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In New England Fields and Woods

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<h2>XXXI</h2> A PLEA FOR THE UNPROTECTED Why kill, for the mere sake of killing or the exhibition of one's skill, any wild thing that when alive harms no one and when killed is of no worth? The more happy wild life there is in the world, the pleasanter it is for all of us. When one is duck-shooting on inland waters, sitting alert in the bow of the skiff with his gun ready for the expected gaudy wood duck, or plump mallard, or loud quacking dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with a splashing flutter out of the wild rice, and there is a sudden beating of broad wings among the sedges with a startled guttural quack, and one's heart leaps to his throat and his gun to his shoulder, and then—only an awkward bittern climbs the September breeze with a slow incline, there is a vengeful temptation to let drive at the disappointing good-for-nothing. But[149] why not let the poor fellow go? If you dropped him back into the marsh to rot unprofitably there, disdained even by the mink, unattainable to the scavenger skunk, what good would it do you? If he disappointed you, you disturbed him in his meditations, or in the pursuit of a poor but honest living. Perhaps a great heron too intent on his fishing or frogging, or dozing in the fancied seclusion of his reedy bower, springs up within short range and goes lagging away on his broad vans. He may be taken home to show, for he is worth showing even when killed. But if you wish your friends to see him at his best, bring them to him and let them see how well he befits these sedgy levels—a goodly sight, whether he makes his lazy flight above them or stands a motionless sentinel in the oozy shallows. The marshes would be desolate without him, or if one desires the charm of loneliness, his silent presence adds to it. A kingfisher comes clattering along the channel. As he jerks his swift way over the sluggish water he may test your marksmanship, but as he hangs[150] with rapid wing-beats over a school of minnows, as steadfast for a minute as a star forever, needing no skill to launch him to his final unrewarded plunge, do not kill him! In such waters he takes no fish that you would, and he enlivens the scene more than almost any other frequenter of it, never skulking and hiding, but with metallic, vociferous clatter heralding his coming. One never tires of watching his still mid-air poise, the same in calm or wind, and his unerring headlong plunge. When one wanders along a willowy stream with his gun, cautiously approaching every lily-padded pool and shadowed bend likely to harbor wood duck or teal, and finds neither, and his ears begin to ache for the sound of his gun—if a green heron flaps off a branch before him he is sorely tempted to shoot the ungainly bird, but if the gun must be heard, let it speak to a stump or a tossed chip, either as difficult a target as he, and let the poor harmless little heron live. Uncouth as he is, he comes in well in the picture of such a watercourse, which has done with the worry of turning mills,[151] left far behind with their noise and bustle on foaming rapids among the hills, and crawls now in lazy ease through wide intervales, under elms and water maples and thickets of willows. On the uplands, where the meadow lark starts out of the grass with a sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away on his steady game-like flight, remember before you stop it, or try to, of how little account he is when brought to bag; and how when the weary days of winter had passed, his cheery voice welcomed the coming spring, a little later than the robin's, a little earlier than the flicker's cackle; and what an enlivening dot of color his yellow breast made where he strutted in the dun, bare meadows. In some States the woodpeckers are unprotected and are a mark for every gunner. Their galloping flight tempts the ambitious young shooter to try his skill, but they are among the best friends of the arboriculturist and the fruit-grower, for though some of them steal cherries and peck early apples, and one species sucks the sap of trees, they are[152] the only birds that search out and kill the insidious, destructive borer. In some States, too, the hare is unprotected by any law, and it is common custom to hunt it, even so late as April, for the mere sake of killing, apparently; or perhaps the charm of the hound's music, which makes the butchery of Adirondack deer so delightful a sport to some, adds a zest to the slaughter of these innocents—though, be it said, there is no comparison in the marksmanship required. Alive, the northern hare is one of the most harmless of animals; dead, he is, in the opinion of most people, one of the most worthless; so worthless that hunters frequently leave the result of all their day's "sport" in the woods where they were killed. Yet the hare is legitimate game, and should be hunted as such, and only in proper seasons, and not be ruthlessly exterminated. A woodland stroll is the pleasanter if one sees a hare there in his brown summer suit, or white as the snow about him in his winter furs. Where there are no statute laws for the protection of game and harmless[153] creatures not so classed, an unwritten law of common sense, common decency, and common humanity should be powerful enough to protect all these. The fox is an outlaw; it is every one's legal right to kill him whenever and however he may, and yet wherever the fox is hunted with any semblance of fair play, whether in New England with gun and hound, or elsewhere with horse and hound, the man who traps a fox, or kills one unseasonably, or destroys a vixen and her cubs, bears an evil reputation. A sentiment as popular and as potent ought to prevail to protect those that, though harmless, are as unshielded by legislative enactments as the fox, and much less guarded by natural laws and inborn cunning.[154] <hr class="chapter"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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