Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER XIV
RABBITS AND LYNXES IN THE NORTH-WEST
There are no Rabbits in the north-west. This statement, far from final, is practically true to-day, but I saw plenty of Lynxes, and one cannot write of ducks without mentioning water.
All wild animals fluctuate greatly in their population, none more so than the Snowshoe or white-rabbit of the north-west. This is Rabbit history as far back as known: They are spread over some great area; conditions are favourable; some unknown influence endows the females with unusual fecundity; they bear not one, but two or three broods in a season, and these number not 2 or 3, but 8 or 10 each brood. The species increases far beyond the powers of predaceous birds or beasts to check, and the Rabbits after 7 or 8 years of this are multiplied into untold millions. On such occasions every little thicket has a Rabbit in it; they jump out at every 8 or 10 feet; they number not less than 100 to the acre on desirable ground, which means over 6,000 to the square mile, and a region as large as Alberta would contain not less than 100,000,000 fat white bunnies.
At this time one man can readily kill 100 or 200 Rabbits in a day, and every bird and beast of prey is slaughtering Rabbits without restraint. Still they increase. Finally, they are so extraordinarily superabundant that they threaten their own food supply as well as poison all the ground. A new influence appears on the scene; it is commonly called the plague, though it is not one disease but many run epidemic riot, and, in a few weeks usually, the Rabbits are wiped out.
This is an outline of the established routine in Rabbit vital statistics. It, of course, varies greatly in every detail, including time and extent of territory involved, and when the destruction is complete it is an awful thing for the carnivores that have lived on the bunny millions and multiplied in ratio with their abundance.
Of all the northern creatures none are more dependent on the Rabbits than is the Canada Lynx. It lives on Rabbits, follows the Rabbits, thinks Rabbits, tastes like Rabbits, increases with them, and on their failure dies of starvation in the unrabbited woods.
It must have been a Hibernian familiar with the north that said: ”A Lynx is nothing but an animated Rabbit anyway.”
The Rabbits of the Mackenzie River Valley reached their flood height in the winter of 1903-4. That season, it seems, they actually reached billions.
Late the same winter the plague appeared, but did not take them at one final swoop. Next winter they were still numerous, but in 1907 there seemed not one Rabbit left alive in the country. All that summer we sought for them and inquired for them. We saw signs of millions in the season gone by; everywhere were acres of saplings barked at the snow-line; the floor of the woods, in all parts visited, was pebbled over with pellets; but we saw not one Woodrabbit and heard only a vague report of 3 that an Indian claimed he had seen in a remote part of the region late in the fall.
Then, since the Lynx is the logical apex of a pyramid of Rabbits, it naturally goes down when the Rabbits are removed.
These bobtailed cats are actually starving and ready to enter any kind of a trap or snare that carries a bait. The slaughter of Lynxes in its relation to the Rabbit supply is shown by the H. B.
Company fur returns as follows:
In 1900, number of skins taken 4,473 ” 1901 ” 5,781 ” 1902 ” 9,117 ” 1903 ” 19,267 ” 1904 ” 36,116 ” 1905 ” 58,850 ” 1906 ” 61,388 ” 1907 ” 36,201 ” 1908 ” 9,664
Remembering, then, that the last of the Rabbits were wiped out in the winter of 1906-7, it will be understood that there were thousands of starving Lynxes roaming about the country. The number that we saw, and their conditions, all helped to emphasise the dire story of plague and famine.
Some of my notes are as follows:
May 18th, Athabaska River, on roof of a trapper's hut found the bodies of 30 Lynxes.
May 19th, young Lynx shot to-day, female, very thin, weighed only 12 1/2 lbs., should have weighed 25. In its stomach nothing but the tail of a white-footed mouse. Liver somewhat diseased. In its bowels at least one tapeworm.
June 3d, a young male Lynx shot to-day by one of the police boys, as previously recorded. Starving; it weighed only 15 lbs.
June 6th, adult female Lynx killed, weighed 15 lbs.; stomach contained a Redsquirrel, a Chipmunk, and a Bog-lemming. (Synaptomys borealis.)
June 18th, young male Lynx, weight 13 lbs., shot by Preble on Smith Landing; had in its stomach a Chipmunk (borealis) and 4 small young of the same, apparently a week old; also a score of pinworms. How did it get the Chipmunk family without digging them out?
June 26th, on Salt Mt. found the dried-up body of a Lynx firmly held in a Bear trap.
June 29th, one of the Jarvis bear-cub skins was destroyed by the dogs, except a dried-up paw, which he threw out yesterday. This morning one of the men shot a starving Lynx in camp. Its stomach contained nothing but the bear paw thrown out last night.
These are a few of my observations; they reflect the general condition--all were starving. Not one of them had any Rabbit in its stomach; not one had a bellyful; none of the females were bearing young this year.