Rascal
Page 1
A surprise encounter
“Dig ’em out, Wowser,” I shouted.
In another minute Wowser was making the dirt fly, and Oscar and I were helping in a frenzy of excitement.
“I’ll bet it’s a fox,” I panted hopefully.
“Probably an old woodchuck,” Oscar said.
But we couldn’t have been more surprised when a furious mother raccoon exploded from her lair screaming her rage and dismay. Wowser nearly fell over backward to avoid the flying claws and slashing little teeth. A moment later the big raccoon had raked her way up a slender oak tree. Thirty feet above us she continued to scream and scold.
In plain sight now, within the den, we found four baby raccoons, a month old perhaps. . . . Three of the little raccoons, hearing their mother’s call, trundled with amazing swiftness into the hazel brush to follow her, and were gone. Oscar, however, was quick enough to cup one kit in his cap, our only reward for our labor—but reward enough, as time would prove.
Remembering My Father,
Sterling North
BY ARIELLE NORTH OLSON
My brother and I loved the stories our dad told us about Rascal, the pet raccoon he had when he was a boy.
One time when we were little, we pestered him for too many stories. We were on vacation, and our parents must have wanted some quiet time. So our dad suggested that we buy the next story with one hundred water-polished, quartz pebbles. We ran over to a mountain stream nearby, waded in the cool water, and gathered the lovely pebbles. When we had one hundred, we handed them to our dad, and he repaid us with another story.
But he didn’t only tell stories—he made up poems and verses. He would tape a poem/riddle on each Christmas present, challenging us to solve the secret of whatever my mother had wrapped inside each package. And when we grew weary on long car trips, he sometimes amused us with funny verses. He wrote beautiful poetry, too. When he was a student at the University of Chicago, his poems were printed in major literary magazines and won national intercollegiate prizes.
Our dad was an enthusiastic man. Much of what he loved as a boy, he continued to love as an adult: his passion for animals, for reading and writing, for nature, for fishing, for music.
When my brother and I were young, our parents let us have lots of cats, a beloved collie dog, a wild and crazy horse, and, at one point, five hundred chickens and three cows. My dad taught us about birdsongs, tree identification, and wildlife—just as he had been taught by his mother and father. We fished together, and we delighted in watching the raccoons and birds and deer who lived in the woods surrounding our home.
Daytimes, my dad worked as literary editor of the Chicago Daily News, and later as literary editor of newspapers in New York City. He read and reviewed hundreds of books every year. Evenings and weekends he wrote his own books.
Bookcases lined the walls of almost every room in our house. My mother arranged the books as carefully as in a library, making it easy to find whatever we were seeking.
When we were sitting in the living room after dinner, we often shared with each other whatever we were reading. One of the books that I wrote many years later, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, was inspired by a paragraph my dad read aloud to me about a lonely, windswept island off the northeast coast of the United States.
My dad had a remarkable memory for everything—for things that happened when he was incredibly young, for conversations over the years, for information of all sorts, for the thousands of books he had read, and—to our pleasure—for songs and for poetry.
He played the banjo and the piano by ear. He couldn’t read a note of music, but once he’d heard—let’s say a song by Gershwin—he would pull his banjo out of the closet or sit down at the piano and play it, belting out the lyrics.
Both he and my Aunt Jessica could quote poetry for hours. I always was amazed by the number of poems those two kept in their heads. In a diary written by my Aunt Jessica when my dad was only four years old, she said that he had already memorized a large chunk of Sir Walter Scott’s “Marmion” and all of the “Night Before Christmas”! He was eight years old when one of his poems was published in St. Nicholas magazine. I am endlessly grateful for the poetry my dad recited to me and for the poetry he taught me, training my ear to appreciate fine writing from childhood on—a poem, for instance, by William Blake:
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”
Memory is important for a writer, and this is particularly true for my dad. His memory of fine poetry and literature helped him to recognize and to write smooth, flowing, and elegant prose. The fact that he could remember something someone said to him, decades earlier, helped him to craft very natural conversations in his books. His memory for the emotions that he felt in his childhood helped him to make Rascal so poignant that I still laugh and cry every time I read it.
But such a marvelous memory can be a two-edged sword, because the sorrow about his mother’s death remained as fresh in his mind as his many joys.
The reception Rascal received surely was one of those special joys. The book was named a Newbery Honor Book by children’s librarians. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks. Countless teachers read it to their classes; reviewers praised it; and it was translated into many languages. Rascal won many state awards voted for by students, and Disney made it into a movie. Fan letters overflowed the mailbox. Rascal secured our dad’s place in the world of children’s literature well beyond his own lifetime.
I feel such tremendous respect and love for my dad. He was an amazing, vital, compassionate, and talented man. I miss him, but I am so glad that he lives on in his books.
—Arielle North Olson
More about Sterling North
When Sterling North was fifteen years old, polio almost killed him. He was told that he would never walk again, that he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But he decided to fight back. He built an exercise machine with ropes and pulleys and various weights of wood. He forced himself to work hard with it every day, and even took to swimming for miles with a heavy brace on his leg. He managed to build up his muscles and he did walk again, even though one leg remained weak. Sometimes the damage from polio is so great, no amount of exercise can restore function, but Sterling never settled for anything less than his best effort, whether it was in regaining his health or in his writing.
Many years after his bout with polio, Sterling North wrote a wonderful letter, encouraging a young friend who was refusing to exercise her own polio-damaged legs.
“Don’t give up,” he wrote to her. “I know you will get well just as I did. I know that you have a long and happy life ahead of you. Think how lucky you and I are. We have learned by experience that great obstacles can be overcome—that nothing can stop us in this difficult world.
“And remember that Renoir despite severe arthritis painted pictures in his old age, that Beethoven despite deafness continued to write great music, and that Roosevelt was changed from a relatively callow young man into great presidential timber by polio. What others have done we too can do in some measure.”
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY
Black Beauty Anna Sewell
The Call of the Wild Jack London
Frightful’s Mountain Jean Craighead George
Gentle Ben Walt Morey
The Midnight Fox Betsy Byars
My Side of the Mountain Jean Craighead George
On the Far Side of the Mountain Jean Craighead George
Pigs Might Fly Dick King-Smith
Rabbit Hill Robert Lawson
Rascal
Rascal
Sterling North
ILLUST
RATED BY JOHN SCHOENHERR
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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A Penguin Random House Company
First published in the United States of America by E. P. Dutton,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1963
Published by Puffin Books, 1990
Reissued, 2005, 2013
Text copyright © 1963 by Sterling North
Copyright renewed David S. North and Arielle North Olson, 1991
Illustrations copyright © 1963 by E. P. Dutton, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1963
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 89-69817
Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-66049-2
All of my friends in this book, both animal and human, were real, and appear under their
rightful names. A few less lovable have been rechristened.—Sterling North
For Gladys, my constant companion
in watching our wilderness world
CONTENTS
I
May
II
June
III
July
IV
August
V
September
VI
October
VII
November
VIII
December–January–February
IX
March and April
“A very interesting book could be written about the
Raccoon and, with its industrious energy and
resourcefulness, it deserves to be elevated to the
status of the National Emblem in place of the
parasitical, carrion-feeding Bald Eagle.”
—Ivan T. Sanderson in Living Mammals of the World
I: May
IT was in May, 1918, that a new friend and companion came into my life: a character, a personality, and a ring-tailed wonder. He weighed less than one pound when I discovered him, a furry ball of utter dependence and awakening curiosity, unweaned and defenseless. Wowser and I were immediately protective. We would have fought any boy or dog in town who sought to harm him.
Wowser was an exceptionally intelligent and responsible watchdog, guarding our house and lawns and gardens and all my pets. But because of his vast size—one hundred and seventy pounds of muscled grace and elegance—he seldom had to resort to violence. He could shake any dog on the block as a terrier shakes a rat. Wowser never started a fight, but after being challenged, badgered, and insulted, he eventually would turn his worried face and great sad eyes upon his tormentor, and more in sorrow than in anger, grab the intruder by the scruff of the neck, and toss him into the gutter.
Wowser was an affectionate, perpetually hungry Saint Bernard. Like most dogs of his breed he drooled a little. In the house he had to lie with his muzzle on a bath towel, his eyes downcast as though in slight disgrace. Pat Delaney, a saloonkeeper who lived a couple of blocks up the street, said that Saint Bernards drool for the best of all possible reasons. He explained that in the Alps these noble dogs set forth every winter day, with little kegs of brandy strapped beneath their chins, to rescue wayfarers lost in the snowdrifts. Generations of carrying the brandy, of which they have never tasted so much as a blessed drop, have made them so thirsty that they continuously drool. The trait had now become hereditary, Pat said, and whole litters of bright and thirsty little Saint Bernards are born drooling for brandy.
On this pleasant afternoon in May, Wowser and I started up First Street toward Crescent Drive where a semicircle of late Victorian houses enjoyed a hilltop view. Northward lay miles of meadows, groves of trees, a winding stream, and the best duck and muskrat marsh in Rock County. As we turned down a country lane past Bardeen’s orchard and vineyard, the signature of spring was everywhere: violets and anemones in the grass; the apple trees in promising bud along the bough.
Ahead lay some of the most productive walnut and hickory trees I had ever looted, a good swimming hole in the creek, and, in one bit of forest, a real curiosity—a phosphorescent stump which gleamed at night with fox-fire, as luminescent as all the lightning bugs in the world—ghostly and terrifying to boys who saw it for the first time. It scared me witless as I came home one evening from fishing. So I made it a point to bring my friends that way on other evenings, not wishing to be selfish about my pleasures.
Oscar Sunderland saw me as I passed his bleak farmhouse far down that lane. He was a friend of mine who knew enough not to talk when we went fishing. And we were trapping partners on the marsh. His mother was a gentle Norwegian woman who spoke English with no trace of an accent, and also her native language. His father Herman Sunderland was another kettle of hasenpfeffer—German on his mother’s side and Swedish on his father’s—with a temper and dialect all his own.
Oscar’s mother baked delicious Norwegian pastries, particularly around Christmastime. Sometimes in placing before me a plate of her delicacies she would say something tender to me in Norwegian. I always turned away to hide the shameful moisture in my eyes. As Mrs. Sunderland knew, my mother had died when I was seven, and I think that was why she was especially kind to me.
Oscar’s tough old father presented no such problem. I doubt that he had ever said anything kind to anyone in his life. Oscar was very much afraid of him and risked a whipping if he were not at home in time to help with the milking.
No one was concerned about the hours I kept. I was a very competent eleven-year-old. If I came home long after dark, my father would merely look up from his book to greet me vaguely and courteously. He allowed me to live my own life, keep pet skunks and woodchucks in the back yard and the barn, pamper my tame crow, my many cats, and my faithful Saint Bernard. He even let me build my eighteen-foot canoe in the living room. I had not entirely completed the framework, so it would take another year at least. When we had visitors, they sat in the easy chairs surrounding the canoe, or skirted the prow to reach the great shelves of books we were continuously lending. We lived alone and liked it, cooked and cleaned in our own fashion, and paid little attention to indignant housewives who told my father that this was no way to bring up a child.
My father agreed amiably that this might well be true, and then returned to his endless research for a novel concerning the Fox and Winnebago Indians, which for some reason was never published.
“I’m headed for Wentworth’s woods,” I told Oscar, “and I may not start home before moonrise.”
“Wait a minute,” Oscar said. “We’ll need something to eat.”
He returned so swiftly with a paper sack filled with coffee cake and cookies that I knew he had swiped them.
“You’ll get a licking when you get home.”
“Ishkabibble, I should worry!” Oscar said, a happy grin spreading across his wide face.
We crossed the creek on the steppingstones below the dam. Pickerel were making their seasonal run up the stream, and we nearly caught one with our hands as he snaked his way between the stones. Kildeer started up from the marshy shallows, crying “kildeer, kildeer” as though a storm were brewing.
Wowser had many virtues, but he was not a hunting dog. So we were much surprised when in Wentworth’s woods he came to a virtual point. Oscar and I waited silently while the Saint Bernard, on his great paws, padded softly to the hollow base of a rotten stump. He sniffed the hole critically, then turned and whined,
telling us plainly that something lived in that den.
“Dig ’em out, Wowser,” I shouted.
“He won’t dig,” Oscar predicted. “He’s too lazy.”
“You just watch,” I said loyally. But I wasn’t betting any glass marbles.
In another minute Wowser was making the dirt fly, and Oscar and I were helping in a frenzy of excitement. We scooped the soft earth with our hands, and used our pocket knives when we came to old decaying roots.
“I’ll bet it’s a fox,” I panted hopefully.
“Probably an old woodchuck,” Oscar said.
But we couldn’t have been more surprised when a furious mother raccoon exploded from her lair screaming her rage and dismay. Wowser nearly fell over backward to avoid the flying claws and slashing little teeth. A moment later the big raccoon had racked her way up a slender oak tree. Thirty feet above us she continued to scream and scold.
In plain sight now, within the den, we found four baby raccoons, a month old perhaps. The entire litter of kits might easily have fitted within my cap. Each tail had five black rings. Each small face had a sharp black mask. Eight bright eyes peered up at us, filled with wonder and worry. And from four inquiring little mouths came whimpered questions.
“Good old Wowser,” I said.
“That’s a pretty good dog you’ve got there,” Oscar admitted, “but you’d better hold him back.”
“He wouldn’t hurt them; he takes care of all my pets.”
In fact the big dog settled down with a sigh of satisfaction, as near to the nest as possible, ready to adopt one or all of these interesting little creatures. But there was one service he could not render. He could not feed them.
“We can’t take them home without their mother,” I told Oscar. “They’re too young.”
“How do we catch the mother?” Oscar asked.