by Farley Mowat
Jitters was the most endearing of my non-human companions. During one of our visits to Point Pelee I had climbed a pine tree containing what I took to be a crow’s nest. It turned out to be the home of a family of black squirrels. I hauled a half-grown young one out of the ball of twigs, stuffed it inside my shirt, and climbed down, much pleased with my acquisition. I was less pleased when I found myself crawling with squirrel lice.
Nevertheless, I was allowed to keep my find and bring it home, where both of us were deloused. Angus then built a clever cage with two compartments and sliding doors, by means of which the squirrel could be shut up in one half of the cage while the other half was being cleaned. This arrangement soon became unnecessary. After a few days Helen began to feel so sorry for the little creature, who spent most of his time clinging to the wire screening and “jittering” piteously, that she suggested we might try letting him out for a little while. This I hastened to do, with the consequence that Jitters soon became a full member of the family, enjoying the freedom of the household.
It was truly remarkable how he fitted himself into our lives—“imprinting,” as Konrad Lorenz might have described it. He house-trained himself within a week, returning to his cage to defecate or urinate. He quickly learned not to steal food but would sit up on his hind legs and beg so prettily for what he wanted that he was seldom refused. Amazingly, he did not chew our belongings or burrow into the upholstery.
His one departure from otherwise almost impeccable behaviour was the merciless way he tormented Miss Carter. Being skinny and undersized, Miss Carter had an inferiority complex to begin with. Jitters made it worse. She spent hours hiding in dark closets rather than endure his gibbering verbal assaults which were often accompanied by a rain of small objects ranging from cigarette butts to walnut shells hurled down upon her from some high point of vantage.
Jitters loved to entertain visitors by racing around the edges of the living-room floor until he had gained maximum velocity whereupon, like a circus motorcyclist, he would begin spinning around the walls, spiralling higher and higher until he reached the picture rail up under the ceiling.
This stunt proved to be his nemesis. One spring day in 1932 he was racing around the outside walls of the apartment building (which were of rough-textured brick) for the entertainment of a group of my friends, when he lost his grip. I saw him shoot off into space from a corner up under the eaves. His little body described a swift parabola over the street then thudded to the pavement. He died in my hands a few minutes later. All of us, except Miss Carter, wept for him. If he had lived, he would have been the first black squirrel ever to trek as far west as Saskatoon, and heaven only knows what effect that might have had upon the world’s equilibrium.
Pets were by no means my only connection with the Others during my years in Windsor. Probably as a consequence of my earlier adventures with bees, wasps, and spiders, I developed a curiosity about insects in general, and moths and butterflies in particular. Collecting moths and butterflies became a major preoccupation. During the warm seasons I seldom went anywhere without my butterfly net. So equipped, I became a figure of ridicule to some of my contemporaries and I think even Hughie found it somewhat embarrassing to be seen with me.
I learned how to “set” the insects on wooden forms so they would dry in the right position to be mounted on long pins in the bottoms of old cigar boxes. Angus made the frame for my net and Helen covered it with fine muslin. Angus also got me a killing bottle, which consisted of a glass pint sealer into the bottom of which had been poured a mixture of plaster of Paris and cyanide of potassium covered with a layer of cotton wool. The cyanide fumes would almost instantly kill any insect placed in the bottle and, I now realize, could have killed me had I taken a few deep breaths of the fumes myself. What I had was, in effect, a small-scale model of Hitler’s final solution to the problem of non-Aryans. It amazes me to think how readily children of my day could come by such lethal devices. At the age of thirteen I went all on my own to a drugstore where I asked for and was sold a cyanide killing bottle made up to order, no questions asked.
Although I collected butterflies with enthusiasm, it was moths that truly fascinated me. I spent countless summer evenings patrolling beneath the street lights on Victoria Avenue to which the mysterious luna moths and the great cecropia and polyphemus moths with their five-inch wing spans were sometimes attracted. I can still smell the fragrance of those summer nights and feel the wild exhilaration of capturing a rare specimen. Although I would not now commit such atrocities against some of the most beautiful creatures extant, I cannot honestly censor the boy-who-was for what he did then.
In December of 1931 I acquired my first dog. My parents and I had paid a weekend visit to one of my mother’s former Trenton friends who was living in Cleveland, Ohio. This lady owned a pure-bred Boston Bull which had given birth to a litter some six weeks before our visit. The father of the pups had been an unidentified travelling dog (possibly a dachshund) and the pups were an embarrassment to their owner. I immediately fell in love with them and pleaded to be allowed to take one home. Angus said he thought there were restrictions about importing dogs into Canada, whereupon Helen volunteered to smuggle a pup across the border, concealed inside her coat.
All went well on our return journey until the customs inspector came up to our car at the Canadian end of the Ambassador Bridge, leaned down, and asked through the open window if we had anything to declare. At this my mother drew her coat so tightly around herself that the pup squealed shrilly in protest.
Wedged between my parents on Eardlie’s narrow seat, I was sure that all was lost, but I had not reckoned with Helen’s ability to deal with the unforeseen. Without a second’s hesitation, she threw back her head and began to squeal with high-pitched abandon. Angus, quick on the uptake as usual, cried out, “My God! She’s getting hysterical. The doctor said it might happen. I’ve got to get her home!”
The customs officer hurriedly waved us on for no man likes to be involved with an hysterical woman. We were all three in near hysterics as we turned down Victoria Avenue, home again.
Billy, as I named the puppy, was ill-fated. In the spring of 1932, he was so badly mauled by a neighbour’s Alsatian that he had to be destroyed. Jitters did not long survive him. Then, in June, Miss Carter disappeared. I suspected the Alsatian, who was also a notorious cat killer, and, in my desolation at having lost so many of my friends in so short a space of time, I contemplated borrowing my father’s revolver and taking vengeance upon the dog. I lacked the courage. I tried to vent my feelings by writing an epic poem celebrating my departed companions and excoriating the villain. It has not survived but I can remember a couplet referring to the Alsatian:
I’d like to choke him full of mud,
And drown him in his own foul blood.
I am not sure when I started writing verse but the dreadful seed took root after the Christmas season of 1930. For reasons which were never clear to me, I was bundled off to spend the holidays with my maternal grandparents in Belleville. I was told this was because my parents both had influenza, but I now suspect it was because there had been a major rupture in their relationship, perhaps due to another episode in my father’s long string of infidelities. If this were indeed the case, then the poem, “Daddy’s Dilemma,” which he sent to me in Belleville is demonstrative of his ability to set out false scents. Here is a truncated version of it.
Preserved by a Princess
or
Daddy’s Dilemma
Your Mother still is stretched upon her bed,
With paunchy pillows pushed beneath her head,
While our Miss Carter doth disport herself
On counterpane, like dizzy, dev’lish elf.
Her name to Persian Princess has been changed,
(P.P. for short) and she has caught the mange,
From sleeping, while in Oakville, with big Joe,
(They
all have mange in Oakville, as you know.)
But, as I said, your Mother had a break,
Short-circuited her nerves, and like a snake
That winds and writhes and ties itself in knots,
She her sweet self all twiny twisted got.
(Don’t try to say this fast—it’s better not.)
The doctor came. His face was ashen grey;
“In bed,” shouts he, “a fortnight you will stay!
Some little medicine I’ll give to you;
For food, I’ll let you gnaw a giblet stew.”
Then came a nurse, in cap and apron white,
And gave P.P. and me an awful fright.
She chased us to the basement dank and dark,
Where P.P. wailed and mewed, whilst I did bark.
There P.P. lost her voice and ’gan to wheeze,
And Daddy doubled up with cough and sneeze.
We both caught cold down in the dismal cellars,
And sniffed and snuffed and snotted in our smellers.
But P. P. hit upon a clever plan,
To fool the nurse and save her loving man.
She dashed upstairs, all streaked with dirt and dust,
And told the nurse that she had seen a ghost.
The nurse came down and found me lying there,
All stark and stiff upon the cellar bare.
“Good lack!” quoth she, “What makes you look so old?”
“Fair dame,” quoth I, “I fear I’m taking cold.”
Her bleak eyes blazed with blue and bloody glee;
She laughed, and sulphur cinders sprayed on me.
She screeched aloud, while from her raving mouth
Red flames went twisting east, and north, and south.
“Gadzooks!” cried she, “I’ll do whate’er I can,
To heap more torments on you, dismal man.
I’ll fill you full of gasoline, then I
Will touch a match to you and watch you fry.
“I’ll pluck your eyeballs out with furnace tongs,
And tie your tongue in knots with red-hot thongs.
I’ll hitch your entrails up to yonder beam,
And throw live coals upon you till you scream!”
Wherewith this jolly lady seized an axe,
Her aim, apparently, to smite some smacks
Upon my unprotected, aging head,
And plash her plods in places where I bled.
But in that moment P.P. saved the breach,
Rushed to my rescue and with fearsome screech
Leapt on that maiden’s back, and strange
As it may seem, implanted there the mange.
“Begone!” she cried. “Avaunt! Avast! Alack!
Depart, thou mangy cat from off my back!”
Then down the street she pooched with pingy pace,
And ne’er again we saw her flatsy face.
Your mother sends her love, to which, as well,
She adds a bit for Arthur and for Hal.
I long to see you coming home again,
So I can play with your electric train.
Be bad, my child, and let who will be silly,
You will be both, l fear me, willy-nilly.
I now remain, your ever-loving poet,
Angus McGill, begettor of Bunje Mowat.
This poem stimulated me to emulation and I became an inveterate scribbler of doggerel. It was an accomplishment which served me well during my remaining school years for not only did my rhymes win me kudos from my teachers but my ability to pillory opponents in verse gave me some protection against mine enemies.
ONE GREY JANUARY afternoon in 1933 Angus brought home momentous news. He had been offered the job of chief librarian in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a place so distant from the Ontario experience that most people, if they had heard of it at all, thought it was some sort of geographic joke. Despite the fact that there would be no increase in salary, and the Depression was deepening daily, Angus was tremendously excited. Helen did not share his enthusiasm.
“Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing,” she cried. “It would be like taking us to Siberia or some dreadful place like that!”
In common with most easterners, she envisaged Saskatchewan as an alien and hostile world, a frigid, wind-swept wilderness in winter and a featureless and dreary expanse of dusty wheat fields in summer. She believed it was inhabited (barely) by peasants from central Europe who lived in sod huts, wore sheepskin clothes, ate black bread, and practised obscure religious rites.
She knew for a fact that the prairies were in the grip of a devastating drought, one of whose manifestations was cyclonic dust storms which whirled the topsoil off eroding farms and left their owners destitute. She had also gathered from the newspapers that the Depression was laying an even heavier hand on the prairies than on Ontario. All in all it was beyond her comprehension why anyone would want to go to Saskatchewan.
However, Angus was determined to make the move, and I backed him up. Our motives were essentially the same. We were men, and Adventure was calling.
My own image of Saskatchewan was of an enormous green plain rolling to an unimaginably distant horizon, inundated by black hordes of buffalo and inhabited by Indian tribes who rode their horses as if they were one with their steeds. My twelve-year-old’s imagination assured me that the world of the Wild West was still alive.
Although I did not take part in the discussions which ensued between my parents, I was well aware of them. I knew by my mother’s air of gloom and bouts of tears that she was fighting a losing battle. I was glad of it because, as each day passed, I wanted ever more desperately to go west. I closed my mind to her travail. It was not until many years later that she told me how she had felt at the time.
“You see, Farley, what Angus was asking me to do was give up not just the world I knew but most of the people who were part of my life. I would be cut off from all those I treasured most, after you and Angus. Perhaps it was very selfish of me but I wanted to stay where I felt I belonged. Going adventuring into the unknown does not attract most women, you know. It frightens most of us, or so it did me.”
At the end of January, Angus tendered his resignation to the Windsor library board, to take effect on June 30. We were committed to one of the great adventures of my life.
7
ONE OF HELEN’S MOST POTENT arguments in her struggle to dissuade Angus from going to Saskatoon was that he would be leaving behind the world of waters and boats which had always been so much a part of him. No more cruising on the bay. No more voyaging on Lake Ontario. Saskatchewan was a “dust bowl,” a semi-desert, and Angus must surely despair of such a place.
The argument was sound but it did not take into account my father’s capacity for self-delusion, with which he now set about manufacturing the illusion of a maritime world in the distant West.
To begin with, he determined that we would not make the journey by train, as sensible migrants of that era did. No, we would become as one with the early pioneers and head out in a covered wagon. Although (in order to enlist my mother’s romantic instincts) he initially described the proposed vehicle as a “kind of gypsy caravan,” what he actually had in mind was a prairie schooner, one which he would design, build, and pilot himself. As captain of his own ship, with Helen and me as crew, he proposed to make the passage to Saskatoon in nautical fashion.
Through the good graces of another of his high-flying friends, Angus got free use of a heated building at the Corby Distillery in Walkerville. Here, in early February, he began constructing his vessel.
There were those amongst my parents’ acquaintances who thought and freely said that the choice of this locale for such an endeavour was inspired. “If Angus wasn’t drunk when he got that crazy idea, he will be before he gets very far along with it,”
was the opinion of Alex Bradshaw, our neighbour in the next apartment. But Alex was wrong. Although my father drank whenever conditions were right he was no alcoholic. He was a man so dedicated to his dreams that not even the proximity of tens of thousands of gallons of whisky could seduce him from his purpose.
During the next six months he spent most of his week-ends and holidays building a ship’s cabin about eight feet wide and fifteen long, mounted on the four-wheeled frame of a Model T Ford truck. Uncompromisingly square both fore and aft, it had a cambered deck high enough to provide headroom for a tall man. Angus framed his vessel with steamed, white oak ribs and sheathed her with tongue-and-groove cedar planking, over which he stretched an outer skin of marine canvas. “Ought to be able to stand up to a hurricane,” opined one of those who came to see her growing. “Yep, but it’ll take a locomotive to shift her,” another concluded. Angus kept his peace. He knew, with the assurance of perfect faith, that Eardlie would be up to the task of hauling our prairie schooner half-way across the continent.
I shared his faith and helped him at work as far as I could—which wasn’t very far. Although I loved fiddling with tools and wood, I could not then and still can’t measure things with anything like the accuracy required of a craftsman. One day when I had made a cut half an inch short in a piece of wood for the caravan’s frame, he said to me, quite unkindly, “Bunje, my lad, you are without doubt the roughest carpenter one man ever told another about. Why don’t you take up knitting or finger-painting?”