Take, for example, the dog hood. Now there’s an animal with character. Why a dog hood’ll sit there on a pan of ice all day long minding his own business. Leave him bide and he’ll do as much for you. But molest him and see what happens, that is if you live to tell about it. Grampa says he’s heard tell about animals in foreign parts that have been known to fight ’til they’re dead. But the dog hood is different. Why he’ll fight after he’s dead.
Skipper Lige Bartle, out swiling one morning years ago, shot and pelted one just after daylight and coming back that way late in the evening, the carcass of that old dog hood, he said, snapped at him and if Skipper Lige hadn’t been so yarry, he’d a lost a piece off his starboard leg.
Or take King David, that’s Jethro Noddy’s billygoat. He got his name from a clergyman that was here one time who watched that billygoat jumping fences and christened him King David after a character in the Psalms who used to be good at jumping over walls, and when you remember that clergyman went away from here during the First World War, it’ll give you some idea about King David’s age. Naturally, he’s through with jumping fences now and is what you might call past his labour, but what dignity! And even today if you throw something at him and then bend over with your back turned to ’im like Aunt Sophy did that time after King David took her best tablecloth off her clothesline and... but that’s a story in itself and is not the one I started to tell in the first place.
The noblest animal of ’em all, says Grampa, is the bull moose and to prove his point he tells the story about Skipper Jonathan Briggs, that’s Pete Briggs’ father, and the experience he had one time with a bull moose. Now, Grampa is not sure about the exact date. All he’s sure of is that there was no war on at the time ’cause the price of fish was low and times were bad, so he figures it was between forty five and fifty year ago, when Skipper Jonathan was in his prime, the spryest man with the longest legs that Pigeon Inlet ever produced.
Well this day, according to Grampa, Skipper Jonathan had an awful longing for meat. Naturally, of course, with times bad, there was only credit for flour and molasses and ’twas the wrong season for turrs. But he figured if he took his muzzle loader and walked the two mile across Gull Mash, into the low woods, he might spy a rabbit or something that might help keep body and soul together. So off he went, muzzle loader, powder horn, shot bag and all.
Now, as everybody knows, the shore to the nor’ard between here and Hartley’s Harbour is awful rugged, with cliffs about two hundred foot high and a sheer drop to the beach below. There’s not a tree to be seen all along that stretch of cliff except one old pine tree right on the edge about a mile to the nor’ard of here. Nowadays with the frost eating away the cliff every spring, that old tree is hanging out over the water and likely to fall anytime. But in those days ’twas standing straight up, right on the edge of that precipice, with the lowest limb about twenty feet off the ground.
Well, according to Grampa’s story, Skipper Jonathan left Pigeon Inlet that morning, followed the dog team trail along the edge of the cliff ’til he got to that old pine tree. Then taking his bearings from it, he turned off and headed straight across Gull Mash towards the woods, oh about two mile back. He stopped just before he got to the scrub timber and put about four fingers in his muzzle loader, just about the right load for a rabbit. He put a cap on the nipple and went in, about half a gunshot, when what should he almost bump into head on but this bull moose. For size the like he’d never seen before or even heard tell of and so close he could almost reach out and touch him with the muzzle of the gun. And then, as Skipper Jonathan often admitted afterwards, he got excited and lost his head. He up gun and fired right into that bull moose’s face although he should have known that four fingers’d have about the same effect on that animal as a handful of pepper.
Well, the moose shook his head, give a snort and took towards him and Skipper Jonathan scooted outta that clump of trees in a hurry and headed back across Gull Mash with the bull moose right on his heels. The mash was dry so Jonathan made good going, but so did the moose. Jonathan looked back once but what he saw didn’t look too pleasant so he hove away his gun and settled down to running. He said after that he remembered seeing a rabbit or two on the mash but they got out of the way to let somebody run as knowed how.
And then, Skipper Jonathan remembered an awful thing. He was headed straight for the cliff with a two hundred foot drop and sure death ahead of him and that bull moose, which was even worse, right behind him. But then he thought of something else - a hope. That old pine tree, straight ahead on the edge of the cliff. But the limb, the lowest one, twenty foot off the ground. Could he jump up to it? Well just then the moose snorted right down the back his neck so he opened his throttle, right to the last notch. The tree was just ahead. He judged his distance, not twenty foot from the edge of the cliff and he jumped with his hands above his head and his fingers stretched out, hoping to clutch that limb. Did he clutch it? says Grampa. No. Sad to say he missed it. Missed it on the way up that is but fortunately he grabbed it on the way down and that bull moose went through the air below ’im like he was shot from a gun and tumbled right down among the rocks in the landwash. And Skipper Jonathan worked his way along that limb to the trunk of the pine tree, got down on the ground and had that moose dressed and brought home to Pigeon Inlet in a boat before dark that evening.
That animal, said Grampa, dressed eleven hundred pounds and the authorities in St. John’s, when they heard it reported to ’em, wired Skipper Jonathan to distribute the meat among the poor families of Pigeon Inlet. Well, said Grampa, everyone is poor a time like that so ’twas cut and come again in every house in Pigeon Inlet for the next week or two. What a animal. Killed lawful too. Yes, said Grampa, if I had my way, the bull moose’d be the national animal of Canada and every Pigeon Inletter would be proud then to be a Canadian.