Goose Eye No. 1 (2021)
Personal Narrative
The Cat from Goose Eye Mountain
Leroy C. Noyes
The following account was written by Leroy Clifford Noyes in 1998. The mounted Canadian Lynx is now in the collections of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society, having been donated by the author in October of 1999. Mr. Noyes passed away on January 31, 2020, at the age of 95.
Darkness settles early in the afternoon in Maine in late December. On this December day, the twilight was fading fast along the Canadian border, and the first few flakes of snow heralded the approach of a gathering storm. On Goose Eye Mountain, it had been cold and stormy since early November. To the west, the notches of the White Mountains were already impassable with ice and deep drifts of snow. To the east, below the peaks of the Mahoosuc Range, the inhabitants of the Sunday River Valley prepared for the night and another storm.
From under the eastern brow of Old Speck in Grafton Notch, Goose Eye Mountain looked down on a tiny gaggle of houses scattered along Bull Branch which was called Ketchum. Here, in the high peaks surrounding Ketchum was the usual home of the cat. However, this winter he had been forced lower and lower down from the mountain tops in search of food. Now, near the base of Goose Eye Mountain, the big cat snarled his defiance of man and the elements. However, as the night darkness grew and needles of snow began to drive in on the biting north winds of the storm, the snarls became mixed with cries of pain and hunger for the cat was very cold, very hungry and hurt.
The cat had hunted the upper mountain for days without success. Finally, as the pangs of hunger overcame his instinctive fear of man, he decided to move down the slopes even closer to the farms in the valley. Experience told him that the farm animals were defenseless against the savage attack of his knifelike claws, and his belly told him that he must have food to survive.
Slowly and deliberately, the cat worked his way down the rocky, slippery crags and then through the spruce and hemlock canopy. He was searching for anything that might ease his pangs of hunger and provide the strength to weather the coming storm. However, both the mountain and the farmer's pasture below it were deserted. The mice and rabbits had long since holed up for the night, the deer and partridge had gone down to their winter quarters in the swamps below and the farmer had put his cattle and sheep in the barn for the winter.
Cautiously testing the wind for scent of his prey or that of his enemy, the farmer, the cat made his way silently through the snow on big padded feet. He was headed toward the spring in the corner of the pasture where he had killed a fat sheep the previous fall. The spring was located near the intersection of two old stone walls. Here the protection of the evergreen forest gave way to low alder bushes and bits of grassy field where the cattle and sheep ate and drank their fill in warmer weather.
Because of the open land, the cat's wariness increased as he approached the spring. Leaving the protection of the trees, he jumped down onto one of the walls and picked his way along the rocks. Reaching the point on the wall nearest the spring, he dropped into the snow on the ground and headed for the water that he could hear gurgling beneath the ice a short distance away. Suddenly, the snow exploded beneath his feet and the iron jaws of the farmer's trap seized his right hind leg in their relentless grip. Frantically, the cat chewed at his leg, trying to release himself from the grip of the trap, and broke the silence of his hunt with mixed cries of pain and hunger.
At dusk, on the farm by the river, the farmer completed his early chores, left his son in the barn, and headed for the kitchen where his wife was preparing the evening meal. As usual, he savored the sweet smells of supper in preparation, took off his hat and frock and, by the warmth of the cook stove, lay down on the couch for a short nap before his meal. Instantly he was sound asleep and needed the rest to furnish strength for the evening chores for he was not well. Suddenly, the farmer awoke from his sleep, sat bolt upright on the couch and told his wife to call the boy in from the barn where he was finishing his chores. In a dream, the farmer had seen a vision of a cat caught in the trap by the pasture spring. When the boy came in, the farmer directed him to hurry, fill the lantern and fetch his rifle.
The boy was 12, going on 13, big for his age and already a skilled hunter. His father had given him a Hopkins and Allen, .22 caliber, single shot rifle for his tenth birthday and he had learned to shoot it with deadly accuracy. Hunting and fishing were normal ways of supplementing the family diet, and he was not afraid of any animal in the woods.
However, when told to take the light and go kill the cat, the boy protested. It was a long, hard trip on snowshoes through the cold and stormy night, to the spring. Furthermore, he and his mother agreed that his father's vision of the trapped cat was only a dream that could be proven as well in the light of morning after the storm had gone.
But the farmer knew that he had "seen" a big Canadian Lynx with bells of fur on his ears, caught by his right-hind-foot in the trap by the spring. He had also seen that the cat had chewed at its leg until only a tendon held the foot and that by morning it would be too late to get the animal. So he silenced the boy and his mother and told him to leave immediately.
Knowing that his father would not change his mind, the boy pulled on his boots and heavy clothing, then picked up his lantern and rifle and headed awkwardly on his snowshoes out into the dark toward the pasture. Surprisingly, as he approached the spring the sounds of the injured cat could be heard through the snowy night above the winds of the storm.
The snow dimmed the feeble light of the lantern and kept him from seeing the source of the spine-chilling sounds until he was almost upon the cat. The boy bravely but cautiously approached the cat with his rifle at the ready. Then, sensing his human enemy, the cat raised his head for a scream of defiance, and the boy killed it with a single shot.
Quickly, the boy reloaded his rifle and edged in to make sure that the animal was dead. Amazingly, the boy found the scene exactly as his father had described it from his dream. It was a Canadian Lynx, caught in the trap by the right hind foot that was held to the leg by only a tendon. With one shot, he had gotten the marauder that had been killing the cattle in the valley for so long.
Satisfied that the cat was dead and would do no more harm, he freed the animal from the trap, slung it across his shoulders with his rifle and proudly made his way back through the storm to show it to his father. Later that night, after the big cat had been displayed to his family, it was frozen in the snow to keep it to show to the neighbors and for the taxidermist who would mount it as proof that his father's vision was not just a dream.
This is the true story of the cat from Goose Eye Mountain as it was told to me so many times by the people that were there. The farmer was my maternal grandfather, Leroy Sunderland Stowe, and the boy was my uncle, Omar Eldon Stowe. The year was 1897, about 100 years after my ancestors settled in the valley.
My grandfather was trying to scratch out a living from the homestead his grandfather had built out of the wilderness. The barn is gone, but the house is still there today. It is almost at the end of the road that leads up the Sunday River from Highway 5 and 26 as it winds along the Androscoggin River toward Rumford between the villages of Bethel and Newry. You will find it on the right, just before the turn to the Outward Bound School above the Sunday River Ski area.
I still have the little Hopkins and Allen .22 caliber rifle that my Uncle gave to me on my tenth birthday, and the mounted Canadian Lynx that he shot that night is above his gun cabinet in our hall. If you look carefully, you will see the damage to the right hind leg, for this is the lynx that appeared to my grandfather in a dream.
