The Wild Animal’s Story: Nonhuman Protagonists in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature through the Lens of Practical Zoocriticism
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Allmark-KentC
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‘instinct’ is illogical.
Like Haig- Brown’s ‘home stream theory’ thought experiment, Lawrence essentially argues for the credibility of cognitive ethology as the most plausible explanation of animal intelligence. Although the Nature Fakers controversy, and early beginnings of behaviourism, led to an increased self-consciousness in Seton ’s and Roberts’ work, it was generally restricted to their prefaces and not their representations. As we have seen, however, the mid-twentieth-century authors were rather more cautious. Yet the gradual decline of behaviourism towards the end of the twentieth century means that Lawrence can take this persuasive stance without the need to justify or explain his attitude to animal minds. As discussed in Chapter Four, the question of nonhuman teaching drew some of the greatest ire during the Nature Fakers controversy. Yet, without hesitation or qualification, Lawrence states that the female puma teaches, instructs, and disciplines her young: [S]he was aware that if her kittens were to survive, they had to be taught to be cautious, to be keenly observant, and to exercise their memories, even while engaging in routine affairs. So [...] the puma led her kittens cautiously and taught them by example; patiently, and hour by hour she demonstrated the skills that would make them capable of identifying and storing a veritable cornucopia of environmental signals. (120) Allmark-Kent 183 In 1992, animal cognition researchers, Tim M. Caro and Marc D. Hauser, published a paper in the Quarterly Review of Biology in which they gave one of the most comprehensive definitions of animal teaching produced so far. In “Is There Teaching in Nonhuman Animals?” they stated: An individual actor A [the tutor] can be said to teach if it modifies its behaviour only in the presence of a naïve observer, B [the pupil], at some cost or at least without obtaining an immediate benefit for itself. A’s behaviour thereby encourages or punishes B’s behaviour, or provides B with experience, or sets an example for B. As a result, B acquires knowledge, or learns a skill earlier in life or more rapidly or effectively than it might otherwise do so, or would not learn at all. (153, emphasis added) Of course, The White Puma was published two years before Caro and Hauser’s paper, and yet Lawrence’s depiction of parental instruction conforms to their definition. The tawny puma repeatedly modifies her behaviour in the presence of her kittens, and adjusts it in accordance with their development. When she deems them old enough, the puma leads them away from the den with the intent to “teach them to survive in the wilderness” (93), and when it is not safe, she instructs them to remain hidden: Before setting out, the puma turned to look at the kittens, her tail rigid and her eyes fixing a stare first on the male, then on his sister, telling them in these ways to remain within the concealment of the rocks and emphasizing her command by growling softly, as she had been in the practice of doing each time she left them in the den. (95) They repeatedly attempt to follow her, and she punishes their disobedience until they comply: Snarling loudly, she reentered [sic] the clearing, meeting the kittens […] Continuing to snarl, the puma raised a front paw, toes spread, and threatened the recalcitrant you ngsters […] But the young cats started to follow her […] The puma swung around anew. This time she charged them. […] Growling, the mother followed them a short way; then she stopped and, facing them, waited until they had crawled under an overhanging grani te slab. The cat then repeated her command. […] She growled again. The kittens mewed distress; clearly unhappy about being left alone, they nevertheless obeyed. (95-6) Allmark-Kent 184 Moreover, when the young pumas display “for the first time the alert and eager sensibil ities of true hunters,” their mother encourages the behaviour, and allows them to continue following her example on a hunt: Despite her intense preoccupation with the task that lay ahead, she became aware of the change […] As soon as she had oriented herself, she moved forward without ordering the kittens to stay behind. She was tacitly allowing them to be her partners in the hunt. […] [T]he manner in which their mother was moving, and the fact that she was clearly allowing them to participate in the hunt further affected the behaviour of the kittens. (132) Thus, she demonstrates all the core elements of Caro and Hauser’s definition: modifying behaviour in the presence of her young, encouraging and punishing, providing experience, and setting an example. This is not to suggest any contact between Lawrence and Caro and Hauser, but to reveal the broad, late twentieth-century shift in attitudes towards animal intelligence that enabled these parallel depictions of nonhuman teaching to arise at almost the same time. As such, it is useful to recall here Burroughs ’ comments regarding pa rental instruction: “The young of all wild creatures do instinctively what their parents do and did. They do not have to be taught; they are taught by nature from the start” (137). Of course, as I have suggested previously, Seton’s speculations on animal teaching were shrouded in anthropomorphic metaphor; Lawrence’s, on the other hand, seem more realistic, more zoocentric. Again, his detailed descriptions indicate cognitive and social complexity, as well as the obvious survival advantage for the young pumas. Furthermore, these interactions also allow for a more complex exploration of nonhuman communication. By prioritizing sensory experiences unique to the nonhuman perspective of a puma, Lawrence emphasizes communication by scent, body language, and vocalization. As I have demonstrated, the mother and her kittens Allmark-Kent 185 constantly observe and interpret the minute, shifting movements and positions of each other’s bodies. Likewise, the tawny puma also uses a range of specific vocalizations, from “the special purr that summoned her children” (94) to the soft growl of the “alarm signal” (98). Yet, within the family, close proximity negates the requirement for scent communication —apart from the obvious bodily scents that aid identification and bonding. Outside, however, the longevity of odour enables a constant stream of information between individuals and across species. Lawrence’s repeated emphasis on this importance of scent as an entirely nonhuman form of communication aids his creation o f the pumas’ perspectives, whilst also demonstrating the potential complexity of nonhuman networks of interaction. When the tawny puma is “announcing her claim” to a new territory by “stopping to spray nearby vegetation with her urine,” she is also stopping to catalogue “the messages left by her competitors” (43-4). The semi-permanence of scent (as opposed to communication by sight, sound, or movement) allows for the depiction of a bodily ‘language.’ Importantly, Lawrence differentiates between the odours left inadvertently by an animal’s mere presence, and those left as intentional communication: “As the female entered the valley, she detected a number of other scents. Grizzly bears had recently travelled the male puma’s trails; so had wolves, and wolverines. All had left their identifiable odors” (24). As these scents may have been messages between members of each species, the puma cannot decode them, and so she merely makes a catalogue of presences. Alternatively, Lawrence describes the format of the intentional messages left by individuals of her own species: As she herself did, members of her species invariably left markers that advertised their claim to a range. These included urine sprays on rocks and trees and fecal mounds, which were made by raking earth and debris over their droppings. Such mounds are always present at the Allmark-Kent 186 junction of puma trails, a dozen or more being usual in such locations, the most recent giving off the most powerful scent. (147) The careful positioning of urine sprays —and the construction and location of faecal mounds, in particular —indicate intentionality. For instance, the tawny puma protects her food by urinating nearby “to mark her ownership of the carcass,” (96) while both mounds and sprays are essential communication for mating: “she entered the range of a large male lion, knowing of his presence by the debris- covered scent mounds,” (23) “he backed off and sprayed urine against the hillock […] [She] sniffed at the urine intently” (25). This defamiliarizing use of excrement, which aids the construction of a nonhuman perspective, is largely absent from the earlier texts —although we do encounter it in Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone. It reveals a certain level of intelligence and autonomy, while also building the richest and most complex image of nonhuman networks seen in any wild ani mal narrative. Lawrence’s animal landscape is not ‘empty,’ it is densely layered with animal messages in a variety of zoocentric, bodily languages. It is significant that Lawrence’s pumas cannot interpret the intentional, bodily messages of other species. He resists the anthropocentric myth that all nonhumans can communicate across species boundaries —as if all ‘speak’ a universal ‘animal language’—and imagines how different animals would decode each other’s scent, vocalizations, and body language. As indicated above, for instance, the tawny puma cannot ‘read’ the messages of bears, wolves, or wolverines, but she can still gain information from their scent trails. This cross- species communication becomes more complex, however, when we consider body language and vocalization. The abrupt silence of otherwise noisy birds, intended to signal extreme danger to each other, carries meaning for other species: Allmark-Kent 187 The absence of their almost continuous melodies had been the signal to all animals in the area, for during the daylight hours the tiny and extremely cautious songsters still their collective voices only when they are greatly alarmed. […] The puma had been waiting for the birds to resume their calls. When they did so, she was totally convinced that all was well. (128) While the birds have little intention of communicating with the puma, who certainly would be unable to understand the content of the calls, information necessary for survival is transmitted and decoded, nonetheless. This ability to observe and comprehend the signals of other species is also vital for the puma’s success as a predator: His labored respiration, his thin body and stiffened legs, and the awkward way in which he bent his long neck to reach the water were all noted by the cougars as they sighted their quarry. The moose was obviously old and in poor condition. (162) The puma’s knowledge and experience allow her to ‘read’ the behaviour and body language of her prey, enabling her to target, directly, the ill or injured members of the herd: Taken as a whole, these signals caused the cat to select the laggard as her target, for, like all predators when given the choice of several prey animals at a time, she invariably chose the one whose behavior and condition demonstrated physical weakness or emotional distress. (135) Interestingly, unlike the authors of other wild animal narratives, Lawrence indicates that the predator’s ability to choose carefully can be beneficial to prey animal. After the death of the old moose described above, for instance, Lawrence explains he was “twenty years old,” “arthritic,” and riddled with parasites (164). Describing these in grim detail, as well as the long death that would have taken “seven or eight days,” during which the moose would have been deprived of “reason, causing him to run staggering and aimless through the wilderness, smashing into trees and rocks and charging imaginary enemies,” Lawrence concludes: “Death by the fangs and claws of three pumas, although violent and gory, released him quickly” (164). Thus, Lawrence Allmark-Kent 188 demonstrates that the inadvertent transfer of basic information across species — the moose’s body language signalling his condition as “poor” to the pumas— can be beneficial to both predator and prey, as well as individuals and populations. As such, Lawrence’s rich networks of meaningful interaction yield a much more complex predator-prey relationship than we find depicted in the other texts. Indeed this is one of the few major differences between The White Puma and the original wild animal stories. Unlike Lawrence, Seton and Roberts emphasized the serendipity or random chance of natural selection —rarely did their predators make choices . Instead, Lawrence’s more ecological perspective indicates the potential benefits of predators to both individuals and groups; almost every animal killed by his protagonists is old, diseased, or injured, for instance. Likewise, he explains the ecology of population fluctuations, the “cycles of feast and famine,” in which the highs and lows of predator and prey species a re interconnected: “In this way nature, when undisturbed by humans, has been attaining the natural balance for untold thousands of years” (55). Moreover, he also incorporates the relationship between prey, predator, and scavenger by providing details of all the animals able to feed from one deer killed by the tawny puma: “seven ravens,” “a red fox,” “two coyotes,” “[t]wo weasels,” “a striped skunk,” and even “mice, shrews, and insects” (58). “By first light the next morning,” Lawrence adds, “there was little left of the buck,” and even his “marrow” and “sinew” were providing nourishment to these creatures. Of course, this ecological approach also aids our ability to empathize with a carnivorous protagonist, which (ironically) can be uneasy. Hence both Seton ’s and Roberts’ tendency to objectify the prey animal when writing from a predator’s perspective or else focus on the chase rather than the consumption. Allmark-Kent 189 Lawrence, on the other hand, describes his pumas killing and eating other animals with unflinching detail, and so his lengthy explanations of ecology and the benefits of predators are vital if he is to challenge the construction of pumas as ‘vermin.’ Indeed, much of the human narrative is used to expose, and defamiliarize, the construction of the puma as ‘vermin,’ ‘trophy,’ and ‘man-eater.’ All three are used to legitimize the actions of humans wishing to hunt pumas but, most importantly, Lawrence reveals the ease with which these labels can be used interchangeably to suit the individual’s needs. For instance, the fetishization of the white puma’s albinism constructs his fur as a uniquely valuable trophy: “Now the usually taciturn man began to babble aloud to himself, alternately cursing and expressing wonder. ‘Hol-ly hell! A white cat! . . . Jee-suss! Worth a fortune . . . a fortune! Hell . . . just wait till Walt hears; ’” “Taggart, relaxed and beery, let slip that he knew where to find a pure white puma. […] ‘What? A white puma? I must have that! I can pay well for it” (197, 221). Likewise, when the puma’s tawny mother and sister are killed, Cousins and Taggart see only trophies to be sold: Just before entering the forest, he stopped and turned to look at Taggart, who was now standing over the dead cat, one booted toe under her head, lifting it. ‘I’m going to get the mounts. You want to start skinning, go ahead.’ […] When Cousins returned with the horses, Taggart had already skinned the young puma. The pelt, with paws and head attached, was folded up, a blood-stained bundle that lay beside the naked and bleeding corpse. The younger man paid but scant attention to the d ead animal’s mutilated remains. (174) Their casual tones juxtapose the gruesomeness of the scene. 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