more had
met with fatal mishaps, and the others driven off,
as Seton believes, by the "recurrent sex-instinct of
the mother." She was fierce and intractable and
would have nothing to do with Chuckie, whom she
had apparently forgotten. And to my astonishment,
she actually ate her way through the walls of the
cage, breaking each wire of the close-meshed screen
by hooking her long, incisor teeth through and jerk-
ing powerfully. I patched the hole with other wire,
but she kept working at the edges until she had pro-
gressively torn away enough of the substantial ma-
terial to allow a man to crawl through. It was un-
believable. I felt that a creature like that deserved
to be free so I let her go.
Hibernates under observation
Chuckie spent his first winter in the little back
room off the kitchen, where the temperature never
quite went down to freezing. He didn't go into his
winter's sleep all at once, but by October he was
fat as a ball of butter, and became more sluggish
each day. One morning he didn't show up and I
found him asleep, curled in a tight ball. It was
cold in the back room so I brought him in and
warmed him by the stove and he gradually came
out of his stupor. But he was not the same, his eyes
had a cloudy, sleepy, almost sick look, and the next
morning I found him back in his box again, sound
asleep, and this time I didn't wake him. I often
picked him up while he slept that winter but he
never knew it, or at least gave no sign. His body
felt cool to my hands, and I knew that his heart,
very rapid during the summer, was now beating
slowly and feebly, and his blood scarcely moving
BIOGRAPHY OF A WHISTLEPIG
115
through the vessels. He was alive, but barely so,
just maintaining the vital spark, so to speak, by a
slow use of the fat he had stored up in his body —
Nature's way of carrying him through an unfavor-
able season. It was uncanny to see him lie there al-
most dead, oblivious to his surroundings, and get-
ting thinner from day to day.
Nor did he waken according to tradition, on Can-
dlemas day, the second of February, to see what the
weather held in store for him and us. The spring
was late that year and on Groundhog's Day, Chuckie
was still asleep and remained so for about two
weeks. He and his kind may be unique in having
a day named for them, but they are unique also in
that they pay no attention to it.
Chuckie never paid much attention to other wood-
chucks, but I saw a large woodchuck making itself
at home in his den one spring, and I suspect that
this was Mrs. Chuckie. Also he was absent from
the yard on various occasions for a week at a time
both in spring and fall, and I know that he hiber-
nated his second winter in the deep den he had pre-
pared the preceding spring. But I never saw any
little woodchucks following after him, and I suspect
that Chuckie, in common with other male wood-
chucks, was more concerned with the actual propa-
gation of his kind than in looking after their wel-
fare when they came. It is so much easier, in wood-
chuck philosophy, to lie in the sun.
What became of Chuckie? I cannot say. He
stayed around close his first year, but after associ-
ating somewhat with his fellows and hibernating
in the hillside for a winter or two, the spirit of the
wild must have gradually filtered back into his funny
little body, for I saw him less and less after that
and finally not at all.
An old hunter told me that he once found an an-
cient grizzled woodchuck feebly digging a shallow
hole. He didn't bother the animal but curiosity
overcame him and on passing that way again in a
few hours, he found the old woodchuck coiled up,
dead, in the bottom of the hole. I have never seen
anything like this and do not know that it is the
custom among woodchucks to dig their own graves,
for owing to their many enemies, most of them, like
other animals, never die of old age. But I like to
believe that even today, Chuckie, a worldly wise old
fellow, is still sitting somewhere upon his doorstep
in the sun, ready to give his defiant whistle before
diving into his den.
INFORMATION TEST
A few informational high spots that may be gleaned
from this month's NATURAL HISTORY
Score 10 points for each correct answer. Correct answers on page 127
1. Both the Great Dane and the
Welsh Terrier originated in
the country for which they are
named.
True False
4. Dried fruit in the United States
is allowed to contain 1 insect
for every ten pieces.
True False
7. Before coloring matter was
manufactured chemically, pul-
verized insects furnished the
pink tint of birthday cakes.
True False
8. The Newfoundland dog never
saw Newfoundland.
True False
2. Deformation of the head by
binding it in infancy renders
5. On Groundhog Day, February
2nd, all groundhogs promptly
awake from hibernation.
True False
the Mangbetu one of the most
stupid tribes in Africa.
True False
9. Some African tribes fight each
other over the possession of
termite houses.
6. The only dog whose evidence
is accepted in a court of law is
the "Police Dog."
True False
3. The Andaman Islanders are a
modern anthropological curios-
ity because they lack knowl-
edge of how to make fire.
True False
10. The habit of dogs of marking
trees is a relic of the days
when they thus identified their
particular hunting grounds.
True False
116
NATURAL HISTORY, FEBRUARY, 1 939
HOW BRIGHT
IS THE DOG?
It's still a moot point. But the celebrated dog
"Fellow" probably did more to elevate the species
in the eyes of Science than any other dog. His ex-
pansive repertory, including the ability to under-
stand about 400 English words, swept him to
world-wide fame and the title of Dogdom's genius
Brightness, like beauty, often
lies only in the eye of the be-
holder. To outsiders a small
child may seem an appalling personifi-
cation of all-around mediocrity, but to
its parents that child will likely ap-
pear not only beautiful of body but
prodigious of mind. It is the same, per-
haps worse, with owners of pets, par-
ticularly dog owners. Given any small
excuse, dog lovers are prone to exag-
gerate their pet's abilities during its
life and even to contrive some sort of
apotheosis after its death.
Few have met the man willing to
jeopardize what are possibly only af-
fectionate illusions in order to help
science discover just how bright the
dog is. Such a man, however, is Jacob
Herbert who has dedicated a large
part of his life to proving the convic-
tion that a dog can be taught to un-
derstand human language. To do this
he unflinchingly exposed himself for
30 years to the incredulity of his
friends, the sneers of his foes, the con-
descending smiles of scientists. He was
thwarted time and again. He was
urged to give it up, and did, for brief
intervals. But soon he was at it again,
J running through a small fortune and
I a whole gamut of disappointments as
; he pressed to achieve his one great
ambition. As he himself says, "It was
a fixed cross laid on my shoulders. I
had no alternative but to go on
! trying."
Persistent experimentation with
• various mongrels throughout his youth
(Above) Fellow and four of the ob-
jects he was taught to identify by his
master, Jacob Herbert (below)
gave him practical lessons in animal
psychology, perfected his teaching
technique, and later brightened his
leisure hours as a successful Danish
business man. Then after all his
worldly goods had vanished in Den-
mark's economic crisis of 1908, the ob-
session remained, buoyed him up and
became his inspiration in new sur-
roundings.
He emigrated to America, became
a photographer, and having once more
risen to comfortable circumstances,
turned his every effort to the consumma-
tion of his hope. He began working
with dogs of all types, always seeking
one with a special gift for language.
He took no interest in the so-called
trick dog. He wanted no acrobat to
perform at the snap of his fingers. He
wanted a dog who could understand
orders communicated only through
the medium of human speech — that
and nothing more.
He decided to select from the
German Shepherd breed because he
reasoned that the temperament and
the century-old education of succes-
sive generations of these highly trained
work dogs showed their aptitude for
such learning. He prepared to invest
in a scheme to sponsor the mating of
two of the finest German Shepherds
available, and in return to receive the
choice of litter. But here fate gave a
twist to his carefully laid plans. Good
was to come of the disappointment,
but that was kept from him until
much later.
All arrangements were made for
the breeding, but when the puppies
arrived, Mr. Herbert found there had
been a misunderstanding, deliberate
or otherwise, on the part of the
breeder, who informed him that he
was entitled to second choice only.
This was a serious blow to Herbert's
hopes. There was obviously but one
well formed, outstanding, puppy in
the litter.
"My heart sank," reminisced Mr.
Herbert, "and I was just about to
leave, making the man a present of
my investment, when I turned for a
last glance at the little group. One
scrawny, little pup, standing in the
center, turned his head toward me and
looked me right in the eye with a
HOW BRIGHT IS THE DOG?
117
pleading expression. So I picked him
up by the scruff of the neck and said,