Still in a Daze at the Cottage

by Ross, James 1744-1827;

  No sharks in the lake, but apparently loons can play the role of deadly hunter, stalking the innocent mergansers like a U-boat preying on a jet skier, or a killer whale gobbling up one of those stand-up paddle boarders, mistaking them for a floundering seal. Sorry, I guess those are poor analogies if I’m trying to drum up sympathy for the ducklings. I’m usually on the side of the loons, but here I had to cheer for my mergansers, so I was happy they’d made a narrow escape. I rose to my feet with coffee dribbling down my legs and shouted at the loon, while the gull climbed back on her perch, waggling her head groggily and squawking derisively at the attacker. The loon yodelled crazily back at us.

  The next day there were only four merganser chicks. Perhaps the loon was to blame for the missing family member, or perhaps it’s my fault. After all, there had been eight little babies hiding out in the water under our boathouse when we arrived at the cottage two weeks ago. Maybe our presence, and the bustle of activity that we bring, forced the young brood away from the safety of our island shoreline sooner than was planned — into the deeper, dangerous waters.

  Dangerous Critters

  A fellow cottager told me a funny story the other day. Well, perhaps the story was not so funny for her, but I had a cheerful chuckle over it.

  She was relaxing one evening in her cottage when her dog, a boxer, started getting restless at the back screen door. She went to investigate, wedging herself between the dog and the door. She turned on the porch light, opened the door a crack, peeked out, and was instantly glad that she had not simply swung open the door and let the dog out, for no more than five feet away was the unmistakable shape and colour of the common American skunk. What a stinky mess it would have been if the boxer had put the run on this small critter.

  As these thoughts were slowly making their way through her head, the dog was quietly getting impatient. This was his find, after all, and yet he was not being allowed to investigate. He backed up and ran at the door. His intention was to squeeze his rather large body through the small opening between his mistress and the door. A dog’s spatial sense is not the best, nor is his understanding of his own proportions. The boxer ran into the back of his mistress, his thick, flat snout punted her out on the deck, sending her tumbling into the night. She landed on her stomach with a thud, but quickly regained her senses and realized the dangerous predicament she was in. She raised her head hoping that the surprised skunk had wisely made its escape. To her horror, what she saw less than two feet away was the shapely backside of the genus Mephitis, its tail held aloft like a flag.

  Now, we have all smelled that rank smell. The distinctive and terrible aroma of a skunk, accidentally flattened on a roadway, permeates an area of a few square kilometres. The putrid odour lasts for hours. The reek is amazing, all-encompassing, nauseating, worse than wandering into the cottage privy after it has been vacated by one of my nephews. Can you imagine getting a face full of it?

  This devilish boxer had been saved the indignity of a nose full of the secreted stench by ensuring that his mistress was first into the fray. After he sent her to her doom, he recognized immediately the error of his ways. He realized he was in trouble, so he let the screen door close and returned quietly to the Muskoka room where the rest of the family sat relaxing. He curled on his mat. He didn’t even cock an ear or lift his head or follow the rest of the clan to the back door when the silence of the cottage night was pierced by a blood-curdling scream.

  My nose twitched involuntarily as I heard the tale. I imagined the smell. I asked whether she had run directly to the lake and dived in, or had her husband immediately filled a basin with tomato juice and held her head under? I also immediately understood why this cottager had such perpetually beautifully coiffed hair, flowing elegantly back from her forehead like she was constantly travelling with her head out of the car window, right next to the boxer’s. After this terrible misadventure, a dousing with the world’s worst styling gel, her hair had probably never quite fallen back into place.

  Many of us cottagers have had our pet canines come whining to the back door of the cabin after having unwittingly put the run on what they thought was a pretty black and white feline. It takes months to get rid of the odour, months of bubble baths and scrubbing, only to have the aroma return each rainy day. That is certainly bad enough. Getting sprayed ourselves is, thankfully, not as common.

  Bit in the Ash (By a Flicker in the Fire)

  At first I thought my crazy robin had once again turned against me. I also debated whether I should tell this story, because I know what you’re thinking, “Here’s this writer again with another tale of woe about getting attacked by some sort of wildlife. The birds and animals around his cottage must really hate him.” Though I will admit that I have had my fair share of run-ins with beavers, pine martens, skunks, and bears, and have also been attacked by robins, bats, and wasps, I put it down to a love of cottage life and of being outdoors. At the cottage we spend many of our days interacting with nature — so there is bound to be a conflict or two.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table enjoying a nice bowl of homemade chicken soup, when from the sitting room there came an exclamation of surprise. It was my youngest daughter. I jumped up immediately and grabbed a cloth to clean up the hot soup I had splashed on myself, and then sauntered off in the direction of the noise. My daughter was pointing a finger in the direction of the stone fireplace. I followed her gaze, but saw nothing; just rock, limestone hearth, and the glass of the airtight. “There is something in the fireplace,” she said.

  At first I thought she had been watching too many horror movies, and was about to tell her so when my eyes caught the movement of something behind the tempered glass. I let out a fearful yelp and shrunk back. I saw that it was a bird. I thought it was my crazy robin again. My fine-feathered friend had forgotten our truce, and was out to finish me once and for all.

  My brave young daughter ventured closer, knelt down, and peered into the fire box. “It’s a poor bird, Dad. She’s trapped in there.” Poor bird, I thought — more like loony killer.

  I crept cautiously closer. The bird fluttered around inside, stirring up ash and dust. The robin looked somewhat different than I remembered it — slightly larger, with a longer beak. The scared bird was grey with dust, but there was a hint of red, not on its breast, but at the nape of its neck. It must have come down the chimney and made its way past the baffles.

  “Do something!” my youngster demanded.

  “I wonder what it might taste like,” I asked. My daughter stared at me incredulously. “You’re right — too hard to pluck. Perhaps if I start a fire, the bird will have to find her way back up the chimney.” I received a look of anger, and then the youngster disappeared for a minute and returned with my gardening gloves.

  I donend a pair of gloves, opened the glass door a crack, and reached around trying to gently grasp the terrified bird. It fluttered around wildly in the enclosed area, powdering my face with soot. It pecked at my fingers with its sharp beak. I made a lunge for it, but the bird avoided my grasp and sliped out the top of the door into the cottage — oh great, I thought, what a mess this is turning out to be. My daughter stared at me and shook her head, hands on hips and eyebrows furrowed. I knew I had to get this taken care of before my wife returned, or I’d be treated to a double dose of this look.

  We opened the front door. The bird flew around crazily. The beating of its wings cleaned it off, and I realized that it was a northern flicker, not my robin after all. I thought that a fishing net might work. I told my daughter to start closing curtains, as I had a bad feeling. Too late — to our horror, the poor bird flew directly into the big dining room window, and fell back motionless on the floor. We rushed to its side.

  “Is she dead?” my daughter asked. I thought it might be. I clasped the stunned bird tenderly in my gloves. My daughter rubbed a finger on its soft crown. Suddenly, the eyes opened and the flicker let out a terrified squawk. The loud bleat made me jump and I almost dropped the thing.
Instead, I walked briskly out the front door and placed the bird gently on the deck. It flew off screaming back at us.

  We felt quite good about ourselves, father and daughter. We had shared a little adventure and perhaps saved the life of a beautiful bird. I climbed onto the roof to check that no nest had been built by the chimney, and that no damage had been done. My daughter cleaned up a few feathers and a bit of ash inside. “I don’t think you should tell mom about the bird,” she said. I wasn’t sure why not — perhaps she just didn’t want me to look stupid because I had let the bird loose.

  I found out the real reason for my promised vow of secrecy later, when my wife walked into the cabin. “Guess what happened,” my daughter chirped with delight. “Dad let a bird into the cottage and I saved its life!”

  The Sword of Damocles

  A strange thing happened to me during a trip up to the cottage. I was getting close to the lake and had sped up my truck, excited to arrive. I came around a tight curve and found myself face to face with a big, plump beaver in the middle of the road. The beaver, figuring that he was about to meet his end, raised his forepaws in front of his face and let out a bucktooth scream. With no time to brake, I swerved quickly to the left and then back to the right, narrowly avoiding the rodent. I stared, wide-eyed, into my rear-view mirror and was shocked to see the animal give me a quick salute before disappearing into the roadside tangle.

  I know what you’re thinking. It struck me, too, that the episode was just like a television commercial, one that was promoting a particular brand of tires. The beaver had no business crossing the road where he did, on the blind side of a sharp bend, and it was only my quick reflexes that saved him. I had seen the TV advert (I believe it aired during the Super Bowl), and therefore knew that the beaver would someday repay the favour.

  The Sword of Damocles was the name we gave to an ancient towering white pine that stood ominously above our neighbour’s cottage. The gnarled conifer grew out of a shallow bed of soil on a rocky clifftop that rose above the back of the cabin. Its massive trunk was twisted and bent and leaned over the cottage roof. Thus the tree’s nickname.

  The tree’s bizarre placement meant that it was almost impossible to take down. Its precarious lean meant that there was no way to cut it to alter its natural fall; on its barren, lofty perch there was no way to anchor a winch. Our friendly neighbours just waited for the day when the Sword would come down, splitting their quaint cottage in two. They checked it upon each cottage arrival, and hoped that it would not come down in the night while they lay comfortably in their bed.

  It finally happened. A July storm hit the lake and a fierce blow brought down the Sword of Damocles, rolling back its massive roots and its bed of soil like the peel of a banana, leaving behind just bare rock. Did it flatten the cottage? No. A rather strange sequence of events came into play that averted disaster. A smaller pine and a smaller spruce tree, two evergreens that had both stood for some time in the white pine’s shadow, fell first in the storm. They fell perpendicular to their towering friend, managing to deflect the tumbling path of the Sword just enough to prevent it from crushing the cottage roof. The massive pine only slightly scraped the cabin’s cedar siding.

  Our neighbours arrived the next day and immediately boated over to our place to tell us the news. We took photos of ourselves standing in the shadow of the roots and soil that towered some twelve feet above out heads. Then, I had a sudden inkling about what had caused the two smaller trees to jump into the path of the falling Sword of Damocles to deflect it from its target. I ran over and checked their broken trunks.

  They had been snapped by the wind. What did you think — that a beaver had intervened? No! While we were admiring the fallen Sword, the beaver was back at my cottage gnawing down my favourite mountain ash. Our fellow cottagers, the Hobbses, are great neighbours, always there to lend a hand. Perhaps their good fortune was deserved. But never believe a silly television commercial, and never, ever trust a beaver.

  The Pine Marten

  One of the most pleasant aspects of cottage life comes from the sharing of our environment with nature. We love to sit on the dock and watch the loons and mergansers drifting around the bay. We pull out the binoculars and point with excitement at the little mink that slinks about in the driftwood and deadheads off the point. We chitter back at the squirrel who chastises us from the treetop. We love to spot a deer, a moose, or even the occasional bear. The dreaded pine marten is a different story. Seeing one peering down from a tree branch has such an agitating effect on me that might, on the surface, seem completely irrational. Let me tell you a little story.

  I recently shared a tale of a lady and a skunk, a misadventure that demonstrated that sometimes it isn’t all that pleasant sharing our cottage space with animals. Yes, the Skunk Lady’s story is a terrible one for sure, but I have heard worse, one that involves the adorable and cuddly pine marten. It is a chilling account of unimaginable horror, one that will make many of you squeamish for weeks afterwards. Told around the evening bonfire, it has a far more sinister effect than the most ghastly of ghost stories. So please, only the brave or foolish should read on.

  It happened some twenty years ago, but it still bothers me. I think about it every time I go camping or visit our cottage. It actually didn’t happen at a cottage, or in cottage country for that matter, but rather at a backcountry cabin in one of our national parks. Still, the memory, and its lingering effect, haunts me during each cottage visit.

  It happened to a park warden, who was doing nothing more than answering the call of nature. He wandered down to what he fondly called the “thunderbox,” with a Canada Outdoors magazine tucked under his arm. No sooner had he settled onto his seat when a small creature, hiding in the depths, had become very frightened by the sudden darkness. The cute little critter reacted like one might expect, as he felt scared, cornered, and trapped — he opened his mouth wide and attacked.

  I can only imagine the surprise, the shock, the pain — the poor fellow screaming and hitting the roof. Would the rodent have bit and released, or did it latch on and refuse to let go? Did it lock its jaws, as many animals do, and swing about as the troubled warden danced in agony around the loo? The tenacious marten must have maintained its grip long enough for the victim to recognize his attacker, for he was very insistent, later, that it was the marten and not a fisher, weasel, mink, chipmunk, or vole.

  I don’t even want to think about the ranger trying to dress and bandage the area, bouncing in the hard saddle riding his horse back to town, and then trying to explain to the triage nurse the nature of his ailment. (“Excuse me sir, you say somebody named Martin tried to bite you?) And then there would be the freezing, and the stitches. Agony and embarrassment! The exploits of the infamous warden certainly became known across the Canadian Rockies.

  We have a nice cedar privy at our cottage, tucked off behind the cabin down a well-worn path. Now, whenever I enter the outhouse, I give the box a little kick, and then I cock an ear to listen for any hidden scurrying, before I take a seat.

  Chirpy Strikes Back

  My parents take great pleasure in observing the wild creatures around their Muskoka River home. Whether it is the great variety of birds that frequent the bird feeders, the geese that nest along the shoreline, the great blue heron that stalks the pond, or the chipmunks and squirrels that flit across their back deck, they always have a few tales to share when we come for a visit.

  They tell about the newborn goslings hiding in the reeds, the heron catching a chipmunk in the trees, or the wild turkeys that have wandered through that very morning, stopping during their pilgrimage to gather up the seed that has fallen from the feeders. Mom walked into the Muskoka room and saw the big male turkey staring in at her. “Help!” she screamed at my father in his office. “There is a Peeping Tom at the window!!”

  Many of their tales are interrupted by a bird sighting. My dad will stop in the middle of a reminiscence to say, “Oh, look at that, a woodpecker is at the su
et!” Then he forgets where he was in his story, so decides it best to start at the beginning, again. I imagine myself doing the same thing when I get older. Unfortunately, my wife also imagines me droning on about birds when I mature, and I see her scowling at me out of the corner of my eye. I am in trouble for what might happen.

  I do admire my parents for taking pleasure from the simple things in life. They have built a wonderful little sanctuary for the birds at their place, and are very particular and thorough in how they manage it. When we are over for a visit, Grandpa will take the kids around and teach them about the different birds and their particular needs. This seed is for that feeder, and the little songbirds love it. That one is for the blue jays, and this one is for the woodpeckers and flickers. He is fastidious about keeping the feeders clean and fresh and in researching the needs and wants of each variety of bird. In return, the lovely birds give them a show. My parents can sit in their well-windowed Muskoka room in the morning with their coffee or in the afternoon with their aperitif and look out at the bustle of activity that takes place. Every day a different story is happening on stage.

  My mom has always had a special way with the small creatures of the world. It is a measure of kindness and generosity mixed with a sprinkle of mischievous fun. During a recent visit, the kids began laughing when they saw a cute chipmunk at the back window tapping on the glass with his forepaw, and then holding his front feet out wide from his side as if asking, “Where are my peanuts?”

  Much to the little guy’s excitement, Grandma acknowledged him with a “Hello Stripey!” Then she jumped up from her chair and grabbed a bag of peanuts, still in the shell. Stripey could hardly contain himself. He ran around in tight circles. Grandma very carefully took out four nuts and set them out on the back deck in a neat pile.