Scatology

As SEPTEMBER slipped into October and the white nights hardened the muskegs and skimmed the lakes with ice, I would have been glad to spend all my time afield, living the life of a pseudo-wolf to the fullest. However, I did not have the freedom of the wolves. An immense backlog of scientific trivia awaited my attention at the cabin. On the theory (my own, and not my employers) that my time should be spent observing living wolves, I had deliberately neglected the innumerable peripheral studies which had been ordained for me by Ottawa. Now, as the time grew short, I felt I should at least make a gesture of compliance to authority.

One of the sideshows with which I had been saddled was a vegetation study. It consisted of three parts: first I had to make a collection of all the species of plants in the area; then I had to make a “cover degree” study, to determine the ratios of various plants one to the other; and finally I was expected to do a “content analysis,” to determine the nutritional value of the vegetation from the point of view of the caribou.

There was no time left to do all these things so I compromised by tackling the “cover degree” study.

This involved the use of a Raunkiaer’s Circle, a device designed in hell. In appearance it was all simple innocence, being no more than a big metal hoop; but in use it was a devil’s mechanism for driving sane men mad. To use it, one stood on a stretch of muskeg, shut one’s eyes, spun around several times like a top, and then flung the circle as far away as possible. This complicated procedure was designed to ensure that the throw was truly “random” but, in the event, it inevitably resulted in my losing sight of the hoop entirely, and having to spend an unconscionable time searching for the thing.

Once the hoop was found, misery began in earnest. I was then expected to pluck every plant, no matter how minute, which lay within its charmed circle; identify and count the number of species; and then count individuals belonging to each species.

It sounds easy? It is not. Barren Land plants are small in any case, and many of them are almost microscopic. My first attempt with the circle cost me the best part of a day, gave me severe eyestrain, and resulted in a seizure in the lumbar region as a result of spending too many hours crouched like a demented rabbit over the circle, while plucking plantlets with a pair of tweezers.

I had discouraged Ootek from accompanying me on my Raunkiaer expeditions, since I simply did not feel capable of explaining what it was all about. However, during my third day of torture he appeared over a nearby ridge and bore happily down upon me. My greeting was a little sour, for the milk of human kindness was not flowing in my veins. Painfully standing erect I picked up the circle and made my next throw, while he watched with interest.

The circle did not go very far, for I was weary and discouraged, and there was no strength in me.

“Shweeanak! Pretty poor,” Ootek commented disparagingly.

“Dammit!” I cried hotly. “Let’s see you do better!”

I think my guardian angel must have inspired that challenge. Ootek grinned in a superior sort of manner, ran over to the circle, picked it up, swung back his arm like a discus thrower, and let fly. The circle rose like a fleeing partridge, glittered brilliantly in the sunshine as it reached the top of its trajectory, sailed gracefully out over a nearby tundra pond and, with barely a splash, sliced into the water and disappeared forever.

Ootek was stricken with remorse. His face tightened with apprehension as he waited for my anger to explode. I suppose he never understood why I threw my arms about him and led him gaily through several steps of an Indian jig before taking him back to the cabin and splitting my last, precious bottle of wolf-juice with him. But the incident no doubt confirmed his conviction that the ways of the white man are indeed inscrutable.

With the plant study so fortuitously ended, I was faced with another distasteful duty—the completion of my scatalogical studies.

Because of the importance attached to scatology in Ottawa, I had been ordered to devote part of my time to collecting and analyzing wolf scats. This was not a task with which I was enraptured, but as I went about the Barrens I had kept a casual eye open for scats. Using a long pair of forceps I had collected those I found and placed them in small canvas bags, each of which bore a label indicating the approximate age of the specimen and where and when it was collected. I kept these little bags under my bunk in the cabin, and by the end of September I had amassed such a formidable collection that there was not room for them all and they had begun to spill out on the floor and get underfoot.

For a variety of reasons, not least of which was the mental image I had formed of Ootek’s and Mike’s expressions when they realized what I was doing, I was loath to begin analyzing my finds. I had managed to keep my scat-collecting activities secret, and although Mike and Ootek may have been curious about the contents of my little bags they were too polite (or too fearful of what they might be told) to question me on the subject. Even though they had both become reasonably tolerant of the idiosyncrasies involved in my professional duties, I did not want to try them too far and so I continued to postpone the analytical work, until one October morning when they went away together on a caribou hunting trip, leaving me in sole possession of the camp. Feeling reasonably assured of privacy I then prepared to come to grips with my unpleasant task.

Due to the effect of weathering, followed by prolonged storage, the scats had become as hard as rocks and had to be softened before I could work on them. I therefore carted them down to the riverbank and put them to soak in two galvanized pails filled with water. While the softening process was taking place I laid out my tools, notebooks and other equipment on a large flat rock exposed to the sun and to a steady breeze. I felt the task ahead of me was one which could best be conducted in an unconstrained environment.

The next step was to don my gas mask. I am not trying to be funny when I record this fact. I had been supplied with the gas mask, along with a case of tear-gas grenades with which I was supposed to drive wolves out of their dens so they could be shot as autopsy specimens. Naturally I would never have stooped so low, even before I came to know and respect the wolves as friends. I had long since dumped the bombs into the nearby lake; but I had retained the mask, since I was charged with it. It now became useful, because wolf scats sometimes carry the eggs of a particularly baneful parasite which, if inhaled by man, hatch into minute worms that bore their way into his brain where they encyst, frequently with fatal results both to themselves and to their host.

Having ascertained that the first batch of scats was in a pliable condition, I donned the mask, placed a scat on a white enamel plate which I had borrowed from the cabin, and began dissecting it with forceps and scalpel. As I identified its constituents through a hand lens, I noted the information in my record book.

It was a laborious process, but not devoid of interest. In fact I soon became so wrapped up in my work that I ceased to be aware of my surroundings.

Consequently when I stood up an hour or two later to stretch my muscles, and casually turned toward the cabin, I was intensely surprised to find myself confronted by a semicircle of a dozen unfamiliar Eskimos who were staring at me with expressions of incredulity mingled with revulsion.

It was a disconcerting moment. I was so startled that I forgot about the gas mask, with its elephantine snout and goggle eyes; and when I tried to greet these strangers my voice, filtered through two inches of charcoal and a foot of rubber pipe, had the muffled and lugubrious quality of wind blowing through a tomb—an effect which filled the Eskimos with consternation.

Hastily attempting to redeem myself I tore off the mask and stepped briskly forward—whereupon the Eskimos, with the precision of a musical comedy chorus line, stepped briskly backwards, staring at me the while with wild surmise.

Desperate to show my good intentions, I smiled as broadly as I could, thereby baring my teeth in what must have seemed a fiendish grin. My visitors responded by retreating another yard or two, and some of them shifted their gaze apprehensively to the shining scalpel clutched in my right hand.

They were clearly poised for flight; but I saved what was left of the situation by recalling appropriate Innuit words and blurting out a more or less formal welcome. After a long pause one of them ventured a timid reply, and gradually they ceased to eye me like a flock of chickens in the presence of a rattlesnake.

Although there was no real rapport between us, the stilted conversation which followed revealed that these people formed a part of Ootek’s band which had spent the summer farther east and had only just returned to the home camps, where they had been told of the presence of a strange white man at Mike’s cabin. They had thereupon decided to come and see this phenomenon for themselves; but nothing they had heard in advance had prepared them for the spectacle which met their eyes when they arrived.

As we talked I noticed several children and some of the adults casting surreptitious glances at the scat pails and at the enamel plate with its litter of hair and mouse bones. In any other people this would have represented simple curiosity, but I had now spent enough time with Eskimos to appreciate the obliquity of their minds. I interpreted their interest as a. subtle suggestion that they were hungry and thirsty after their long journey and would appreciate some tea and food.

Since in Mike’s absence I was the host, and since hospitality is the greatest of virtues in the North, I invited the Eskimos to join me in the cabin for a meal that evening. They seemed to understand and to accept my offer and, leaving me to complete my work on the last few scats, they withdrew to a nearby ridge to pitch their travel camp.

The results of the analysis were most interesting. Some 48 per cent of the scats contained rodent remains, largely incisor teeth and fur. The balance of the identifiable food items included fragments of caribou bones, caribou hair, a few bird feathers and, surprisingly, a brass button much corroded by the action of digestive juices but still bearing a recognizable anchor-and-cable motif such as is used in various merchant navy services. I have no idea how this button happened to end up where it did, but its presence cannot be taken as evidence of a wolf having eaten some wandering sailor.^*5

Watched by two solemn little Eskimo boys, I now washed out the pails, then filled them with fresh water with which to make the several gallons of tea I knew would be required. As I walked back to the cabin I noted that the little boys were haring it up the ridge as if filled with great tidings which they were anxious to impart to their elders, and I smiled at their enthusiasm.

My cheerful mood did not survive for long. Three hours later dinner was ready (it consisted of fish balls cooked Polynesian style with a sweet-and-sour sauce of my own devising), and there was no sign of my guests. It was already dark, and I begun to worry lest there had been some misunderstanding about the time of dinner.

Eventually I put on my parka, took a flashlight, and went in search of the Eskimos.

I never found them. Indeed, I never saw them again. Their camp site was abandoned, and the people had vanished as totally as if the great plains had swallowed them down.

I was much puzzled, and somewhat offended. When Ootek returned the next day I told him the story and demanded an explanation. He asked a number of searching questions about pails, scats, and other things—questions which did not seem to me to be particularly relevant. And in the end, he failed me—for the first time in our association. He insisted that he could not possibly explain why my hospitality had been so rudely spurned…and he never did.