“SAM SLICK”

Forest and Bird, Issue 54, 1 November 1939, Page 13

“SAM SLICK”

(By Hugh Ross)

4 4 of these days, my lad,” prophesied Vx the man on the breaking-down bench, “you’ll get one of your toes caught in a strand of that wire rope and get wound up in the winch. That’s what will happen to you!” “Sam Slick” ignored the grim warning. Indeed it is very doubtful if he so much as heard the words. His mind was on other things. The screaming saws, clatter of raw timber, thunder of rolling logs, voices issuing instructions: they were the merest trivialities compared with that faintly wriggling something that might be a grub down the skidway. “Sam” leaned far forward peering intently while the wire rope upon which he perched drew his unheeding body ever nearer the winch as it strained to the task of pulling three red-pine logs off the tractor trolly. Ah-h! The tomtit’s descent upon his prey and the rolling crash of falling logs concurred. From beneath the heavy bulk of a moving trunk he snatched the grub and, like a black streak, was gone to perch on the mill roof, where he killed and devoured his catch in leisure. A scant half-minute, and he was back again. “Sam Slick” had come to be regarded by the men as part and parcel of the mill. One looked upon his rounded pleasant form in the same manner as he looked upon the inevitable necessities of the day’s work. Perched solemnly upon rope or log, that perky black and yellow* bird appeared no more incongruous in that environment than did an axe, a cross-cut saw or one of the numerous canthooks placed ready to hand. And from “Sam Slick’s” point of view? Well, I’m pretty sure that “Sam” regarded everything from the tractor to the winch, and from the winch to the breaking-down bench, together with the logs and the men who handled them, as being unanimously congregated for the sole purpose of assuring an endless supply of grubs for his delight. Certainly he did his utmost to cope with the plentiful supply. “Grubs?” said the quick flick of tail and wings. “Grubs! I eat ’em alive!” I am very certain, however, that the merci*Black and yellow in South Island, black and white in North Island.

less punishment he dealt “em” before he did eat them left the captured snacks very dead. How “ Sam Slick ” did work! He was at his post and “going it” before we arrived in the morning, and he toiled on for long hours after the mill stopped at night. At intervals he deserted the skids for a scouting trip through the mill as though he never could quite satisfy himself that there wasn’t a better hunting ground just round the corner. A moment he would spend viewing the deserted roadway and the timber yard. Again the jerk of wings and tail to express lofty contempt. “Grubs,” he seemed to say to the yard-men, “you don’t know the first thing about hunting them. Follow me and take g lesson. I tell you they have got you licked hollow,” and off he would go. Sometimes over the roof, but mostly back through the mill, taking absolutely no heed of fast-running belts or noise of a high-pitched, howling breast-saw. Part and parcel of the mill! Say rather that “Sam Slick” owned the mill. He was so continually present that we, for the most part, failed to realise his importanceuntil that day he disappeared. Then we missed him and oft was raised the query, “Where’s ‘Sam Slick’?” No one could answer. He simply was not there, and that was all there was about it. So we drew the only possible conclusion dead. He must have been killed; else he would have been here for his grubs.” The next morning as we clustered round the boiler waiting for the whistle we had evidence which indicated that poor “Sam Slick” actually was dead. We found beneath the fire box a small mongrel cat; dead too, as it happened. What had killed it we never knew; but mostly we contented ourselves with the thought that it was but iustice done for the slaying of “Sam Slick.” “Sneaking devil of a cat killed him all right,” one of the men said. “ ‘Sam’ was just a bit too tame.” We gathered round the body of the cat. None could identify it. Puss was picked up by the tail and dropped into the fire box. That afternoon, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of some moving shape. Turning about I was confronted by “Sam Slick”with a grub. Whither he had gone

or where he came from, none of us knew, and “Sam” offered no explanation. He must merely have decided upon a short holiday and left without farewell. It was thought that the cat had tried to stalk “Sam Slick,” and that the stray animal—an enemy of native —had suffered the fate intended for the tom-tit.

“Sam” still bosses the mill. For weeks and months he has haunted those skids, growing ever fatter from his feeds of grubs. Of private affairs he evidently has none; he doesn’t seem to have a sweetheart or wife. He hasn’t time for such trivialities, his head and wing flips seem to say. No time at all. He is much too busy hunting grubs.