One thousand acre Wassookeag Lake lies just outside the little mill town of Dexter, Maine. From 1975 through 1977, Wassookeag was the most northerly of the more than 600 lakes on my watch as an Assistant Regional Fishery Biologist in Maine’s Fishery Region B, the south central coastal plain.

            Lying next to a minor population center in otherwise rural central Maine, Wassookeag received heavier ice fishing pressure than most lakes. The lake at that time possessed small populations of landlocked Atlantic salmon and lake trout (“Mackinaw”). There were never enough to go around, yet I could always find an assortment of several dozen “townies” trying their luck on Wassookeag.

Wassookeag was well inland and high enough in latitude to lie in a much colder climate than lakes along the coast. By late winter the ice might approach four feet in thickness. This was enough to support any vehicle safely.

            During that particular winter we had a couple of February rain storms in between cold weather cycles that had flattened and blended the snow cover on the lake before it refroze.

            Whereas the teens in Fort Morgan cruise Main Street after school each day, when conditions were right, the students at Dexter High School went out and cruised the surface of Lake Wassookeag.

            My mission, on those days when I worked Wassookeag was to sort through the relative chaos and glean accurate angler hour and catch rate information from the confusion.  I found the most effective way was to interview individual anglers out on the ice during the middle of the morning and afternoon, then return to the one vehicle access point – the town boat ramp – during the noon hour and again as sundown approached. I interviewed anglers at the end of their efforts.

            On that particular day in 1977, I returned to shore around 3 p.m. and parked parallel to the boat ramp. With an excellent view of the entire lake, through binoculars I could monitor the activities of about 60 scattered ice fishermen.

            Except for fish holes and a few chunks of litter and debris, the surface of the ice was nearly unblemished except for an 18-inch raised  “wave” in the ice about 100 yards off shore to the west of the south-facing access ramp. This had been created earlier in the winter when someone with a Jeep plowed a road out onto the lake after a big snowstorm. Soon afterward the rain flattened the snow and the cold that followed welded it into the ice sheet. The snow bank created by the plow became a solid, wave-like ridge that presented a potential obstacle to drivers and snowmobilers.

            The day had begun sunny and clear. By afternoon puffy clouds moving in from the southwest began to increase in size and darken. As I sat in the warmth of my Plymouth station wagon, I watched a particularly dark cloud approaching on a track that would bring it right over the lake. Heavy precipitation was dropping from its underside.

            Before the squall hit, most of the cruisers left the lake and headed into town leaving the lake to the die-hard ice fishermen. But a minute or two before the squall struck, one of those huge, 1963-vintage Oldsmobile 98s came down the ramp and headed off across the lake. You probably remember those cars – broad and flat with hood and trunk so large helicopters could land on either end.

As the rusted relic passed close down the port side of my own vehicle, I saw that its 4 occupants were droopy-eyed men in their 60s. I’d run into them a few times before. All four had little else to do all day in a rural town than ride from spot to spot while maintaining a high titer of blood alcohol to ward off the boredom of a long winter.

            Moments later the squall struck Wassookeag with a vengeance. Like a great white curtain it enveloped us and pelted the lake with wet snow driven by high wind. In the 15 minutes it lasted, it blanketed the lake with 3 inches of sticky snow.

            Visibility at the height of the mini-blizzard was barely 100 yards. It was an absolute whiteout. There were no shadows; there was no horizon.

            Halfway through the squall, through wipers set at the fastest speed, I suddenly made out the faint glow of double headlights off to the right. A second later I could make out the large, low silhouette of the Oldsmobile. It was coming on fast and, although I couldn’t see it, I knew it was fast approaching the vicinity of that ridge on the ice.

            So limited was the visibility that no more than a couple of seconds lapsed between my first spotting the car and it hitting the curved ridge at right angles at 35-40 mph.

            The effect was sort of like the launch of a jet from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Suddenly the nose snapped into the air and the great craft left earth on an orbital trajectory. Sadly it lacked the means to continue its rather graceful flight.

            For a brief moment I saw the entire underside of the car as it completely left the ice at a 45-degree, nose-up angle and rolled slowly to the right. Then its right rear corner struck the ice and caused the car to slam back onto the ice on all four tires very violently.

Within two or three car lengths the would-be spacecraft came to a stop with the heads, arms, and legs of its scrambled occupants sticking up out of a pile of bodies clustered more or less in the center of the fuselage. An entire header pipe, muffler, and tail pipe assembly, along with a wide assortment of other rust-colored pieces-parts, littered its wake.

I was just about to drive out and assess the damage and check for injuries when the car suddenly came back to life. Sans muffler, it sounded like a stock car as the driver revved the engine. Ever so slowly the battered, roaring beast moved forward again and limped up the ramp. I rolled down my window and the driver did the same as he pulled alongside.

All four men were nearly as white as the snow. I asked if they were okay. The driver said he thought so, but they all needed to go home and change their underwear.

Did you ever hear of a hound making a career change?

Years ago my friend Dave Schnoor, manager back then of the state fish hatchery out in Wray, had a little rabbit hound named Luke. Luke was “beagle-ish,” but by no means a purebred. He was tri-colored like a typical beagle and small in stature. But Luke was heavier set and his head, ears and feet suggested a basset somewhere in his recent ancestry.

At any rate, Luke’s true love, aside from being a Schnoor family member and all the duties that entailed, was hunting rabbits. With his super nose and full voice, he was very good at it.

When Luke was around 7 years old, the unthinkable happened. His humans, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, brought home a pair of Brittany puppies. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with competition. Life was cruel. Life was unfair. And it was about to turn more so.

That fall Luke saw Dave take a shotgun out of the cabinet and naturally assumed it was time to go bunny hunting. He squealed and spun with delight. Imagine his disappointment when it was the two young Brits that were loaded into the Jeep and Luke was shut in his kennel. Luke howled with anger and heartbreak the entire time they were gone.

The next time Dave got ready for a bird hunt with his promising Brittanies, his wife Tammy intervened and implored him to take Luke along lest he drive her crazy with his mourning. Dave agreed to try it.

Most folks do not place beagles or other hounds very high on the canine intelligence tree. But Luke proved the exception. Made to walk at heal beside Dave while the two youngsters romped in front of them, Luke watched carefully and soon figured out the new game. The pups were looking for birds!

If you can’t beat them, join them.

Within two or three hunts Luke created a role for himself as a sort of crew chief and backup. For whatever reason, Dave just wasn’t interested in rabbits any more. So Luke learned to suppress his instincts and become a sort of self-made bird dog.

It was late in that first fall of Luke’s career change that Dave invited me on a bird hunt on Sandsage State Wildlife Area west of Wray. We started out behind the three dogs, the Brittanies working enthusiastically back and forth out ahead while Luke stayed just ahead of us as if waiting for an opportunity to prove himself.

The behavior of the full-grown Brittanies belied their young age. Frequently they would forget the task at hand and tussle with each other. They were, after all, less than a year old.

After 15 minutes of on-again, off-again hunting the Brittanies began to act “birdy” along the edge of corn stubble and I walked up behind them. A covey of bobwhite burst up like the shrapnel of a firecracker in front of the dogs. I’m not known for my shooting ability; but that time it all came together and I knocked down a quail with each barrel. Meanwhile the two pups were already one hundred yards away trying to catch some of the remaining birds as they scaled across the field. Now it was Luke’s turn.

As Dave hollered at his misbehaving bird dogs, Luke quietly worked out ahead and made a double retrieve, returning to his master with both quail in his mouth. A retrieving beagle!

Later in the afternoon, as I was walking along a deer path with Luke coming up from behind me, a cottontail bolted across my path a few yards ahead. I stopped and let Luke pass, wondering what he’d do with a nose full of bunny scent. As he crossed the spot where the rabbit had just been, he slammed on the brakes. He looked off in the direction the bunny had fled, pointed his nose to the sky, and let out a loud, soulful Bo-WOOOO. After all, he was a rabbit hound in his first life.

 by Peter Walker

His name was Tiny. He belonged to the Tedfords who lived up the hill from my grandparents in rural southwestern Maine.

He was quite possibly the oddest little dog I’ll ever see. Physically he looked like a critter made of leftover parts and pieces. His head was pretty much golden retriever both in size and appearance. But his body was more or less basset hound. So his head was way too big for his body.

His legs were extremely short and his tail stood straight up. His hair was long and frilly – a mixture of yellows and whites. The upper half of his tail had long white hair trailing off like the big flag on a sailboat’s mast.

            If he looked absurd, you should have heard him try to bark! Try as he might, the only thing Tiny could muster was a loud coughing noise like a circus sea lion. It always made people laugh.

            But Tiny had heart. His chosen profession was neighborhood greeter and ambassador of friendship.

Every morning Tiny would make the rounds from his house to the half dozen or so houses down the hill. Several of the neighbors were elderly and very much looked forward to Tiny’s enthusiastic morning visits. More than one of the elderly neighbor’s asked to adopt Tiny; but he better served the world as an equal opportunity friend to all.

My best friend – and the only other high school age boy within several miles of my home during that part of my life – was Gayland Brackett, who lived almost across the road from Tiny’s house. One day Gayland was loading up his gear for a pheasant hunt while Tiny supervised the job. On a whim, Gayland invited him along.

Now Tiny looked about as much like a bird dog as a poodle resembles a parrot! As far as anyone knew, Tiny had never gone bird hunting – or even chased a chicken!

Perhaps somewhere in his muddled ancestry, one of Tiny’s antecedents was a setter or a spaniel. Much to Gayland’s surprise, the little guy figured out how to play the game in no time at all!

Plowing through the thick grass was a problem for a little dog with minimum clearance. He would have been very hard to see had it not been for the great white banner flapping from his upright tail.

When Tiny encountered pheasant scent, he determined the general area from which it was emanating, then set off in a wide circle around the source. It was better than a point. As the funny little dog gradually tightened his circles and closed in on the pheasant, the bird crouched and sat tight. Finally, with Tiny only a couple of feet away, the pheasant would burst into the air with a cackle.

Although the little dog’s head was large enough to be a retriever’s, Tiny’s 7-inch legs were just not suitable for bringing back a downed bird. That, too, was no problem for Tiny’s improvisation. Tiny would simply find the dead bird, then sit on it and bark like a seal!

Thus the neighborhood mascot launched a second career as an unorthodox, but extremely effective pheasant dog. In all my years of working in conservation agencies, I’ve never seen a more unique dog. Tiny made the most he could with what he was given, and that was more than enough.

USFWS photo by Peter Johnson, 2008

Oh, why does man pursue the smelt?
It has no valuable pelt,
It boasts of no escutcheon royal,
It yields no ivory or oil,
Its life is dull, its death is tame,
a fish as humble as its name.
Yet – take this salmon somewhere else;
And bring me half a dozen smelts!

Ogden Nash, 1902-1971

            I can’t explain it either. But ever since I was a little kid I’ve had a fascination with the smelt. And lots of other Mainers do, too.

            Middle Range Pond, the natural lake at the foot of the hill where I grew up in Poland Spring, Maine had a thriving population of tiny, sardine-sized smelts. They lived in the lake’s depths and were only seen in the early spring around ice-out when they ran up the little tributary brooks late at night to spawn. Men used to stay out all night to go smelting. They would catch the tiny fish with fine mesh dip nets. The limit was 4 quarts per fisherman per night. But, as I soon came to realize, smelts for most Maine outdoorsmen, are simply an excuse to stay out all night and howl at the moon and drink themselves into oblivion.

            When I was seven I got my first bicycle, a 24” Columbia, and shortly after discovered there was gold on the roadsides in the form of returnable bottles: 2¢ for a long-necked beer bottle, 3¢ for a 12-ounce pop bottle, and 5¢ for a quart pop or beer bottle.

            One of my first bicycle trips afield was down the hill to a 2-track woods road that led in to a cove where Schellinger’s Brook emptied into the lake. It was April, 1955 on one of the very first warm days of spring at that high latitude. I don’t remember why I chose that destination but, when I reached the edge of the brook, I knew I’d struck it rich. Every square inch of the rocks and fontinalis moss in the brook from the mouth up to the first falls was coated with tiny yellow-white smelt eggs in testimony of what had taken place the night before. Everywhere on either bank lay returnable beer bottles by the dozen! I was rich!

            It took me awhile to gather up all the good ones and stash them behind a brush pile lest someone else find them and steal them before I could get them all home. In the process I came upon a big dry cell flashlight, the kind with a handle and a red-flashing beacon on the back. Even in the second grade I knew that whoever left that nice light must have been smashed when he staggered back up out of the woods.

            I never really caught the smelt dipping bug. Once in awhile in high school I would go out with a few buddies and try to locate a run. Once I remember walking out on the end of an 8” x 8” cross piece on a logging road bridge. “Be careful of these beams,” I warned my friends. “Some of them may be rot….ten!”

            A second or two later the outer 4 feet of the beam and I both hit the shell ice and water ten feet below. My buddies said the only thing visible in their flashlight beams was my wool cap floating on the surface. I spent the rest of the evening stripped down and wrapped in a car blanket trying to trap the entire output of the car’s heater inside my blanket.

            Angling for smelts was a different story. The smelts in the lake spent most of their time near the bottom even in winter. My older friend at the base of the hill, Ronnie Morrill, had a fishing shack that his dad would put out in the middle of the lake every January. For two months Ronnie and I would fish in 60 feet of water for the occasional lake trout and all the smelts we could catch. To catch a 4-5” smelt at that depth takes a special rig. We used a 10-12” length of spring steel such as an old corset stay anchored to the wall of the shanty above a hole in the floor. To the end was attached a length of fine monofilament line – either 2 or 4 pound test – long enough to reach down to within a foot of the bottom of the lake. On the business end of that line was a small sinker and a #10 or #12 fly-tying hook baited with a tiny sliver of cut up baitfish.

            We usually each fished two smelt lines and set several tip-ups with live shiners or smelts for lake trout in proximity to the shanty. In those days an ice fisherman could have up to five lines.  The object was to watch the tips of the bowed springs closely. When a tiny smelt took the bait far below the spring wiggled slightly. One had to grab the line to set the hook, then haul it in hand over hand. It wasn’t an occupation that would keep a person fed. If we caught enough smelts in ten days afield, for one man to make a meal  I don’t remember when that was. But it was a great way to spend a bitterly cold winter’s day and it sure beat the heck out of Saturday cartoons.

            For some reason the Maine legislature has never looked upon ice fishing at night with favor. Middle Range, like most of the lakes in my county, was closed to fishing after dark. One day Ronnie and I discussed the state of affairs and decided there must be a good reason for it. We figured it must be a conservation measure. Smelts must be much easier to catch at night. Therefore we hatched a plan to test our hypothesis.

            The next weekend we took a small bag of night-fishing supplies out to the shack. As evening came on, we taped black paper across the three, single-pane windows and banked snow thickly around the base of the shack so that no light would be visible from shore. As nightful came on, we turned off the portable AM radio and placed tiny candles just above the smelt springs that gave just enough light to see the movement of the springs.

            Well, darned if it didn’t work spectacularly! Just about dark the springs began to wiggle and we caught smelts one after another about as fast as we could bait our hooks. In a couple of hours we easily caught more smelts than we’d caught collectively in the past 2-3 years! Around 9:30 p.m. we quietly locked up and walked the half mile across the lake to Ronnie’s house making as little noise as possible.

            Among the other ice anglers frequenting the lake in those days was my much older cousin Bobby Walker and his friend Bobby Martin. Bobby had a better-built shanty much closer to the landing on Route 26 than Ronnie’s little tarpaper-covered shack. The week after our successful smelt poaching operation we bragged about our success to the older boys.

            Thus on the following Saturday the two Bobbies came equipped with black paper, masking tape, and candles to give our technique a try. It worked just as well. The two high school seniors had a ball catching smelts through the evening. Perhaps if Bobby Walker’s giggle didn’t carry quite so far on a still winter’s night and perhaps if their shanty was another quarter of a mile off the highway, the game warden would never have become suspicious and walked out to see what was going on.

That’s how, at 9-years-old, I out-poached my cousin Bobbie.

Drawing by Wayne Lewis courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife.

by Peter Walker

            Three years ago my then 7-year-old grandson, Jason, introduced me to the recent hit animated movie “Over the Hedge.” One of the funniest scenes takes place in a tract home when the invading small animals are confronted by the woman of the house, armed with a broom.

            In the confusion the skunk turns to one of her compatriots and says, “I’m sorry you have to see this.”

Then she yells out, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

The view pans back away from the house as, “POOM!” a green cloud blows out simultaneously from the windows and doors.

That incident reminds me of a tale often told in the Walker family. My paternal grandfather, Elmer Walker, was a big man for his generation. At 6’ 3” he had a deep booming voice to match his stature.

My grandparents lived in a huge farmhouse in southern Maine that had been in our family since 1840. Typical of the homes of that era, the barn and house were attached by an enclosed shed to make chores possible without going out into the snow.

In more recent times the shed was finished off into a 2-story apartment. That apartment once served as a doctor’s office and at other times was rented to various people, including Nancy and me early in our marriage.

 The particular incident occurred in summer in the 1950s. At that time my Uncle Gerry and Aunt Claire were living in the apartment and saving to buy a house of their own.

Grampa owned a plumbing company. One of the responsibilities of the trade is making house calls at all hours of the night.

On that particular night, Grampa had been out fixing a water pump or unplugging a drain until after midnight. He returned dirty, tired and hungry to a darkened house and yard. The door to the main part of the house was on a low, open porch.

My grandmother had forgotten to leave the porch light on. Without a light Grampa fumbled through his ring of keys without success. As his frustration grew, the cat – or so he thought – squeezed between his ankles and the door.

At that point my temperamental grandfather took out his frustrations on the bothersome animal straddling his feet. Uttering, “Get out of here, cat!” he cuffed the critter off to one side with the side of his work boot.

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

Grampa caught the full retaliation of an offended skunk dead center in the sternum.

Those who have never experienced the wrath of a skunk at close range cannot appreciate how it overwhelms all the senses. Every nerve in one’s body fires off in panic. Your hearing; your eyesight; everything is temporarily paralyzed.

In that state of impaired thinking, Grampa headed for safety – sort of. Somewhere in his brain the urge to take shelter inside took over. Since he couldn’t find his key, he headed for the barn.

In the back of the barn, a hallway led to an unlocked door through my aunt and uncle’s apartment and on into the main part of the house. Aunt Claire said she and Gerry were watching TV in the sanctity of their darkened living room when their home was suddenly invaded by a bellowing, wounded beast preceeding an odor most foul.

By now my grandmother had been awakened. She met her howling husband at the door into the main kitchen and blocked his way. Instead she herded him back through Gerry and Claire’s apartment and into the barn from which he came, once again fumigating the already reeking quarters.

Once out in the yard, my 95-pound grandmother took control of the situation. She ordered the big man to strip off his ruined clothing while she connected the garden hose. The bellowing changed pitch but never let up as she directed a hard stream of ice-cold well water onto his naked frame and gradually took the edge off the skunk smell.

This was followed by several scrubbings with her homemade lye soap and still more icy rinses.

Needless to say no one in the house got a full night’s sleep and the after-effects of the event lingered on for weeks to come.

The human brain is a complex organ. There is still so much about this natural computer with its enormous capacity for data storage and retrieval that is a mystery to science. Obliquely, my story today is about a little-used function of the human brain stem.

Evolutionists believe the human brain stem represents the original brain possessed by our reptile-like ancestors millions of years ago. As such, it was not capable of very much thought, but it served to keep body functions like breathing and heart rate steady. It was also capable of conducting certain instinctual reactions to external stimuli – reactions like fright response.

Scientists today tell us that this thickening of the nervous tissues at the base of the human brain still serves these same functions. The brain stem tells the heart how fast to beat and maintains our breathing without our having to think about it.

 But what about instinctual behavior? Is it possible to react to fright without thinking about it? Can the brain stem, in response to certain strong, primitive stimuli, take command of our bodies and attempt to deal with a situation while bypassing conscious thought?  I’m here to tell you that it can.

For more nearly 40 years I have worked in a wildlife agency field office in one place or another. Members of the public are always bringing in injured critters for us to take care of. Sometimes they make ill-advised attempts to adopt wild animals and birds and make pets of them. Sooner or later, whether voluntarily surrendered or by confiscation, we end up in possession of them.

I first moved from a Maine fish hatchery to a regional fish and wildlife headquarters in 1974. During my first week there I learned an important lesson. Never open an unmarked box or sack without nudging it first to see if anything nudges back. The very angry great blue heron that narrowly missed my face when I opened a burlap sack left in the hallway taught me to be more careful.

On the other hand, curiosity can overcome even the most important lessons in life. I once returned from the field to find a hand-written sign taped to the bathroom door in the Brush, Colorado office that said, “CAUTION. LIVE BOBCAT. DO NOT ENTER.”

I, of course, just had to get a look at that bobcat. Who would have thought that a bobcat kitten can actually transform itself into an out-of-control electrical appliance? But, I digress….

One of the laboratory analytical processes that I performed years ago as the Maine State Fish Pathologist involved the screening of trout and salmon kidney tissues with a special microscope that used a black light to make treated pathogenic bacteria glow in the dark. I therefore had to black out the window in my small laboratory and spend several hours at a time working alone in a nearly pitch black room.

On such days I hung a sign on the door asking my colleagues to stay out. I usually cranked up the radio for company. 

One day in 1982 I was sitting in my darkened laboratory with my eyes in the microscope when I was aware that the door had opened for a second or two. That was not unusual. Frequently Bert, our mailman, slipped my mail in onto the end of the counter. I kept on working without looking up.

A minute later while buried in some sort of thought, I felt something gently press on the top of my right thigh. Keeping my eyes on the illuminated microscopic field, I absentmindedly reached down with my right hand to brush away whatever it was. Instead, my hand closed over a softball-sized furry head with stiff whiskers.

That’s when my reptilian brain stem high-jacked my body. It may be the closest thing I will ever have to an out-of-body experience. Completely beyond my conscious control, my body sprang back and took me through the narrow darkened room out into the bright hallway. From somewhere deep in my chest a most piteous deep roaring and howling burst forth, all entirely beyond my control.

After several seconds the noise subsided and I was able to shut off the autopilot and regain control. It was then that I began to hear the rib-splitting laughter of the fishery managers and game biologists that worked down the hall. When I switched on the overhead light in the lab, a 25-30 pound beaver balanced on its haunches with both paws on the seat of my chair staring at me as if it, too, thought the whole episode was hilariously funny.

It turned out that a couple had hand-reared a beaver kit until the living room furniture and the bedroom set came under peril. After making friends with the not-so-little guy, my buddies down the hall thought I might like to meet it, too. So, one opened the door while another shoved the beaver into my darkroom.

If anyone ever leaves off a live badger, or perhaps a mountain lion at the Brush DOW office, I will give serious thought to catching the next flight from DIA back to Augusta, Maine!

Let’s face it. Chickens are not smart. Inside that small, silly-looking head is a brain about the size of a garbanzo bean. That’s not much to work with. 

Still, insofar as a hen can cluck while at the same time walking from Point A to Point B, chickens are capable of rudimentary multitasking.

 Now, if you want to really cripple the intellectual abilities of a chicken’s brain, add about a half cup of testosterone. I grew up in the country. In my younger days I dressed out many a chicken. I can attest to the fact that a rooster’s gonads are many, many times the size of its brain. You know what that phenomenon does to the behavior of teenage boys. Just imagine its effects on a chicken! Whereas a normal chicken brain might broadcast the signal, “Worm ahead. Eat it.” – a testosterone-soaked rooster brain is more likely to consider whether to pick a fight with said worm or make love to it. 

Unfortunately, in the mental gymnastics of rooster thinking, there is inability to inject the concept of size or probability into the equation. To a rooster, a grizzly bear looks pretty much like a pigeon. It’s his job to run both of them off, then go receive thanks and maybe a little nik-nik from the pullets. 

As a 5-year-old, I am not sure whether I was physically intimidated by the alpha White Leghorn rooster in my Dad’s flock so much as I was creeped out by the blank, reptilian look in its eyes. Whether from a rooster or a snapping turtle or a playground bully or a politician, I’ve always gotten the willies from that look. At any rate, I had no desire to tangle with the white rooster. 

Since it was my job to feed and water the flock and collect the eggs, I needed a strategy to avoid confrontation. My mother always saved uneaten toast, bread heels, and salad scraps in a bowl for the chickens. I would take those out to the henhouse and toss them through the fence into the outdoor pen, then imitate the sound the rooster made when he was trying to impress the hens with his chivalry. The hens would pour out into the yard with the rooster right behind them. While they feasted, I’d slip into the henhouse and drop the gate to bar their return. 

Twenty odd years earlier my own father was not as fortunate. The tyrant rooster in his world was allowed to roam the grounds at will and thus was an ever-present threat. One day while walking through the main room of the barn old beady eyes ambushed the 5-year-old from a side entrance. There was no place for the boy to run except in circles all the time yelling for help with the big, fluffed-up rooster close on his heels in hot pursuit. 

As it happened, help was not long in coming. Dad’s 6-years-older brother, Bob, was tending the cows in the stanchions in a side room and could hear the commotion. The older boy arrived on-scene carrying a three-prong pitchfork. He waited for his younger brother to pass, and then flung the pitchfork at the big rooster. The long steel tines almost missed entirely, but one pierced the webbing between the base of one wing and the outer joint then stuck firmly in the gray boards of the barn wall pinning the indignant chicken so that its toes did not quite touch the floor. 

That is quite of lot of indignity for one rooster to suffer. But it paled to what came next. Before the pitchfork was pulled from the wall, the mop-headed little kid whom the big bird so enjoyed tormenting was allowed by the bigger human to get in a few retributive slaps and kicks while the big bird hung squawking helplessly. 

That rooster did not learn any permanent lesson. (There is only so much memory in half a dozen neurons.) Instead he became increasingly brazen, now attacking my grandmother as well as all three boys whenever their backs were turned. When my grandmother joined the chorus of lobbyists for the rooster’s demise, it probably meant the end was near anyway. But the old bird had yet to commit the ultimate blunder. 

Grampa Walker was a very large man for his time. He kept a watering trough filled beneath the barn during times when the brook ran dry in late summer. He came home one evening and filled two pails of water to carry down to the stock trough. Getting there involved crossing in front of the barn door, then descending a little hill and circling around to the open underside of the barn. 

My grandmother described how, as Grampa passed the big front door of the barn, the rooster’s head craned out from inside and watched the big man go by with hands full. As the bald head disappeared beneath the crest of the hill, the rooster’s hackles went erect and the bird lit out on his tail. 

Five minutes later Grampa came back up the hill into view. In one hand were the two empty pails. The other held the leg of a large, limp chicken carcass. The old bird finally went too far. The reign of terror was over.

When I was about 12 or 13, a family by the name of Kelly lived in the old Mills farm about a mile further up White Oak Hill from where I lived in southwestern Maine.  I used to mow their huge lawn and, when they were away, I took care of their pets and stock. One day at the beginning of a two-week period when the Kellys would be out of town, I carried a partial sack of laying mash into the chicken pen on the second floor of their huge barn. The flock consisted of about 30 black laying hens (brown eggs) and a single, enormous barred gray roosted with 2-inch long spurs that almost could have doubled for tent stakes.

 As I bent over the long wooden trough to spread out the feed, I completely dropped my guard. From behind I was rammed as if by one of the linemen on the Broncos’ offensive line. But that was nothing compared to the pain of the rooster’s spurs jabbing into both sides of one of my calves. I had been violated!

 Without pausing to think, I looked at the unfinished wall ahead of me. There, leaning between two studs as if deliberately set out for me, was a 30” piece of half-inch copper pipe. In a rage I grabbed the pipe, turned on the rooster, and swung for the fence. The giant rooster was laid out flopping on the floor, apparently in his death throes.

But I could not celebrate my successful revenge for even a millisecond. Icy fingers of reality gripped me instead. Okay, tough guy, now what are you going to do? You’ve just cruelly killed someone else’s rooster. How are you going to explain that? 

I avoided coming to terms with it for a little while by leaving the twitching carcass where it lay and going outside to mow the lawn. As I pushed the lawnmower around I first mentally beat myself up for giving in to my temper, then began to sort things out and make a plan.

 I could not commit the double sin of letting the huge chicken go to waste. I needed to dress it out and put it in the Kellys’ freezer. Then I would just have to face the music and confess my sins first to my folks, then to the Kelly family.

 I put the lawnmower away and went into the house (I had a key) and found a sharp knife and a couple of large plastic bags. I climbed the barn stairs and entered the hen pen to retrieve my victim.

 But he wasn’t there! Instead, sticking up from deep within the crowd of cowering hens along the back wall was a rooster’s head bent off to one side at about 45 degrees. On it’s neck was a baseball-sized hematoma. The eye on that side was swollen shut, but the rooster was conscious and semi-functional. It didn’t look like he was going to make it; but there was hope.

 Every day for the next two weeks the bulge on the rooster’s neck grew smaller. His swollen eye reopened after about a week and, by the time the Kelly family returned from their vacation, the old bird could nearly hold his head erect again.

 So, in a way, I got away with it. I never told anyone about the incident until many years later. But to this day, whenever I lose my temper – which is less and less as I get older, I remind myself of what I did to that poor rooster and what a senseless act a temper tantrum is.

            “You aren’t going to believe this one,” said the young Maine game warden as he poured himself a cup of coffee in the office of the fish hatchery in northern Maine one late fall day.

            Of course that got our full attention and all craned his way to hear every juicy detail. Not much goes on a typical day in an outpost village on the edge of the boreal forest.

            The state salmon, trout, and char hatchery where I worked that fall lay nestled in the balsam fir forest just downhill from the little village of Enfield, Maine. The next township to the southeast, and the last partially settled area before the start of the vast corporate timber holdings of Diamond International and Georgia Pacific, was Passadumkeag. The name is Abnaki Indian, but the locals simply shorten it to  “Dunky.”

            That morning the game warden received a radio call from the State Police dispatcher that a party was requesting a game warden’s assistance at a residence in Passadumkeag. The wildlife officer was definitely not prepared for what he found.

            It seemed a young wife, 8 months pregnant, took advantage of the crisp sunny early November day to hang a load of washing on the clothesline behind her house. As she did so, something rather small and creepy feeling suddenly leaped onto her back at the base of her neck. In a sudden panic she reached back and tried to dislodge the object. It snarled and chattered back at her! She realized it was a small monkey! No matter how she tried, it would not get off.

            Sobbing and on the verge of total hysteria, the woman went into the kitchen, the monkey still riding on her back, and called the paper mill in Lincoln, some 25 miles to the north where her husband worked. She had him paged. When he answered she screamed out, “There’s a monkey on my back! Come help me!”

            The poor fellow must have assumed the stresses of pregnancy had pushed his bride over the edge. He jumped in his car and sped home not knowing what to expect, and certainly not taking the monkey comment literally. But when he pulled into the driveway, there she stood, sobbing incoherently while a tiny but extremely feisty monkey clung tenaciously to her back.

            For a few minutes the man tried to dislodge the monkey from its perch. But each time he approached, the monkey bared its fangs and very persuasively “told” him to back off. It was at that point that the call went out for a game warden. After all, who else would you call if your wife had a monkey on her back?

            By the time the young district warden pulled up, the monkey had been in possession of his “ride” for the greater portion of the morning. The very pregnant object of his/her affection was by now a whimpering basket case.

The warden first tried heavy leather gloves, the kind used to handle injured hawks and owls. But injured hawks and owls are much less agile than small monkeys plus they lack the ability to communicate their feelings the way we primates can. The game warden soon began to sympathize with the little animal. It was terrified and obviously desperate for solace. Nevertheless, he knew that he had to get the creature off quickly or he and the monkey might well be sharing midwife duties.

The warden tried a fish net, but the monkey had hands and could fend it off with great dexterity. Next he found a short board in the garage and used it as a long-handled pry. That did the trick. When the monkey realized it had no defense against the tactic, it made a mighty leap off the woman’s shoulder out onto the lawn and scurried for the dense evergreen timber at the edge of the cleared house lot. In a few seconds it disappeared into the tangle.

The woman recovered. She carried her baby to full term. The warden wrote what must have been one of the more unique incident reports in the history of the Maine Warden Service. As for the monkey, no one reported seeing it ever again. Maine winters are especially bitter in Enfield and Passadumkeag and there is little likelihood that a monkey could survive there unless perhaps it found a more willing back to ride. Its origin and its destiny will probably never be known.

Growing up in a very rural area of Maine, having other kids to play with was the exception, not the rule. My social skills were slow to develop. Rural grade school was okay; but high school in the city was absolutely painful. Scholastically I was placed in the same classes with the A-list kids. But being an outsider and the son of a plumber, they were never going to cut me any slack socially. To make matters worse, I had the physical coordination and athletic ability of a top-heavy rock. I couldn’t make the B-list either.

By my junior year in high school I reached my full height of an even 6 feet. My legs were so short I wore pants with a 29-inch leg. My torso was so long I could not wear a hat while sitting in a car. I was a giant penguin!

I hated gym class. But it wasn’t just inability to keep up. It was the Athletic Director, Coach Grenda. Coach Grenda was one of the first adults I ever encountered who was truly cruel. Being the head football coach of a 4A school (as high as it went in Maine), Steve Grenda enjoyed considerable status in the community. To the jocks, he was a god. To those of us at the other end of the scale, he was the personification of evil.

The first time he ever hurt me was when I had to go to him for something after school – maybe to be let in to the locker room to retrieve some needed sneakers or something. As he waited for me, he asked, “Are you related to John Walker?”

“He’s my first cousin,” I replied. John was a star football and baseball player five years older than me.

“Too bad you aren’t more like him,” Coach Grenda replied, then turned his back on me and walked away.

I was crushed.

Later, after enduring almost three years of daily phys-ed classes, a good-looking jock – a wealthy doctor’s son – showed up for gym one day in black sneakers. Coach Grenda insisted we wear only white ones. The coach called Ricky out in front of the line and dressed him down for his lack of respect.

Ricky’s response was to divert attention away from the black shoes at my expense. With a grin, the handsome and confident A-list kid pointed me out and said, “At least I have the ability to do everything you ask of me, Coach. I’m not some fat klutz like him.”

The coach and most of the class all turned to stare at me. I wanted to throw up.

But it got worse. Coach Grenda glared at me for a second, shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back again. He let it stand. Class resumed and I was left standing by myself, my self-esteem in complete ruins.

Imagine my horror as a freshman at the University of Maine, to find I’d have to take two semesters of athletics or physical education to graduate. It was already a terrifying period in history. Our country’s leaders were pouring my generation into a war that made little sense while our World War II parents cheered them on. Make one slip in college and hello Southeast Asia, son.

I opted to get the worst part over with quickly. I reported to the Field House three times a week for PE 101. But it wasn’t so bad this time. The first thing I learned was that not all phys-ed instructors are evil and mean. The T-A was polite and treated me courteously. I was graded by my personal progress and never once compared with the others in my class. I got through that semester with a “C,” the best I felt I could hope for.

Early in my second semester, while taking PE 102, I had a series of accidents that involved violently twisting my right knee. The doctor at the campus infirmary sent me to an orthopedic specialist in Bangor who diagnosed stretched tendons and torn cartilage. Rather than operate – in those days there was no arthroscopic repair – he wanted me to wait and try to strengthen my knee by weight lifting and walking.

After 3 weeks of hobbling to classes on crutches, I limped into PE one afternoon with a note from my doctor. While I was standing there, another student walked up with a nearly identical note. Coach Grenda would have seized the moment to berate us for sloughing off. But our T-A was sympathetic. He said, “Alright, as soon as I get these other guys started, I’ll set up a weight room regimen for you two and you can spot each other. The second half of the hour I want you to jog, or at least walk around the track and strengthen those knees.”

For the rest of the semester I did leg lifts and walked around the gritty Field House track with the sophomore, Steve. Steve was a very big man, at least 4 inches taller than me. He, too, was funny shaped with very long torso, extra short legs, and barrel-chested. He was extremely hairy with a permanent 5 o’clock shadow. Together we must have looked like a pair of great apes stumbling around the dimly lit track. Physical “short straws.” Losers.

At first I was intimidated by Steve’s appearance. He looked gruff and imposing. I could never tell if his faded gym shorts and threadbare T-shirts were of necessity or an anti-establishmentarian statement. But he turned out to be gentle and, like me, a bit shy and withdrawn. We got along well enough, although I suspect neither one of us, for the same reason, dared open up very much in that environment.

I wish I could say we became close friends. As it was, after that class saying hello when we met on the sidewalk was about the only interaction I had with the guy.

Life went on. With the conclusion of that gym class my obligation to physical education mercifully ended. I stayed within my shell through all eight semesters of college and graduated in 4 years. It was the only way to do it in the 1960s without taking a sabbatical for Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. By 1970 the war in Vietnam was winding down a little and Uncle Sam was getting more picky about who he drafted. My knee kept me out of the Service through two consecutive draft notices.

I stayed in my shell and brooded out my undergraduate years. My former gym partner began to come out of his. His forte was the pen. By the time he was a senior, Steve wrote a weekly column in the campus newspaper that had everyone scrambling for the free periodical as bundles of it landed on the steps, just to read what he had to say. We all thought he had great talent. Rumor had it that Steve wrote at least a thousand words every day.

It took me another decade to realize I had potential of my own. It took even longer to gain the self-confidence to comfortably approach people and initiate conversations. By that time, Steve Grenda was just a bad memory – a very small man who didn’t matter. The other Steve – Stephen King – proved to me that it is possible to be very successful in life without ever wearing an athletic uniform.

by Peter Walker

(Maine whitetail photo by David Walker)

One of my favorite game warden stories was told to me years after the fact over cups of coffee with two of the three Maine wardens involved in the caper. Roger and Danny were in the same Maine Warden Service training class in the early 1970s. As the end of several months of training drew near, they spent more and more time in the field being mentored by experienced district officers.

The fall night of their big adventure, the two were assigned to patrol for night hunters in eastern Maine under the tutelage of Eric, a tall, gruff, deep-voiced veteran of the Maine Warden Service. The three were sitting in the dark in a pickup truck pulled into the edge of the woods off a large field. The field was well off the highway and accessible via a one-lane woods road.

Catching “deer jackers,” as they are known in Maine, is a game of patience. It takes long hours of sitting quietly, waiting for the bad guys to make a move. Even then you must witness them at least using a spotlight in order to make a pinch. In Maine, the fields are carved from dense woodlands. So that narrows the playing field a bit for the game wardens just as it concentrates the whitetails for the poachers.

That long ago evening the veteran and the two rookies sat for hours crammed in the single seat of the truck in pitch darkness without seeing or hearing a thing. Finally they decided it was time to stretch. Getting out, they walked to the side of the little cove off the main field and were relieving themselves in the bushes when a car came speeding up the road and caught them by surprise.

The wardens and their pickup were back just far enough that the headlights of the poachers’ car missed them. As the three stood a short distance from the car, it swung so that its headlights swept across the field and illuminated a whitetail doe. Almost as quickly a shot rang out from the car window and the deer lay flopping on the ground.

The poachers must have planned a hit and run caper where they would return to get the deer after making sure no one was around. The car spun around and headed back out the access road.

This action was the first the two rookies had ever witnessed. Young Roger yelled, “Let’s get ‘em!”, then raced for the driver’s side of the pickup.

By the time Danny scrambled into the passenger’s side of the cab, Roger had the engine started, the blue lights flashing, and the siren on. “Go, go, go, go, go!” yelled Danny as Roger pushed down on the accelerator.

A half second later it occurred to both young men that they had forgot something important. As fast as he’d gunned the big V-8, Roger slammed on the brakes. Eric, as it turned out, upon missing the bus had opted to hop on the rear bumper and climb over the tailgate into the bed.

The older man had one long leg over the tailgate when Roger hit the brakes. The sudden stop caused Eric to vault forward down the empty truck bed and slam into the back of the cab. Danny, upon seeing his instructor was “safely” aboard, yelled, “He’s in! Go, go, go, go, go!”

Roger again tromped down on the accelerator and the truck surged forward. Eric, still stunned from his rough boarding, found himself sliding back down the truck bed like a human bowling ball and slammed into the tailgate with a loud, bear-like “Oooof!”

By this time the poachers, aware that they were being pursued, had enough lead on the game wardens to probably have made a clean getaway if they had gone in either direction once they reached the highway. But the panicking driver made the mistake of crossing the highway and driving down a dead-end woods road on the opposite side in hopes of hiding there while the warden truck sped off left or right. Unfortunately for the bad guys, the wardens glimpsed their headlights out in the woods and knew they had them.

When the two poachers reached the end of the road it was decision time. With the wardens coming up fast, the driver jumped out. In his state of panic he apparently thought there was some merit in unloading the rifle they had just used in the crime. As the warden truck arrived, they found the man desperately trying to jack cartridges from the lever action gun as fast as he could.

Those of you who have ever used such a firearm know that it is critical not to get your fingers in the way when you unload one or you can easily discharge it. In this instance the hapless poacher forgot the rule and, just as the wardens pulled up, blew a .30 caliber hole through the brand new front tire of his car, then dropped the gun and surrendered!

Meanwhile the other poacher decided to flee into the black woods. With young and lanky Roger in foot pursuit, the bad guy ran headlong into the forest without benefit of a flashlight. He did not get far. Following by sound, Roger later told me the fellow’s luck ran out completely when he struck a 2-inch aspen sapling from nose to crotch dead center. The tree bent forward from the blow, then sprang back sending the limp and badly stunned poacher right into the arms of the pursuing game warden.

Game over.