Robert Robert - Scouting for Boys

Schilling’s book With Flashlight and Rifle in Africa is a most interesting collection of photos of wild animals, most of them taken by night by means of flashlight, which was set going by the animals themselves striking against wires put up for the purpose. Schilling got splendid photos of lions, hyaenas, deer of all sorts, zebras, and other beasts. There is one of a lion actually in the air springing on to a buck.

Boars and Panthers

The boar is certainly the bravest of all animals. He is the real “King of the Jungle”, and the other animals all know it. If you watch a drinking pool in the jungle at night, you will see the animals that come to it all creeping down nervously, looking out in every direction for hidden enemies. But when the boar comes he simply swaggers down with his great head and its shiny tusks swinging from side to side. He cares for nobody, but everybody cares for him. Even a tiger drinking at the pool will give a snarl and sneak quickly out of sight.

I have often lain out on moonlight nights to watch the animals, especially wild boars, in the jungle.

And I have caught and kept a young wild boar and a young panther, and found them most amusing and interesting little beggars. The boar used to live in my garden. He never became really tame, though I got him as a baby.

He would come to me when I called him—but very warily. He would never come to a stranger, and a native he would “go for” and try to cut him down with his little tusks.

He used to practise the use of his tusks while turning at full speed round an old tree stump in the garden. He would gallop at it and round it in a figure eight continuously for over five minutes at a time, and then fling himself down on his side panting with his exertions.

My panther was also a beautiful and delightfully playful beast, and used to go about with me like a dog. But he was very uncertain in his dealings with strangers. I think one gets to know more about animals and to understand them better by keeping them as pets at first, and then going and watching them in their wild natural life.

Study Animals at Home

But before going to study big game in the jungles you must study all animals, wild and tame, at home. Every Boy Scout ought to know all about the tame animals which he sees every day. And if you live in the country, you ought to know all about grooming, feeding, and watering a horse, about putting him into harness or taking him out of harness and putting him in the stable, and know when he is going lame and should not therefore be worked.

Your Dog

A good dog is the very best companion for a Scout, who need not think himself a really good Scout till he has trained a young dog to do all he wants of him. It requires great patience and kindness, and genuine sympathy with the dog. Dogs are being used frequently for finding lost men and for carrying messages.

A dog is the most human of all animals, and therefore the best companion for a man. He is always courteous, and always ready for a game—full of humour, and very faithful and loving.

Where to Study Animals

Of course a Scout who lives in the country has much better chances of studying animals and birds than in a town.

Still, if you live in a big city there are lots of different kinds of birds in the parks, and there is almost every animal under the sun to be seen alive in zoological gardens.

In s maller towns it is perhaps a little more difficult, but many of them have their Natural History Museum, where a fellow can learn the appearance and names of many animals, and you can do a lot of observing in the parks or by starting a feeding-box for birds at your own window. But, best of all, is to go out into the country whenever you can get a few hours for it, by train, or bicycle, or on your own flat feet, and there stalk animals and birds, and watch what they do, and get to know different kinds and their names, and also what kind of tracks they make on the ground, and, in the case of the birds, their nests and eggs, and so on.

If you are lucky enough to own a camera, you cannot possibly do better than start making a collection of photos of animals and birds. Such a collection is ten times more interesting than the ordinary boy’s collection of stamps, or autographs.

Watching Animals

Every animal is interesting to watch, and it is just as difficult to stalk a weasel as it is to stalk a lion.

We are apt to think that all animals are guided in their conduct by instinct—that is, by a sort of idea that is born in them. For instance, we imagine that a young otter swims naturally, directly he is put into water, or that a young deer runs away from a man from a natural inborn fear of him.

William Long, in his book School of the Woods, shows that animals largely owe their cleverness to their mothers, who teach them while they are young. Thus he has seen an otter carry two of her young upon her back into the water, and after swimming about for a little while, suddenly dive from under them, and leave them struggling in the water. But she rose near them and helped them to swim back to the shore. In this way she gradually taught them to swim.

The mother animal teaches her young. This lioness seems to be telling her cubs how to act if a man should come.

I once saw a lioness in East Africa sitting with her three little cubs all in a row watching me approach her. She looked exactly as though she were teaching her young ones how to act in the case of a man coming.

She was evidently saying to them:

“Now, cubbies, I want you all to notice what a white man is like. Then, one by one, you must jump up and skip away, with a whisk of your tail. The moment you are out of sight in the long grass, you must creep and crawl till you have got to leeward (down-wind) of him. Then follow him, always keeping him to windward, so that you can smell whereabouts he is, and he cannot find you.”

Birds

A man who studies birds is called an ornithologist. Mark Twain, the amusing yet kind-hearted American writer, said:

“There are fellows who write books about birds and love them so much that they’ll go hungry and tired to find a new kind of bird—and kill it.

“They are called ‘ornithologers.’

“I could have been an ‘ornithologer’ myself, because I always loved birds and creatures. And I started out to learn how to be one. I saw a bird sitting on a dead limb of a high tree, singing away with his head tilted back and his mouth open —and before I thought I fired my gun at him. His song stopped all suddenly, and he fell from the branch, limp like a rag, and I ran and picked him up—and he was dead. His body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like as if his neck was broke, and there was a white skin over his eyes, and one drop of red blood

sparkled on the side of his head —and—laws! I couldn’t see nothing for tears. I haven’t ever murdered no creature

since then that warn’t doing me no harm—and I ain’t agoing to neither.”

The crows seem to be everywhere

with their loud “Caw-caw.”

Watching Birds

A good Scout is generally a good “ornithologer”, as Mark Twain calls him. That is to say, he likes stalking birds and watching all that they do. He discovers, by watching them, where and how they build their nests.

He does not, like the ordinary boy, want to go and rob them of their eggs, but he likes to watch how they hatch out their young and teach them to feed themselves and to fly. He gets to know every species of bird by its call and by its way of flying. He knows which birds remain all the year round and which only come at certain seasons, what kind of food they like best, and how they change their plumage, what sort of nests they build, where they build them, and what the eggs are like.