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Cornell Aniversity Library

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME ~
FROM THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND
THE GIFT OF

Henry W. Sage

1891

 

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Books bp John Burroughs.

WORKS. Each volume, 16mo, gilt top, $1.25; the set,
11 vols., uniform, $13.75; half calf, gilt top, $27.50;
half polished morocco, $30.25.

Wake-Ropsin.

WINTER SUNSHINE.

Locusts anp Witp Honey.

Frasu FIevps.

Inpoor Stupizs.

Birps anp Ports, with Other Papers.

Pepacron, and Other Sketches.

Sicns AND SEASONS.

Riversy.

Wuitman: A Stupy.

Tue Licut or Day: Religious Discussions and
Criticisms from the Standpoint of.a Naturalist.

A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate
to each season of the year, from the writings of John
Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CuiF-
‘ton JoHNsoN. Uniform with the Riverside Edition
of Burroughs’s works. 12mo, $1.50.

WHITMAN: A Study. Riverside Edition. 12m0, $1.50,
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THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and
Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist. 7zv-
erside Edition, x2mo, $1.50, net.

WAKE-ROBIN. Riverside Aldine Series. 16mo, $1.00.

SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illus-
trated. Square 12mo, $1.00.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
Boston anp New York.

 

 
 

. (Page 58)

RED FOX.
SQUIRRELS

~ AND
OTHER FUR-BEARERS

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN
COLORS AFTER AUDUBON, AND
A FRONTISPIECE FROM LIFE

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
@he Riverside press, Cambridge
1900

K
RNAV SAS
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY JOHN BURROUGHS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

eg
CONTENTS

OHAP, :
I. Squmrre.s
II. THe CaipMung .
Il. Tue Woopcuuck . i
IV. Tue Rassir AND THE Hees
VY. Tue Muskrat :
VI. Tue Sxunk
VIL. Tue Fox.
VIII. Tae WeaAsEL
IX. Tue Minx
X. Toe Raccoon
XI. Tue Porourme . 7 7
’ XIL Tae Orossom
XIII. Wirp Mice
XIV. Guuesses or WILD —
XV. A Lirs or Fear
InpDEXx

PAGE

15
32
38
43,

53
72
90
94.
98
106

' 11

125
185
145
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Rep Fox (page 58) . 7 . . + .« Frontispiece
Frying SquirRREL . ‘ . * . a ‘ . 4
Gray SquirREL ‘ 8
CaipMUNK «ee ewe 18
Woopcuuck ‘j e ‘i 4 ‘ te : ; - 84
Gray Ragerr 5 ; 7 a - ‘ 5 : : 40
MuskRAT . é é ‘ : - . 7 ; : - 46
Skunk . ‘ é 3 3 * ‘i : é s 3 50
WEASEL. . - ; ‘ ‘ 5 ‘ ‘ 7 . 4
Mink “ 2 % 5 * ‘ fe a: P : ¥ 90
Raccoon . . ; Z * ‘ - 2 ‘ ‘ - 96
Porcurnne . ‘ a , 5 5 3 3 é ‘ 102
Opossum. ‘ ‘ ‘ i ‘ . ‘ : j » 108
WritE-Footep Mouse . ‘ ‘ 5 r ‘ : 3 112
Jumpinc Mouse : Fy : . 3 5 i : - 120

Rep SquIRREL “ - . x 5 a é é ‘ 136
SQUIRRELS AND OTHER
FUR-BEARERS

I
‘SQUIRRELS

Wa kine through the early October woods
one day, I came upon a place where the ground
was thickly strewn with very large unopened
chestnut burrs. On examination I found that
every burr had been cut square off with about
an inch of the stem adhering, and not one had
been left on the tree. It was not accident,
then, but design. Whose design? <A squirrel’s.
The fruit was the finest I had ever seen in the
woods, and some wise squirrel had marked it for
his own. The burrs were ripe, and had just
begun to divide. The squirrel that had taken
all this pains had evidently reasoned with himself
thus: “Now, these are extremely fine chestnuts,
and I want them; if I wait till the burrs open
on the tree, the crows and jays will be sure to
carry off a great many of the nuts before they
2 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

fall; then, after the wind has rattled out what
remain, there are the mice, the chipmunks, the
red squirrels, the raccoons, the grouse, to say
nothing of the boys and the pigs, to come in for
their share; so I will forestall events a little: I
will cut off the burrs when they have matured,
and a few days of this dry October weather will
cause every one of them to open on the ground ;
I shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather
up my nuts.” The squirrel, of course, had to
take the chances of a prowler like myself coming
along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his
neighbors. As I proceeded to collect and open
the burrs, I was half prepared to hear an audible
protest from the trees about, for I constantly
fancied myself watched by shy but jealous eyes.
It is an interesting inquiry how the squirrel knew
the burrs would open if left to lie on the ground
a few days. Perhaps he did not know, but
thought the experiment worth trying.

One reason, doubtless, why squirrels are so
bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is
that, if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain
no injury. Every species of tree-squirrel seems
to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,—
at least of making itself into a parachute, so as
to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height.
SQUIRRELS 3

The so-called flying squirrel does this the most
perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps
into the air, and sails down the steep incline from
the top of one tree to the foot of the next as
lightly as a bird. But other squirrels know the
same trick, only their coat-skirts are not so broad.
One day my dog treed a red squirrel in a tall
hickory that stood in a meadow on the side of a
steep hill. To see what the squirrel would do
when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I
drew near he took refuge in the topmost branch,
and then, as I came on, he boldly leaped into the
air, spread ‘himself out upon it, and, with a quick,
tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended
quite slowly and landed upon the ground thirty
feet below me, apparently none the worse for the
leap, for he ran with great speed and eluding the
dog took refuge in another tree.

A recent American traveler in Mexico gives a
still more striking instance of this power of squir-
rels partially to neutralize the force of gravity
when leaping or falling through the air. Some
boys had caught a Mexican black squirrel, nearly
as large asacat. It had escaped from them once, .
and, when pursued, had taken a leap of sixty feet,
from the top of a pine-tree down upon the roof
of a house, without injury. This feat had led
the grandmother of one of the boys to declare
4 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

that the squirrel was bewitched, and the boys
proposed to put the matter to further test by
throwing the squirrel down a precipice six hun-
dred feet high. Our traveler interfered, to see
that the squirrel had fair play. The prisoner
was conveyed in a pillow-slip to the edge of the
cliff, and the slip opened, so that he might have
his choice, whether to remain a captive or to take
the leap. He looked down the awful abyss, and
then back and sidewise,— his eyes glistening,
his form crouching. Seeing no. escape in any
other direction, “ he took a flying leap into space,
and fluttered rather than fell into the abyss below.
His legs began to work like those of a swimming
poodle-dog, but quicker and quicker, while his
tail, slightly elevated, spread out like a feather
fan. A rabbit of the same weight would have
made the trip in about twelve seconds; the squir-
rel protracted it for more than half a minute,”
and “landed on a ledge of limestone, where we
could see him plainly squat on his hind legs and
smooth his ruffled fur, after which he made for
the creek with a flourish of his tail, took a good
drink, and scampered away into the willow
thicket.”

The story at first blush seems incredible, but
I have no doubt our red squirrel would have
made the leap safely; then why not the great
 

 

 

 

FLYING SQUIRREL

.
SQUIRRELS 5

black squirrel, since its parachute would be pro-
portionately large ?

The tails of the squirrels are broad and long
and flat, not short and small like those of go-
phers, chipmunks, woodchucks, and other ground
rodents, and when they leap or fall through the
air the tail is arched and rapidly vibrates. A
squirrel’s tail, therefore, is something more than
ornament, something more than a flag; it not
only aids him in flying, but it serves as a cloak,
which he wraps about him when he sleeps.

In making the flying leap I have described
the animals’ legs are widely#extended, their bodies
broadened and flattened, the tail stiffened and

slightly curved, and a curious tremulous motion
~ runs through all. It is very obvious that a delib-
erate attempt is made to present the broadest sur-
face possible to the air, and I think a red squirrel
might leap from almost any height to the ground
without serious injury. Our flying squirrel is
in no proper sense a flyer. On the ground he
is more helpless than a chipmunk, because less
agile. He can only sail or slide down a steep
incline from the top of one tree to the foot of
another. The flying squirrel is active only at
night; hence its large, soft eyes, its soft fur, and
its gentle, shrinking ways. It is the gentlest
and most harmless of our rodents. A pair of
6 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

‘them for two or three successive years had their
nest behind the blinds of an upper window of a
large, unoccupied country-house near me. You
could stand in the room inside and observe the
happy family through the window pane against
which their nest pressed. There on the window
sill lay a pile of large, shining chestnuts, which
they were evidently holding against a time of
scarcity, as the pile did not diminish while I ob-
served them. The nest was composed of cotton
and wool which they filched from a bed in one of
the chambers, and it was always a mystery how
they got into the room to obtain it. There seemed
to be no other avenue but the chimney flue.

Red and gray squirrels are more or less active
all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined
to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here
a gray one has just passed, — came down that
tree and went up this; there he dug for a beech-
nut, and left the burr on the snow. How did
he know where to dig? During an unusually
severe winter I have known him to make long
journeys to a barn, in a remote field, where
wheat was stored. How did he know there was
wheat there? In attempting to return, the ad-
venturous creature was frequently run down and
caught in the deep snow.
SQUIRRELS 7

His home is in the trunk of some old birch or
maple, with an entrance far up amid the branches.
In the spring he builds himself a summer-house
of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighbor-
ing beech, where the young are reared and much
of the time passed. But the safer retreat in the
maple is not abandoned, and both old and young
resort thither in the fall, or when danger threat-
ens. Whether this temporary residence amid
the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for
sanitary reasons or domestic convenience, the
naturalist has forgotten to mention.

The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits,
so graceful in its carriage, so nimble and daring
in its movements, excites feelings of admiration
akin to those awakened by the birds and the
fairer forms of nature. His passage through the
trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the flying squir-
rel has little or no advantage over him, and in
speed and nimbleness cannot compare with him
at all. If he miss his footing and fall, he is sure
to catch on the next branch ; if the connection
be broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest
spray or limb, and secures his hold, even if it be
by the aid of his teeth.

His career of frolic and festivity begins in the
fall, after the birds have left us and the holi-
day spirit of nature has commenced to subside.
8 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

How much his presence adds to the pleasure of |
a saunter in the still October woods. You step
lightly across the threshold of the forest, and
sit down upon the first log or rock to await the
signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems
to have acquired new powers, and there is no
movement to confuse the eye. Presently you
hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or
spring as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or
else you hear a disturbance in the dry leaves,
and mark one running upon the ground. He
has probably seen, the intruder, and, not liking
his stealthy movements, desires to avoid a nearer
acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see
if the way is clear, then pauses a moment at the
foot of a tree to take his bearings, his tail as he
skims along undulating behind him, and adding
to the easy grace and dignity of his movements.
Or else you are first advised of his proximity by
the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of
the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again,
after contemplating you a while unobserved, and
making up his mind that you are not dangerous,
he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences
to quack and bark, with an accompanying move-
ment of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when
the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are
repeated. There is a black variety, quite ‘rare,
 

 

 

 

 

GRAY SQUIRREL
SQUIRRELS 9

but mating freely with the gray, from which it
seems to be distinguished only in color.

The red squirrel is more common and less
dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of
petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.
He is most abundant in mixed oak, chestnut, and
hemlock woods, from which he makes excursions
to the fields and orchards, spinning along the
tops of the fences, which afford not only con-
venient lines of communication, but a safe re-
treat if danger threatens. He loves to linger
about the orchard; and, sitting upright on the
topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake
in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds,
his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his
paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a
pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance
atones for all the mischief he does. At home,
in the woods, he is very frolicsome and loqua-
cious. The appearance of anything unusual, if,
after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it
not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and
ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able
to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of
a tree and squealing in derision, then hopping
into position on a limb and dancing to the music
of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit.
10 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

There is something very human in this appar-
ent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems
to. be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-
conscious pride and exultation in the laugher.
“‘ What a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure!”
he seems to say; “how clumsy and awkward,
and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me,
look at me! ”’ —and he capers about in his best
style. Again, he would seem to tease you and
provoke your attention ; then suddenly assumes
a tone of good-natured, childlike defiance and
derision. That pretty little imp, the chipmunk,
will sit on the stone above his den and defy you,
as plainly as if he said so, to catch him before
he can get into his hole if you can.

A hard winter affects the chipmunks very
little ; they are snug and warm in their burrows
in the ground and under the rocks, with a boun-
tiful store of nuts or grain. I have heard of
nearly a half-bushel of chestnuts being taken |
from a single den. They usually hole up in No-
vember, and do not come out again till March or
April, unless the winter is very open and mild.
Gray squirrels, when they have been partly do-
mesticated in parks and groves near dwellings,
are said to hide their nuts here and there upon
the ground, and in winter to dig them up from
SQUIRRELS 11

beneath the snow, always hitting the spot ac-
curately.

The red squirrel lays up no stores like the pro-
vident chipmunk, but scours about for food in
all weathers, feeding upon the seeds in the cones
of the hemlock that still cling to the tree, upon
sumac-bobs, and the seeds of frozen apples. I
have seen the ground under a wild apple-tree
that stood near the woods completely covered
with the “ chonkings’’ of the frozen apples, the
work of the squirrels in getting at the seeds ; not
an apple had been left, and apparently not a
- seed had been lost. But the squirrels in this
particular locality evidently got pretty hard up
before spring, for they developed a new source
of food-supply. A young bushy-topped sugar-
maple, about forty feet high, standing beside a
stone fence near the woods, was attacked, and
more than half denuded of its bark. The ob-
ject of the squirrels seemed to be to get at the
soft, white, mucilaginous substance (cambium
layer) between the bark and the wood. The
ground was covered with fragments of the bark,
and the white, naked stems and branches had
been scraped by fine teeth. When the sap starts
in the early spring, the squirrels add this to their
scanty supplies. They perforate the bark of the
branches of the maples with their chisel-like
12. SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

teeth, and suck the sweet liquid as it slowly
oozes out. It is not much as food, but evidently
it helps.

I have said the red squirrel does not lay by a
store of food for winter use, like the chipmunk
and the wood-mice ; yet: in the fall he sometimes
hoards in a tentative, temporary kind of way. I
have seen his savings — butternuts and black
walnuts — stuck here and there in saplings and
trees near his nest ; sometimes carefully inserted
in the upright fork of a limb or twig. One day,
late in November, I counted a dozen or more
black walnuts put away in this manner in a
little grove of locusts, chestnuts, and maples by
the roadside, and could but smile at the wise
forethought of the rascally squirrel. His sup-
plies were probably safer that way than if more
elaborately hidden. They were well distributed ;
his eggs were not all in one basket, and he could
go away from home without any fear that his
storehouse would be broken into in his absence.
The next week, when I passed that way, the
nuts were all gone but two. I saw the squirrel
that doubtless laid claim to them, on each oc-
casion.

There is one thing the red squirrel knows un-
erringly that I do not (there are probably several
other things) ; that is, on which side of the but-
SQUIRRELS 13

ternut the meat lies. He always gnaws through
the shell so as to strike the kernel broadside, and
thus easily extract it; while to my eyes there is
no external mark or indication, in the form or
appearance of the nut, as there is in the hickory-
nut, by which I can tell whether the edge or the
side of the meat is toward me. But examine any
number of nuts that the squirrels have rifled,
and, as a rule, you will find they always drill
through the shell at the one spot where the meat
will be most exposed. Occasionally one makes
a mistake, but not often. It stands them in
hand to know, and they do know. Doubtless,.
if butternuts were a main source of my food,
and I were compelled to gnaw into them, I
should learn, too, on which side my bread was
buttered.

The cheeks of the red and gray squirrels are
made without pockets, and whatever they trans-
port is carried in the teeth. They are more or
less active all winter, but October and November
are their festal months. Invade some butter-
nut or hickory grove on a frosty October morn-
ing, and hear the red squirrel beat the “juba”
on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively jig,
what the boys call a “ regular break-down,” in-
terspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive
laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about
14 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind
of duet. In other words, by some ventriloquial
tricks, he appears to accompany himself, as if his
voice split up, a part forming a low guttural
sound, and a part a shrill nasal sound.
II
THE CHIPMUNK.

Tue first chipmunk in March is as sure a
token of the spring as the first bluebird or the
first robin, and is quite as welcome. Some
genial influence has found him out there in his
burrow, deep under the ground, and waked him
up, and enticed him forth into the light of day.
The red squirrel has been more or less active all
winter ; his track has dotted the surface of every
new-fallen snow throughout the season. But the
chipmunk retired from view early in December,
and has passed the rigorous months in his nest,
beside his hoard of nuts, some feet underground,
and hence, when he emerges in March, and is
seen upon his little journeys along the fences, or
perched upon a log or rock near his hole in the
woods, it is another sign that spring is at hand.
His store of nuts may or may not be all con-
sumed ; it is certain that he is no sluggard, to
sleep away these first bright warm days.

Before the first crocus is out of the ground,
you may look for the first chipmunk. When
16 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

I hear the little downy woodpecker begin his
spring drumming, then I know the chipmunk
is due. He cannot sleep after that challenge of
the woodpecker reaches his ear. _

Apparently the first thing he does on coming
forth, as soon as he is sure of himself, is to go
courting. So far as I have observed, the love-
making of the chipmunk occurs in March. A
single female will attract all the males in the
vicinity. One early March day I was at work
for several hours near a stone fence, where a
female had apparently taken up her quarters.
What a train of suitors she had that day! how
they hurried up and down, often giving each
other a spiteful slap or bite as they passed. The
young are born in May, four or five at a birth.

The chipmunk is quite a solitary creature; I
have never known more than one to occupy the
_ same den. Apparently no two can agree to live
together. What a clean, pert, dapper, nervous
little fellow he is! How fast his heart beats, as
he stands up on the wall by the roadside, and,
with hands spread out upon his breast, regards
you intently! A movement of your arm, and
he darts into the wall with a saucy chip-r-r,
which has the effect of slamming the door be-
hind hin.

On some still day in autumn, one of the nutty
THE CHIPMUNK 17

days, the woods will often be pervaded by an
undertone of sound, produced by their multi-
tudinous clucking, as they sit near their dens.
It is one of the characteristic sounds of fall.

I was much amused one October in watching a
chipmunk carry nuts and other food into his den.
He had made a well-defined path from his door
out through the weeds and dry leaves into the ter-
ritory where his feeding-ground lay. The path
was a crooked one; it dipped under weeds, under
some large, loosely piled stones, under a pile of
chestnut posts, and then followed the remains of
an old wall. Going and coming, his motions
were like clock-work. He always went by spurts
and sudden sallies. He was never for one mo-
ment off his guard. He would appear at the
mouth of his den, look quickly about, take a
few leaps to a tussock of grass, pause a breath
with one foot raised, slip quickly a few yards
over some dry leaves, pause again by a stump
beside a path, rush across the path to the pile of
loose stones, go under the first and over the sec-
ond, gain the pile of posts, make his way through
that, survey his course a half moment from the
other side of it, and then dart on to some other
cover, and presently beyond my range, where I
think he gathered acorns, as there were no other
nut-bearing trees than oaks near. In four or
18 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

five minutes I would see him coming back, always
keeping rigidly to the course he took going out,
pausing at the same spots, darting over or under
the same objects, clearing at a bound the same
pile of leaves. There was no variation in his
- manner of proceeding all the time I observed
him.

He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly me-
thodical. He had found safety in a certain
course, and he did not at any time deviate a
hair’s breadth from it. Something seemed to
say to him all the time, “Beware, beware!”
The nervous, impetuous ways of these creatures
are no doubt the result of the life of fear which
they lead.

My chipmunk had no companion. He lived all
by himself in true hermit fashion, as is usually
the case with this squirrel. Provident creature
that he is, one would think that he would long ago -
have discovered that heat, and therefore food, is
economized by two or three nesting together.

One day in early spring, a chipmunk that lived
near me met with a terrible adventure, the
memory of which will probably be handed down
through many generations of its family. I was
sitting in the summer-house with Nig the cat
upon my knee, when the chipmunk came out of
its den a few feet away, and ran quickly to a
 

 

CHIPMUNK
THE CHIPMUNK 19

pile of chestnut posts about twenty yards from
where I sat. Nig saw it, and was off my lap
upon the floor in an instant. I spoke sharply
to the cat, when she sat down and folded her
paws under her, and regarded the squirrel, as I
thought, with only a dreamy kind of interest.
I fancied she thought it a hopeless case there
amid that pile of posts. “That is not your game,
Nig,” I said, “‘so spare yourself any anxiety.”
Just then I was called to the house, where I was
detained about five minutes., As I returned I
met Nig coming to the house with the chipmunk
in her mouth. She had the air of one who had
wona wager. She carried the chipmunk by the
throat, and its body hung limp from her mouth. |
I quickly took the squirrel from her, and reproved
her sharply. It lay in my hand asif dead, though
I saw no marks of the cat’s teeth upon it. Pre-
sently it gasped for its breath, then again and
again. I saw that the cat had simply choked it.
Quickly the film passed off its eyes, its heart
began visibly to beat, and slowly the breathing
became regular. I carried it back, and laid it
down in the door of its den. In a moment it
crawled or kicked itself in. In the afternoon I
placed a handful of corn there, to express my
sympathy, and as far as possible make amends
for Nig’s cruel treatment.
20 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS
Not till four or five days had passed did my

little neighbor emerge again from its den, and
then only for a moment. That terrible black
monster with the large green-yellow eyes, — it
might be still lurking near. How the black
monster had captured the alert and restless squir-
rel so quickly, under the circumstances, was a
. great mystery tome. Was not its eye as sharp
as the cat’s, and its movements as quick? Yet
cats do have the secret of catching squirrels, and
birds, and mice, but I have never yet had the
luck to see it done.

It was not very long before the chipmunk was
going to and from her den as usual, though the
dread of the black monster seemed ever before
her, and gave speed and extra alertness to all
her movements. In early summer four young
chipmunks emerged from the den, and ran freely
about. There was nothing to disturb them, for,
alas! Nig herself was now dead.

One summer day I watched a cat for nearly a
half hour trying her arts upon a chipmunk that
sat upon a pile of stone. Evidently her game
was to stalk him. She had cleared half the dis-
tance, or about twelve feet, that separated the
chipmunk from a dense Norway spruce, when I
chanced to become a spectator of the little drama.
There sat the cat crouched low on the grass, her
THE CHIPMUNK. 21

big, yellow eyes fixed upon the chipmunk, and
there sat the chipmunk at the mouth of his den,
motionless, with his eyes fixed upon the cat. For
a long time neither moved. “ Will the cat bind
him with her fatal spell?” ITthought. Sometimes
her head slowly lowered and her eyes seemed to
dilate, and I fancied she was about to spring.
But she did not. The distance was too great to
be successfully cleared in one bound. Then the
squirrel moved nervously, but kept his eye upon
the enemy. Then the cat evidently grew tired
and relaxed a little and looked behind her.
Then she crouched again and riveted her gaze
upon the squirrel. But the latter would not be
hypnotized ; he shifted his position a few times
and finally quickly entered his den, when the cat
soon slunk away.

In digging his hole it is evident that the chip-
munk carries away the loose soil. Never.a grain
of it is seen in front of his door. Those pockets
of his probably stand him in good stead on such
occasions. Only in one instance have I seen a
pile of earth before the entrance to a chip-
munk’s den, and that was where the builder had
begun his house late in November, and was prob-
ably too much hurried to remove this ugly mark
from before his door. I used to pass his place
every morning in my walk, and my eye always
22 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

fell upon that little pile of red, freshly-dug soil.
A little later I used frequently to surprise the
squirrel furnishing his house, carrying in dry
leaves of the maple and plane tree. He would
seize a large leaf and with both hands stuff it
into his cheek pockets, and then carry it into
his den. I saw him on several different days oc-
cupied in this way. I trust he had secured his
winter stores, though I am a little doubtful. He
was hurriedly malay himself a new home, and
the cold of December was upon us while he was
yet at work. It may be that he had moved the
stores from his old quarters, wherever they were,
and again it may be that he had been dispos-
sessed of both his house and provender by some -
other chipmunk.

I have been told by a man who says he has
seen what he avers, that the reason why we do
not find a pile of fresh earth beside the hole of
the chipmunk is this: In making his den the
workman continues his course through the soil a
foot or more under the surface for several yards,
carrying out the earth in his cheek pouches and
dumping it near the entrance. Then he comes
to the surface and makes a new hole from be-
neath, which is, of course, many feet from the
first hole. This latter is now closed up, and
henceforth the new one alone is used. I have
no doubt this is the true explanation.
THE CHIPMUNK 23

When nuts or grain are not to be had, these
thrifty little creatures will find some substitute
to help them over the winter. Two chipmunks
near my study were occupied many days in carry-
ing in cherry pits which they gathered beneath a
large cherry-tree that stood ten or twelve rods
away. As Nig was no longer about to molest
them, they grew very fearless, and used to spin |
up and down the garden path to and from their
source of supplies in a way quite unusual with
these timid creatures. After they had got enough
cherry pits, they gathered the seed of a sugar
maple that stood near. Many of the keys re-
mained upon the tree after the leaves had fallen,
and these the squirrels harvested. They would
run swiftly. out upon the ends of the small
branches, reach out for the maple keys, snip off
the wings, and deftly slip the nut or samara into
their cheek pockets. Day after day in late au-
tumn, I used to see them thus occupied.

As I have said, I have no evidence that more
than one chipmunk occupy the same den. One
March morning after a light fall of snow I saw
where one had come up out of his hole, which
was in the side of our path to the vineyard, and
after a moment’s survey of the surroundings had
started off on his travels. I followed the track
to see where he had gone. He had passed
24 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

through my woodpile, then under the beehives,
then around the study and under some spruces
and along the slope to the hole of a friend of
his, about sixty yards from hisown. Apparently
he had gone in here, and then his friend had
come forth with him, for there were two tracks
leading from this doorway. I followed them to
a third humble entrance, not far off, where the
tracks were so numerous that I lost the trail. It
was pleasing to see the evidence of their morning
sociability written there upon the new snow.

One of the enemies of the chipmunk, as I dis-
covered lately, is the weasel. I was sitting in
the woods one autumn day when I heard a small
cry, and a rustling amid the branches of a tree
afew rods beyond me. Looking thither I saw
a chipmunk fall through the air, and catch on a
limb twenty or more feet from the ground. He
appeared to have dropped from near the top of
the tree.

He secured his hold upon the small branch
that had luckily intercepted his fall, and sat per-
fectly still. In a moment more I saw a weasel
— one of the smaller red varieties — come down
the trunk of the tree, and begin exploring the
branches on a level with the chipmunk.

I saw in a moment what had happened. The
weasel had driven the squirrel from his retreat in
THE CHIPMUNK 25

the rocks and stones beneath, and had pressed
him so closely that he had taken refuge in the
top of a tree. But weasels can climb trees, too,
and this one had tracked the frightened chip-
munk to the topmost branch, where he had tried
to seize him. Then the squirrel had, in horror,
let go his hold, screamed, and fallen through the
air, till he struck the branch as just described.
Now his bloodthirsty enemy was looking for him
again, apparently relying entirely upon his sense
of smell to guide him to the game.

How did the weasel know the squirrel had not
fallen clear to the ground? He certainly did
know, for when he reached the same tier of
branches he began exploring them. The chip-
munk sat transfixed with fear, frozen with ter-
ror, not twelve feet away, and yet the weasel saw
him not.

Round and round, up and down, he went on
the branches, exploring them over and over.
How he hurried, lest the trail get cold! How
subtle and cruel and fiendish he looked! His
snakelike movements, his tenacity, his speed !

He seemed baffled; he knew his game was
near, but he could not strike the spot. The
branch, upon the extreme end of which the
squirrel sat, ran out and up from the tree seven
or eight feet, and then, turning a sharp elbow,
26 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

swept down and out at right angles with its first
course.

The weasel would pause each time at this
elbow and turn back. It seemed as if he knew
that particular branch held his prey, and yet its
crookedness each time threw him out. He would
not give it up, but went over his course again
and again.

One can fancy the feelings of the chipmunk,
sitting there in plain view a few feet away,
watching his deadly enemy hunting for the clue.
How his little heart must have fairly stood still
each time the fatal branch was struck! Probably
as a last resort he would again have let go his
hold and fallen to the ground, where he might
have eluded his enemy a while longer.

In the course of five or six minutes the weasel
gave over the search, and ran hurriedly down the
tree to the ground. The chipmunk remained mo-
tionless for a long time; then he stirred a little
as if hope were reviving. Then he looked ner-
vously about him; then he had recovered him-
self so far as to change his position. Presently
he began to move cautiously along the branch
to the bole of the tree; then, after a few mo-
ments’ delay, he plucked up courage to descend
to the ground, where I hope no weasel has
disturbed him since.
THE CHIPMUNK: 27

One season a chipmunk had his den in the
side of the terrace above my garden, and spent
the mornings laying in a store of corn which he
stole from a field ten or twelve rods away. In
traversing about half this distance, the little
poacher was exposed ; the first cover on the way
from his den was a large maple, where he always
brought up and took a survey of the scene. I
would see him spinning along toward the maple,
then from it by an easy stage to the fence ad-
joining the corn; then back again with his
booty. One morning I paused to watch him
more at my leisure. He came up out of his
retreat and cocked himself up to see what my
motions meant. His forepaws were clasped to
his breast precisely as if they had been hands,
and the tips of the fingers thrust into his vest
pockets. Having satisfied himself with reference
to me, he sped on toward the tree.. He had
nearly reached it, when he turned tail and
rushed for his hole with the greatest precipita-
tion. As he neared it, I saw some bluish object
in the air closing in upon him with the speed of
an arrow, and, as he vanished within, a shrike
brought up in front of the spot, and with spread
wings and tail stood hovering a moment, and,
looking in, then turned and went away. Appar-
ently it was a narrow escape for the chipmunk,
28 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

and, I venture to say, he stole no more corn that
morning. The shrike is said to catch mice, but
it is not known to attack squirrels. The bird cer-
tainly could not have strangled the chipmunk,
and I am curious to know what would have been
the result had he overtaken him. Probably it
was only a kind of brag on his part —a bold
dash where no risk was run. He simulated the
hawk, the squirrel’s real enemy, and no doubt en-
joyed the joke.

The sylvan folk seem to know when you are
on a peaceful mission, and are less afraid than
usual. Did not that marmot to-day guess my
errand did not concern him as he saw me ap-
proach there from his cover in the bushes? But,
when he saw me pause and deliberately seat my-
self on the stone wall immediately over his hole,
his confidence was much shaken. He apparently
deliberated awhile, for I heard the leaves rustle
as if he were making up his mind, when he sud-
denly broke cover and came for his hole full
tilt. Any other animal would have taken to his
heels and fled; but a woodchuck’s heels do not
amount to much for speed, and he feels his only
safety is in his hole. On he came in the most
obstinate and determined manner, and I dare
say if I had sat down in his hole would have
THE CHIPMUNK 29

attacked me unhesitatingly. This I did not
give him a chance to do, and he whipped into
his den beneath me with a defiant snort. Far-
ther on, a saucy chipmunk presumed upon my
harmless character to an unwonted degree also.
I had paused to bathe my hands and face in a
little trout brook, and had set a tin cup, which I
had partly filled with strawberries as I crossed
the field, on a stone at my feet, when along
came the chipmunk as confidently as if he knew
precisely where he was going, and, perfectly
oblivious of my presence, cocked himself up on
the rim of the cup and proceeded to eat my
choicest berries. I remained motionless and ob-
served him. He had eaten but two when the
thought seemed to occur to him that he might
be doing better, and he began to fill his pockets.
Two, four, six, eight of my berries quickly dis-
appeared, and the cheeks of the little vagabond
swelled. But all the time he kept eating, that
not a moment might be lost. Then he hopped
off the cup, and went skipping from stone to
stone till the brook was passed, when he disap-
peared in the woods. In two or three minutes
he was back again, and went to stuffing himself
as before ; then he disappeared a second time,
and I ‘mapined told a friend of his, for in a mo-
ment or two along came a bobtailed chipmunk,
30 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

as if in search of something, and passed up, and
down, and around, but did not quite hit the
spot. Shortly, the first returned a third time,
and had now grown a little fastidious, for he
began to sort over my berries, and to bite into
them, as if to taste their quality. He was not
long in loading up, however, and in making off
again. But I had now got tired of the joke, and
my berries were appreciably diminishing, so I
moved away. What was most curious about the
proceeding was, that the little poacher took dif-
ferent directions each time, and returned from
different ways. Was this to elude pursuit, or
was he distributing the fruit to his friends and
neighbors about, astonishing them with straw-
berries for lunch?

On another occasion I was much amused by
three chipmunks, who seemed to be engaged in
some kind of game. It looked very much as if
they were playing tag. Round and round they
would go, first one taking the lead, then an-
other, all good-natured and gleeful as schoolboys.
There is one thing about a chipmunk that is
peculiar: he is never more than one jump from
home. Make a dive at him anywhere and in he
goes. He knows where the hole is, even when
it is covered up with leaves. There is no doubt,
also, that he has his own sense of humor and
THE CHIPMUNK 31

fun, as what squirrel has not? I have watched
two red squirrels for a half hour coursing through
the large trees by the roadside where branches
interlocked, and engaged in a game of tag as
obviously as two boys. As soon as the pursuer
had come up with the pursued, and actually
touched him, the palm was his, and away he
would go, taxing his wits and his speed to the
utmost to elude his fellow.

I have observed that any unusual disturbance
in the woods, near where the chipmunk has his
den, will cause him to shift his quarters. One
October, for many successive days, I saw one
carrying into his hole buckwheat which he had
stolen from a near field. The hole was only a
few rods from where we were getting out stone,
and as our work progressed, and the racket and
uproar increased, the chipmunk became alarmed.
He ceased carrying in, and after much hesitating
and darting about, and some prolonged absences,
he began to carry out; he had determined to
move; if the mountain fell, he, at least, would
be away in time. So, by mouthfuls or cheek-
fuls, the grain was transferred to a new place.
He did not make a “bee” to get it done, but
carried it all himself, occupying several days,
and making a trip about every ten minutes.
Tit
THE WOODCHUCK

In the Middle and Eastern States our wood-
chuck takes the place, in some respects, of the
English rabbit, burrowing in every hillsidé and
under every stone wall and jutting ledge and
large boulder, whence it makes raids upon the
grass and clover and sometimes upon the gar-
den vegetables. It is quite solitary in its habits,
seldom more than one inhabiting the same den,
unless it be a mother and her young. It is not
now so much a wood chuck as a field chuck.
Occasionally, however, one seems to prefer the
woods, and is not seduced by the sunny slopes
and the succulent grass, but feeds, as did his
fathers before him, upon roots and twigs, the
bark of young trees, and upon various wood
plants.

One summer day, as I was swimming across a
broad, deep pool in the creek in a secluded place
in the woods, I saw one of these sylvan chucks
amid the rocks but a few feet from the edge of
the water where I proposed to touch. He saw
THE WOODCHUCK 33

my approach, but doubtless took me for some
water-fowl, or for some cousin of his of the
muskrat tribe; for he went on with his feeding,
and regarded me not till I paused within ten feet
of him and lifted myself up. Then he did not
know me, having, perhaps, never seen Adam in
his simplicity, but he twisted his nose around
to catch my scent ; and the moment he had done
so he sprang like a jumping-jack and rushed into
his den with the utmost precipitation.

The woodchuck is the true serf among our
animals; he belongs to the soil, and savors of it.
He is of the earth, earthy. There is generally a
decided odor about his dens and lurking places,
but it is not at all disagreeable in the clover-
scented air; and his shrill whistle, as he takes to
his hole or defies the farm dog from the interior
of the stone wall, is a pleasant summer sound..
In form and movement the woodchuck is not
captivating. His body is heavy and flabby. In-
deed, such a flaccid, fluid, pouchy carcass I have
never before seen. It has absolutely no muscu-
lar tension or rigidity, but is as baggy and shaky
as a skin filled with water. The legs of the
woodchuck are short and stout, and made for
digging rather than running. The latter opera-
tion he performs by short leaps, his belly scarcely
clearing the ground. For a short distance he
34 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

can make very good time, but he seldom trusts
himself far from his hole, and, when surprised in
that predicament, makes little effort to escape,
but, grating his teeth, looks the danger squarely
in the face.

I knew a farmer in New York who had a very
large bobtailed churn-dog by the name of Cuff.
The farmer kept a large dairy and made a great
deal of butter, and it was the business of Cuff to
spend nearly the half of each summer day tread-
ing the endless round of the churning-machine.
During the remainder of the day he had plenty
of time to sleep and rest, and sit on his hips and
survey the landscape. One day, sitting thus, he
discovered a woodchuck about forty rods from
the house, on a steep sidehill, feeding about near
his hole, which was beneath a large rock. The
old dog, forgetting his stiffness, and remember-
ing the fun he had had with woodchucks in his
earlier days, started off at his highest speed,
vainly hoping to catch this one before he could
get to his hole. But the woodchuck, seeing the
dog come laboring up the hill, sprang to the
mouth of his den, and, when his pursuer was
only a few rods off, whistled tauntingly and went
in. This occurred several times, the old dog
marching up the hill, and then marching down
again, having had his labor for his pains.
MONMHOGOOM

 

 

 

 

 
THE WOODCHUCK 85

I suspect that he revolved the subject in his
mind while revolving the great wheel of the
churning-machine, and that some turn or other
brought him a happy thought, for next time he
showed himself a strategist. Instead of giving
chase to the woodchuck, when first discovered, he
crouched down to the ground, and, resting his
head on his paws, watched him. The wood-
chuck kept working away from his hole, lured
by the tender clover, but, not unmindful of his
safety, lifted himself up on his haunches every
few moments and surveyed the approaches. Pre-
sently, after the woodchuck had let himself down
from one of these attitudes of observation and
resumed his feeding, Cuff started swiftly but
stealthily up the hill, precisely in the attitude of
a cat when she is stalking a bird. When the
woodchuck rose up again, Cuff was perfectly mo-
tionless and half hid by the grass. When he
again resumed his clover, Cuff sped up the hill
as before, this time crossing a fence, but in a
low place, and so nimbly that he was not discov-
ered. Again the woodchuck was on the outlook,
again Cuff was motionless and hugging the

round. As the dog neared his victim he was
partially hidden by a swell in the earth, but still
the woodchuck from his outlook reported “ All
right,” when Cuff, having not twice as far to
36 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

run as the chuck, threw all stealthiness aside and
rushed directly for the hole. At that moment
the woodchuck discovered his danger, and, see-
ing that it was a race for life, leaped as I never
saw marmot leap before. But he was two sec-
_onds too late, his retreat was cut off, and the
powerful jaws of the old dog closed upon him.

The next season Cuff tried the same tactics
again with like success, but when the third wood-
chuck had taken up his abode at the fatal hole,
the old churner’s wits and strength had begun to
fail him, and he was baffled in each attempt to
capture the animal.

The woodchuck usually burrows on a sidehill.
This enables him to guard against being drowned
out, by making the termination of the hole higher
than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for
about two or three feet, then makes a sharp up-
ward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the sur-
face of the ground for a distance of eight or ten
feet farther, according to the grade. Here he
makes his nest and passes the winter, holing up
in October or November and coming out again
in March or April. This is a long sleep, and is
rendered possible only by the amount of fat with
which the system has become stored during the
summer. The fire of life still burns, but very
faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all closed
THE WOODCHUCK 37

and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is contin-
ued, but at longer intervals, and all the vital pro-
cesses are nearly at a standstill. Dig one out
during hibernation (Audubon did so), and you
find it a mere inanimate ball, that suffers itself
to be moved and rolled about without showing
signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire,
and it presently unrolls and opens its eyes, and
crawls feebly about, and if left to itself will seek
some dark hole or corner, roll itself up again,
and resume its former condition.
IV
THE RABBIT AND THE HARE

Wirs us the hare is of the remote northern
woods, the rabbit is of the fields and bushy mar-
gins of the woods. One retreats before man and
civilization, the other follows in their wake. The
rabbit is now common in parts of our State (New
York) where in my boyhood only the hare was
found. The rabbit evidently loves to be neigh-
bor to man and profits by it. Nearly every
winter one takes up her abode under my study
floor, and when the snow is deep and the weather
is cold she usually finds every night a couple of
sweet apples on her threshold. I suppose she
thinks they grow there, or are blown there by
the wind like the snow. At such times she does
not leave her retreat; the apples are good for-
tune enough. If I neglect to put them there, in
the morning I see where she has gone forth over
the lawn looking for them, or for some other
food.

I wonder if that fox chanced to catch a
glimpse of her the other night when he stealth-
THE RABBIT AND THE HARE 39

ily leaped over the fence near by and walked
along between the study and the house? How
clearly one could read that it was not a little dog
that had passed there! There was something
furtive in the track; it shied off away from the
house and around it, as if eyeing it suspiciously ;
and then it had the caution and deliberation of
the fox, — bold, bold, but not too bold ; wariness
was in every footprint. If it had been a little
dog that had chanced to wander that way, when
he crossed my path he would have followed it up
to the barn and have gone smelling around for a
bone ; but this sharp, cautious track held straight
across all others, keeping five or six rods from
the house, up the hill, across the highway toward
a neighboring farmstead, with its nose in the air,
and its eye and ear alert, so to speak.

One summer a wild rabbit came up within a
few feet of my neighbor’s house, scooped out a
little place in the turf, and reared her family
there. I suppose she felt more secure from
prowling cats and dogs than in the garden or
vineyard. My neighbor took me out to let me
into her secret. He pointed down to the ground
a few feet in front of us and said, “ There it is.”
I looked and saw nothing but the newly mown
turf with one spot the size of my two hands
where the grass was apparently dead. “TI see
40 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

no rabbit nor any signs of a rabbit,” I replied.
He stooped to this dry spot and lifted up a little
blanket or carpet of matted dry grass and re-
vealed one of the prettiest sights I had ever
seen, and the only one of the kind I had ever
looked upon !—four or five little rabbits half the
size of chipmunks, cuddled down in a dry fur-
lined nest. They did not move or wink, and
their ears were pressed down close to their
heads. My neighbor let the coverlet fall back,
and they were hidden again as by magic.

They had been discovered a few days before
when the lawn was mown, and one, as it sprang
out from the nest, was killed by the mower, who
mistook it for a young rat. The rest of them
fled and disappeared through the grass, but the
next morning they were back in the nest, where
they remained for several days longer. Only at
night, so far as was observed, did the mother
visit and nurse them.

There was no opening into the nest, the mat
of dried grass covered it completely, so that the
mother, in her visits to them, must have lifted it
up and crept beneath. It was a very pretty and
cunning device. One might have stepped upon
it in his walk, but surely his eyes alone would
never have penetrated the secret. I am told by
men wise in the lore of the fields and woods
 

 

 

 

 

GRAY RABBIT
THE RABBIT AND THE HARE 41

that the rabbit always covers her nest and young
with a little blanket, usually made of fur plucked
from her own breast.

The rabbit seems to suffer very little from
the deep snows and severe cold of winter. The
deeper the snow, the nearer she is brought to
the tops of the tender bushes and shoots. I see
in my walks where she has cropped the tops of
the small, bushy, soft maples, cutting them slant-
ingly as you would with a knife, and quite as
smoothly. Indeed, the mark was so like that of
a knife that, notwithstanding the tracks, it was
only after the closest scrutiny that I was con-
vinced it was the sharp, chisel-like teeth of the
rabbit. She leaves no chips, and apparently
makes clean work of every twig she cuts off.

The hare is nocturnal in its habits, and though
a very lively creature at night, with regular
courses and run-ways through the wood, is en-
tirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes
little effort to conceal himself, usually squatting
beside a log, stump, or tree, and seeming to
avoid rocks and ledges where he might be par-
tially housed from the cold and the snow, but
where also — and this consideration undoubtedly
determines his choice —he would be more apt to
fall a prey to his enemies. In this, as well as in
many other respects, he differs from the rabbit
42 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

proper. He never burrows in the ground, or takes
refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught
in the open fields, he is much confused and easily
overtaken by the dog; but in the woods, he
leaves his enemy at a bound: In summer, when
first disturbed, he beats the ground violently with
his feet, by which means he would express to you
his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he
has of scolding. After leaping a few yards, he
pauses an instant, as if to determine the degree
of danger, and then hurries away with a much
lighter tread.

His feet are like great pads, and his track in
the snow has little of the sharp, articulated ex-
pression of Reynard’s, or of animals that climb
or dig. Yet it is very pretty, like all the rest,
and tells its own tale. There is nothing bold
or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harm-
less character is published at every leap. He
abounds in dense woods, preferring localities
filled with a small undergrowth of beech and
birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature
is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme
local habits and character with a suit that cor-
responds with his surroundings, — reddish gray
in summer and white in winter.
Vv
THE MUSKRAT

Ir sometimes looks as if the muskrat were
weather-wise and could forecast the coming sea-
son, I doubt if a long series of observations
would bear out the truth of this remark, yet I
have. noticed that in his nest-building he some-
times hits the mark with surprising accuracy.

In the fall of 1878 I observed that he built
unusually high and massive nests. I noticed
them in several different localities. In a shallow,
sluggish pond by the roadside, which I used to
pass daily in my walk, two nests were in process
of construction throughout the month of Novem-
ber. The builders worked only at night, and I
could see each day that the work had visibly ad-
vanced. When there was a slight skim of ice
over the pond, this was broken up about the
nests, with trails through it in different directions
where the material had been brought. The
houses were placed a little to one side of the
main channel, and were constructed entirely of a
species of coarse wild grass that grew all about.
44 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

So far as I could see, from first to last they were
solid masses of grass, as if the interior cavity or
nest was to be excavated afterward, as doubtless
it was. As they emerged from the pond they
gradually assumed the shape of a miniature moun-
tain, very bold and steep on the south side, and
running down a long gentle grade to the surface
of the water on the north. One could see that
the little architect hauled all his material up this
easy slope, and thrust it out boldly around the
other side. Every mouthful was distinctly de-
fined. After they were two feet or more above
the water, I expected each day to see that the
finishing stroke had been given and the work
brought to a close. But higher yet, said the
builder.

December drew near, the cold became threat-
ening, and I was apprehensive that winter would
suddenly shut down upon those unfinished nests.
But the wise muskrats seemed to know better
than I did. Finally, about the 6th of December,
the nests assumed completion; the northern in-
cline was absorbed or carried up, and each struc-
ture became a strong massive cone, three or four
feet high, the largest nest of the kind I had ever
seen. “Does it mean a severe winter?” I in-
quired. An old farmer said it meant “high
water,” and he was right once, at least, for in a few
THE MUSKRAT 45

days afterward we had the heaviest rainfall known
in this section for half a century. The creeks
rose to an almost unprecedented height. The
sluggish pond became a seething, turbulent water-
course; gradually the angry element crept up the
sides of these lake dwellings, till, when the rain
ceased, about four o’clock, they showed above
the flood no larger than a man’s hat. During
the night the channel shifted till the main current
swept over them, and next day not a vestige of
the nests was to be seen; they had gone down-
stream, as had many other dwellings of a less
temporary character. The rats had built wisely,
and would have been perfectly secure against any
ordinary high water, but who can foresee a flood ?
The oldest traditions of their race did not run
back to the time of such a visitation.

Nearly a week afterward another dwelling was
begun, well away from the treacherous channel,
but the architects did not work at it with much
heart ; the material was very scarce, the ice hin-

dered, and before the basement-story was fairly
finished, winter had the pond under his lock and
key.

In other localities I noticed that where the
nests were placed on the banks of streams, they

were made secure against the floods by being
built amid a small clump of bushes. When the
46 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

fall of 1879 came, the muskrats were very tardy
about beginning their house, laying the corner-
stone — or the corner-sod — about December 1,
and continuing the work slowly and indifferently.
On the 15th of the month the nest was not yet
finished. “Maybe,” I said, “this indicates a
mild winter;”’ and, sure enough, the season was
one of the mildest known for many years. The
rats had little use for their house.

Again, in the fall of 1880, while the weather-
wise were wagging their heads, some forecasting
a mild, some a severe winter, I watched with
interest for a sign from my muskrats. About
November 1, a month earlier than the previous
year, they began their nest, and worked at it
with a will. They appeared to have just got
tidings of what was coming. If I had taken
the hint so palpably given, my celery would not
have been frozen up in the ground, and my
apples caught in unprotected places. When the
cold wave struck us, about November 20, my
four-legged “I told-you-so’s” had nearly com-
pleted their dwelling; it lacked only the ridge-
board, so to speak ; it needed a little “topping
out,” to give it a finished look. But this it never
got. The winter had come to stay, and it waxed
more and more severe, till the unprecedented
cold of the last days of December must have.
 

 

 

 

 

MUSKRAT
THE MUSKRAT 47

astonished even the wise muskrats in their snug
retreat. I approached their nest at this time, a
white mound upon the white, deeply frozen sur-
face of the pond, and wondered if there was any
hfe in that apparent sepulchre. I thrust my
walking-stick sharply into it, when there was a
rustle and a splash into the water, as the occu-
pant made his escape. What a damp basement
that house has, I thought, and what a pity to
rout a peaceful neighbor out of his bed in this
weather, and into such a state of things as this!
But water does not wet the muskrat; his fur is
charmed, and not a drop penetrates it.

Where the ground is favorable, the muskrats
do not build these mound-like nests, but burrow
into the bank a long distance, and establish their
winter quarters there.

The muskrat does not hibernate like some ro-
dents, but is pretty active all winter. In Decem-
ber I noticed in my walk where they had made
excursions of a few yards to an orchard for frozen
apples. One day, along a little stream, I saw a
mink track amid those of the muskrat ; following
it up, I presently came to blood and other marks
of strife upon the snow beside a stone wall.
Looking in between the stones, I found the car-
cass of the luckless rat, with its head and neck
eaten away. The mink had made a meal of him.
VI
THE SKUNK

In February a new track appears upon the
snow, slender and delicate, about a third larger
than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no
haste or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting
the most imperturbable ease and leisure, the foot-
prints so close together that the trail appears
like a chain of curiously carved links. Sir Me-
phitis mephitica, or, in plain English, the skunk,
has waked up from his six weeks’ nap, and come
out into society again. He is a nocturnal trav-
eler, very bold and impudent, coming quite up
to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes
taking up his quarters for the season under the
haymow. There is no such word as hurry in his
dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the
snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating way,
and goes creeping about the fields and woods,
never once in a perceptible degree altering his
gait, and, if a fence crosses his course, steers for
a break or opening to avoid climbing. He is too
indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropri-
THE SKUNK 49

ates that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice
in the rocks, from which he extends his rambling
in all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather.
He has very little discretion or cunning, and
holds a trap in utter contempt, stepping into it
as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for defense
against all forms of danger upon the unsavory
punishment he is capable of inflicting. He is
quite indifferent to both man and beast, and will
not hurry himself to get out of the way of either.
Walking through the summer fields at twilight,
I have come near stepping upon him, and was
much the more disturbed of the two.

He has a secret to keep and knows it, and is
careful not to betray himself until he can do so
with the most telling effect. I have known him
to preserve his serenity even when caught in a
steel trap, and look the very picture of injured
innocence, manceuvring carefully and deliber-
ately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the
naughty jaws. Do not by any means take pity
on hin, and lend a helping hand!

How pretty his face and head! How fine and
delicate his teeth, like a weasel’s or a cat’s! When
about a third grown, he looks so well that one
covets him for a pet. My neighbor once cap-
tured a young one, which he kept over a year,
and which afforded him much amusement. He
named it Mahomet.
50 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

No animal is more cleanly in its habits than
he. He is not an awkward boy who cuts his
own face with his whip; and neither his flesh
nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is
armed. The most silent creature known to me,
he makes no sound, so far as I have observed,
save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced
by beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when
the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the
stone fence. He renders himself obnoxious to
the farmer by his partiality for hens’ eggs and
young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and
at plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-
grown fowls are his victims, but the youngest and
most tender. At night Mother Hen receives
under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched
chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction
feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers.
In the morning she is walking about disconso-
lately, attended by only two or three of all that
pretty brood. What has happened? Where are
they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could
solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached,
under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved
her of her precious charge. Look closely, and
you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or
part of a mangled form, lying about on the
ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he
 

 

 

 

 

SKUNK
THE SKUNK. 51

may find her out, and, by the same sleight of
hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty
blood-stained shells to witness against him. The
birds, especially. the ground-builders, suffer in
like manner from his plundering propensities.
The secretion upon which he relies for defense,
and which is the chief source of his unpopularity,
while it affords good reasons against cultivating
him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game,
is by no means the greatest indignity that can be
offered to a nose, It is a rank, living smell, and
has none of the sickening qualities of disease or
putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will
enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches
the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is
tonic and bracing’, and, I can readily believe, has
rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its
use as eye-water, though an old farmer assures
me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied.
Hearing, one night, a disturbance among’ his
hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the thief,
when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and no
doubt much annoyed at being interrupted, dis-
charged the vials of his wrath full in the farmer’s
face, and with such admirable effect that, for a
few moments, he was completely blinded, and
powerless to revenge himself upon the rogue,
who embraced the opportunity to make good his
52 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

escape ; but he declared that afterwards his eyes
felt as if purged by fire, and his sight was much
clearer.

The skunk has perfect confidence in the effi-
cacy of his weapon. Late one March afternoon
in my walk, I saw one coming down through a
field toward the highway. I thought I would
intercept him and turn him back. I advanced to
within fifteen or twenty yards of him, and, as he
did not check his course, judged it prudent to
check mine. On he came toward me, with the
most jaunty and frolicsome air, waving his tail
high above his head and challenging me to the
combat. I retreated and he pursued, till I finally
left him master of the field. .
Vil
THE FOX

Tr has been many a long day since I heard a
fox bark, but in my youth among the Catskills I
often heard the sound, especially of a still moon-
light night in midwinter. Perhaps it was more
a cry than a bark, not continuous like the baying
of a dog, but uttered at intervals. One feels that
the creature is trying to bark, but has not yet
learned the trick of it. But it is a wild, weird
sound. I would get up any night to hear it again.
l used to listen for it whena boy, standing in
front of my father’s house. Presently I would
hear one away up on the shoulder of the mountain,
and I imagined I could almost see him sitting
there in his furs upon the illuminated surface
and looking down in my direction. As I listened,
maybe one would answer him from behind the
woods in the valley, a fitting sound amid the
ghostly winter hills.

The red fox was the only species that abounded
in this locality. On my way to school in the
morning, after a fresh fall of snow, I would see
54 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

at many points where he had crossed the road.
Here he had leisurely passed within rifle-range
of the house, evidently reconnoitrnng the prem-
ises with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear,
sharp track, — there was no mistaking it for the
clumsy footprint of a little dog. - All his wildness
and agility were photographed in it. Here he
had taken fright, or suddenly recollected an en-
gagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely
touching the fence, had gone careering up the
hill as fleet as the wind.

The usual gait of the fox, unlike that of the
dog, is, at night at least, a walk. On such occa-
sions he is in quest of game and he goes through
the woods and fields in an alert, stealthy manner,
stepping about a foot at a time, and keeping his
eyes and ears open.

The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he
is! I had often seen his dead carcass, and at a
distance had witnessed the hounds drive him
across the upper fields; but the thrill and ex-
citement of meeting him in his wild freedom in
the woods were unknown to me till, one cold
winter day, drawn thither by the baying of a
hound, I stood near the summit of the mountain,
waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might de-
termine the course of the dog and choose my
position, — stimulated by the ambition of all
THE FOX 55

young Nimrods to bag some notable game.
Long I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and
benumbed, I was about to turn back, when, hear-
ing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most
superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace
and ease, evidently disturbed, but not pursued
by the hound, and so absorbed in his private
meditations that he failed to see me, though I
stood transfixed with amazement and admiration,
not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a
glance, —a large male, with dark legs, and mas-
sive tail tipped with white, — a most magnificent
creature; but so astonished and fascinated was
I by this sudden appearance and matchless
beauty, that not till I had caught the last
glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll,
did I awake to my duty as a sportsman, and real-
ize what an opportunity to distinguish myself I
had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun,
half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went
home out of humor with myself and all fox-kind.
But I have since thought better of the experi-
ence, and concluded that I bagged the game
after all, the best part of it, and fleeced Reynard
of something more valuable than his fur, without
his knowledge.

This is thoroughly a winter sound, — this
voice of the hound upon the mountain, — and
56 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

one that is music to many ears. The long trum-
pet-like bay, heard for a mile or more, — now
faintly back to the deep recesses of the moun-
tain, —now distinct, but still faint, as the hound
comes over some prominent point and the wind
favors, — anon entirely lost in the gully, — then
breaking out again much nearer, and growing
more and more pronounced as the dog ap-
proaches, till, when he comes around the brow
of the mountain, directly above you, the barking
is loud and sharp. On he goes along the north-
ern spur, his voice rising and sinking as the wind
and the lay of the ground modify it, till lost to
hearing.

The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regu-
lating his speed by that of the hound, occasion-
ally pausing a moment to divert himself with a
mouse, or to contemplate the landscape, or to
listen for his pursuer. If the hound press him
too closely, he leads off from mountain to moun-
tain, and so generally escapes the hunter; but if
the pursuit be slow, he plays about some ridge
or peak, and falls a prey, though not an easy
one, to the experienced sportsman.

A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when
the farm-dog gets close upon one in the open |
field, as sometimes happens in the early morning.
The fox relies so confidently upon his superior
THE FOX 57

speed, that I imagine he half tempts the dog to
the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and
their course lies down hill, over smooth ground,
Reynard must put his best foot forward, and
then sometimes suffer the ignominy of being
run over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite
unable to pick him up, owing to the speed. But
when they mount the hill, or enter the woods,
the superior nimbleness and agility of the fox
tell at once, and he easily leaves. the dog far in
his rear. For a cur less than his own size he
manifests little fear, especially if the two meet
alone, remote from the house. In such cases, I
have seen first one turn tail, then the other.
One of the most notable features of the fox is
his large and massive tail. Seen running on the
snow at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicu-
ous as his body; and, so far from appearing a
burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and
buoyancy. It softens the outline of his move-
ments, and repeats or continues to the eye the
ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by
the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes
so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious
inconvenience, and compels him to take refuge
in his den. He is very loath to do this; both
his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate
him to run it out, and win by fair superiority of
58 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

wind and speed ; and only a wound or a heavy
and moppish tail will drive him to avoid the issue
in this manner.

To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cun-
ning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue
that he is, he always suspects some trick, and
one must be more of a fox than he is himself to
overreach him. At first sight it would appear
easy enough. With apparent indifference he
crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in
the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or
lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns.
Carry the carcass of.a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to
a distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights
his tracks cover the snow about it.

The inexperienced country youth, misled by
this seeming carelessness of Reynard, suddenly
conceives a project to enrich himself with fur,
and wonders that the idea has not occurred to
him before, and to others. I knew a youthful
yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found
a mine of wealth on discovering on a remote side-
hill, between two woods, a dead porker, upon
which it appeared all the foxes of the neighbor-
hood did nightly banquet. The clouds were
burdened with snow; and as the first flakes com-
menced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom
in hand, already counting over in imagination the
THE FOX 59

silver quarters he would receive for his first fox-
skin. With the utmost care, and with a palpi-
tating heart, he removed enough of the trodden
snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface.
Then, carefully sifting the light element over it
and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly with-
drew, laughing exultingly over the little surprise
he had prepared for the cunning rogue. The
elements conspired to aid him, and the falling
snow rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work.
The next morning at dawn he was on his way to
bring in his fur. The snow had done its work
effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret
well. Arrived in sight of the locality, he strained
his vision to make out his prize lodged against
the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching
nearer, the surface was unbroken, and doubt
usurped the place of certainty in his mind. A
slight mound marked the site of the porker, but
there was no footprint near it. Looking up the
hill, he saw where Reynard had walked leisurely
down toward his wonted bacon till within a few
yards of it, when he had wheeled, and with pro-
digious strides disappeared in the woods. The
young trapper saw at a glance what a comment
this was upon his skill in the art, and, indig-
. nantly exhuming the iron, he walked home with
it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting
in another direction.
60 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

The successful trapper commences in the fall,
or before the first deep snow. In a field not too
remote, with an old axe he cuts a small place, say

ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and
removes the earth to the depth of three or four
inches, then fills the cavity with dry ashes, in
which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard
is very suspicious at first, and gives the place a
wide berth. It looks like design, and he will see
how the thing behaves before he approaches too
near. But the cheese is savory and the cold se-
vere. He ventures a little closer every night,
until he can reach and pick a piece from the
surface. Emboldened by success, like other mor-
tals, he presently digs freely among the ashes,
and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable
morsels every night, is soon thrown off his
guard and his suspicions quite lulled. After a
week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve
of a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully con-
ceals his trap in the bed, first smoking it thor-
oughly with hemlock boughs to kill or neutralize
all smell of the iron. If the weather favors and
the proper precautions have been taken, he may
succeed, though the chances are still greatly
against him.

Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom

more than the ends of his toes being between the
THE FOX 61

jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
spring the trap without injury even to his toes,
or may remove the cheese night after night with-
out even springing it. I knew an old trapper
who, on finding himself outwitted in this man-
ner, tied a bit of cheese to the pan, and next
morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The
trap is not fastened, but only incumbered with
a clog, and is all the more sure in its hold by
yielding to every effort of the animal to extricate
himself.

When Reynard sees his captor approaching,
he would fain drop into a mouse-hole to render
himself invisible. He crouches to the ground
and remains perfectly motionless until he per-
ceives himself discovered, when he makes one
desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases
all struggling as you come up, and behaves in a
manner that stamps him a very timid warrior, —
cowering to the earth with a mingled look of
shame, guilt, and humiliation. A young farmer -
told me of tracing one with his trap to the border
of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue
trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most
animals, when taken in a trap, show fight; but
Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his
feet than in the terror of his teeth.

I once spent a summer month in a mountain-
62 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

ous district in the State of New York, where,
from its earliest settlement, the red fox has been
the standing prize for skill in the use of the trap
and gun. At the house where I was stopping
were two foxhounds, and a neighbor half a mile
distant had a third. There were many others in
the township, and in season they were well em-
ployed, too; but the three spoken of, attended
by their owners, held high carnival on the moun-
tains in the immediate vicinity. And many were
the foxes that, winter after winter, fell before
them, twenty-five having been shat, the season
before my visit, on one small range alone. And
yet the foxes were apparently never more abun-
dant than they were that summer, and never
bolder, coming at night within a few rods of the
house and of the unchained alert hounds, and |
making havoe ainong the poultry.

One morning a large, fat goose was found
minus her head and otherwise mangled. Both
hounds had disappeared, and, as they did not
come back till near night, it was inferred that
they had cut short Reynard’s repast, and given
him a good chase into the bargain. But next
night he was back again, and this time got safely
off with the goose. A couple of nights after he
must have come with recruits, for next morning
three large goslings were reported missing. The
THE FOX 63

silly geese now got it through their noddles that
there was danger about, and every night there-
after came close up to the house to roost.

A brood of turkeys, the old one tied to a tree
a few rods to the rear of the house, were the
next objects of attack. The predaceous rascal
came, as usual, in the latter half of the night. I
happened to be awake, and heard the helpless
turkey ery “Quit, quit,” with great emphasis.
Another sleeper, on the floor above me, who, it
seems, had been sleeping with one ear awake for
several nights in apprehension for the safety of
his turkeys, heard the sound also, and instantly
divined its cause. I heard the window open and
a voice summon the dogs. A loud bellow was
the response, which caused Reynard to take him-
self off in a hurry. A moment more, and the
mother turkey would have shared the fate of the
geese. There she lay at the end of her tether,
with extended wings, bitten and rumpled. The
young ones roosted in a row on the fence near
by, and had taken flight on the first alarm.

Turkeys, retaining many of their wild instincts,
are less easily captured by the fox than any other
of our domestic fowls. On the slightest show of
danger they take to wing, and it is not unusual,
in the locality of which I speak, to find them
in the morning perched in the most unwonted
64 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

places, as on the peak of the barn or hay-shed,
or on the tops of the apple-trees, their tails
spread and their manners showing much excite-
ment. Perchance one turkey is minus her tail,
the fox having succeeded in getting only a
mouthful of quills.

As the brood grows and their wings develop,
they wander far from the house in quest of grass-
hoppers. At such times they are all watchful-
ness and suspicion. Crossing the fields one day,
attended by a dog that much resembled a fox, I
came suddenly upon a brood about one third -
grown, which were feeding in a pasture just.be-
yond a wood. It so happened that they caught
sight of the dog without seeing me, when in-
stantly, with the celerity of wild game, they
launched into the air, and, while the old one
perched upon a treetop, as if to keep an eye on
the supposed enemy, the young went sailing over
the trees toward home.

The two hounds before referred to, accom-
panied by a cur-dog, whose business it was to
mind the farm, but who took as much delight in
running away from prosy duty as if he had been
a schoolboy, would frequently steal off and have
a good hunt all by themselves, just for the fun
of the thing, I suppose. I more than half sus-
pect that it was as a kind of taunt or retaliation
THE FOX 65

that Reynard came and took the geese from under
their very noses. One morning they went off and
stayed till the afternoon of the next day; they
ran the fox all day and all night, the hounds
' baying at every jump, the cur-dog silent and
tenacious. When the trio returned they came
dragging themselves along, stiff, foot-sore, gaunt,
and hungry. For a day or two afterward they
lay about the kennels, seeming to dread nothing
so much as the having to move. The stolen hunt
was their “ spree,” and of course they must take
time to get over it.

Some old hunters think the fox enjoys the
chase as much as the hound, especially when the
latter runs slowly, as the best hounds do. The
fox will wait for the hound, will sit down and
listen, or play about, crossing and recrossing and
doubling upon his track, as if enjoying a mis-
chievous consciousness of the perplexity he would
presently cause his pursuer. It is evident, how-
ever, that the fox does not always have his share
of the fun: before a swift dog, or in a deep
snow, or on a wet day when his tail gets heavy,
he must put his best foot forward. As a last
resort he “holes up.” Sometimes he resorts to
numerous devices to mislead and escape the dog
altogether. He will walk in the bed of a small

creek, or on a rail-fence. I heard of an instance
66 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

of a fox, hard and long pressed, that took to
a rail-fence, and, after walking some distance,
made a leap to one side to a hollow stump, in
the cavity of which he snugly stowed himself.
The ruse succeeded, and the dogs lost the trail;
but the hunter, coming up, passed by chance
near the stump, when out bounded the fox, his
cunning availing him less than he deserved. On
another occasion the fox took to the public road,
and stepped with great care and precision into a
sleigh-track. The hard, polished snow took no
imprint of the light foot, and the scent was no
doubt less than it would have been on a rougher
surface. Maybe, also, the rogue had considered
the chances of another sleigh coming along, be-
fore the hound, and obliterating the trail entirely.

Audubon tells of a fox, which, when started
by the hounds, always managed to elude them at
a certain point. Finally the hunter concealed
himself in the locality, to discover,.if possible,
the trick. Presently along came the fox, and,
making a leap to one side, ran up the trunk of
a fallen tree which had lodged some feet from
the ground, and concealed himself in the top.
In a few minutes the hounds came up, and in
their eagerness passed some distance beyond the
point, and then went still farther, looking for
the lost trail, Then the fox hastened down,
THE FOX 67

and, taking his back-track, fooled the dogs com-
pletely.

I was told of a silver-gray fox in northern
New York, which, when pursued by the hounds,
would run till it had hunted up another fox,
or the fresh trail of one, when. it would so
manceuvre that the hound would invariably be
switched off on the second track.

In cold, dry weather the fox will sometimes
elude the hound, at least delay him much, by
taking to a bare, ploughed field. The hard, dry
earth seems not to retain a particle of the scent,
and the hound gives a loud, long, peculiar bark,
to signify he has trouble. It is now his turn to
show his wit, which he often does by passing
completely around the field, and resuming the
trail again where it crosses the fence or a strip
of snow.

The fact that any dry, hard surface is unfa-
vorable to the hound suggests, in a measure, the
explanation of the wonderful faculty that all dogs
in a degree possess of tracking an animal by the
scent of the foot alone. Did you ever think
why a dog’s nose is always wet? Examine the
nose of a fox-hound, for instance; how very
moist and sensitive! Cause this moisture to dry
up, and the dog would be as powerless to track
an animal as you are! The nose of the cat, you
68 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

may observe, is but a little moist, and, as you
know, her sense of smell is far inferior to that
of the dog. Moisten your own nostrils and lips,
and this sense is plainly sharpened. The sweat
of a dog’s nose, therefore, is no doubt a vital
element in its power, and, without taking a very
long logical stride; we may infer how a damp,
rough surface aids him in tracking game.

A still hunt rarely brings you in sight of a
fox, as his ears are much sharper than yours,
and his tread much lighter. But if the fox is
mousing in the fields, and you discover him be-
fore he does you, you may, the wind favoring,
call him within a few paces of you. Secrete
yourself behind the fence, or some other object,
and squeak as nearly like a mouse as possible.
Reynard will hear the sound at an incredible
distance. Pricking up his ears, he gets the
direction, and comes trotting along as unsuspi-
ciously as can be. I have never had an op-
portunity to try the experiment, but I know per-
fectly reliable persons who have. One man, in the
pasture getting his cows, called a fox which was
too busy mousing to get the first sight, till it
jumped upon the wall just over where he sat
secreted. He then sprang up, giving-a loud
whoop at the same time, and the fox, I suspect,
came as near being frightened out of his skin as
a fox ever was.
THE FOX 69

I have never been able to see clearly why
the mother fox generally selects a burrow or
hole in the open field in which to have her
young, except it be, as some hunters maintain,
for better security. The young foxes are wont
to come out on a warm day, and play like pup-
pies in front of the den. The view being un-
obstructed on all sides by trees or bushes, in the
cover of which danger might approach, they are
less liable to surprise and capture. On the
slightest sound they disappear in the hole.
Those who have watched the gambols of the
young foxes speak of them as very amusing,
even more arch and playful than those of kit-
tens, while a spirit profoundly wise and cunning
seems to look out of their young eyes. The
parent fox can never be caught in the den with
them, but is hovering near the woods, which are
always at hand, and by her warning ery or bark
telling them when to be on their guard. She
usually has at least three dens, at no great dis-
tance apart, and moves stealthily in the night
with her charge from one to the other, so as
to mislead her enemies. Many a party of boys,
and of men, too, discovering the whereabouts of
a litter, have gone with shovels and picks, and,
after digging away vigorously for several hours,
have found only an empty hole for their pains.
70 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS
The old fox, finding her secret had been found

out, had waited for darkness, in the cover of
which to transfer her household to new quar-
ters ; or else some old fox-hunter, jealous of the
preservation of his game, and getting word of
the intended destruction of the litter, had gone
at dusk the night before, and made some dis-
turbance about the den, perhaps flashed some
powder in its mouth, — a hint which the shrewd
animal knew how to interpret.

The fox nearly always takes his nap during
the day in the open fields, along the sides of the
ridges, or under the mountain, where he can look
down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their
many sounds, the barking of dogs, the lowing of
cattle, the cackling of hens, the voices of men
and boys, or the sound of travel.upon the high-
way. It is on that side, too, that he keeps
the sharpest lookout, and the appearance of the
hunter above and behind him is always a sur-
prise.

Foxes, unlike wolves, never go in packs or
companies, but hunt singly. Many of the ways
and manners of the fox, when tamed, are like the
dog’s. I once saw a young red fox exposed for
sale in the market in Washington. A colored
man had him, and said he had caught him out
in Virginia. He led him by a small chain, as
THE FOX 71

he would a puppy, and the innocent young ras-
cal would lie on his side and bask and sleep in
the sunshine, amid all the noise and chaffering
around him, precisely like a dog. He was about
the size of a full-grown cat, and there was a be-
witching beauty about him that I could hardly
resist. On another occasion, I saw a gray fox,
about two thirds grown, playing with a dog,
about the same size, and by nothing in the man-
ners of either could you tell which was the dog
and which was the fox.
Vill
THE WEASEL

My most interesting note of the season of
1893 relates to a weasel. One day in early No-
vember, my boy and I were sitting on a rock at
the edge of a tamarack swamp in the woods, hop-
ing to get a glimpse of some grouse which we
knew were in the habit of feeding in the swamp.
We had not sat there very long before we heard
a slight rustling in the leaves below us, which we
at once fancied was made by the cautious tread
of a grouse. (We had no gun.) Presently,
through the thick brushy growth, we caught
sight of a small animal running along, that we
at first took for a red squirrel. A moment more,
and it came into full view but a few yards from
us, and we saw that it was a weasel. A second
glance showed that it carried something in its
mouth which, as it drew near, we saw was a
mouse or a mole of some sort. The weasel ran
nimbly along, now the length of a decayed log,
then over stones and branches, pausing a mo-
ment every three or four yards, and passed
THE WEASEL 73

within twenty feet of us, and disappeared be-
hind some rocks on the bank at the edge of the
swamp. “He is carrying food into his den,” I
said; “let us watch him.” In four or five
minutes he reappeared, coming back over the
course along which he had just passed, running
over and under the same stones and down the
same decayed log, and was soon out of sight in
the swamp. We had not moved, and evidently.
he had not noticed us. After about six minutes
we heard the same rustle as at first, and in a
moment saw the weasel coming back with another
mouse in his mouth. He kept to his former route
as if chained to it, making the same pauses and
gestures, and repeating exactly his former move-
ments. He disappeared on our left as before,
and, after a few moments’ delay, reémerged and
took his course down into the swamp again. We
waited about the same length of time as before,
when back he came with another mouse. He:
evidently had a big crop of mice down there
amid the bogs and bushes, and he was gather-
ing his harvest in very industriously. We he-
came curious to see exactly where his den was,
and so walked around where he had seemed to
disappear each time, and waited. He was as
punctual as usual, and was back with his game
exactly on time. It happened that we had stopped
74 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

within two paces of his hole, so that, as he
approached it, he evidently discovered us. He
paused, looked steadily at us, and then, without
any sign of fear, entered his den. The entrance
was not under the rocks as we had expected to
find it, but was in the bank a few feet beyond
them. We remained motionless for some time,
but he did not reappear. Our presence had made
him suspicious, and he was going to wait a while.
Then I removed some dry leaves and exposed his
doorway, a small, round hole, hardly as large as
the chipmunk makes, going straight down into
the ground. We had a lively curiosity to get a
peep into his larder. If he had been carrying in
mice at this rate very long, his cellars must be
packed with them. With a sharp stick I began
digging into the red clayey soil, but soon en-
countered so many roots from near trees that I
gave it up, deciding to return next day with a
mattock. So I repaired the damages I had done
as well as I could, replacing the leaves, and we
moved off.

The next day, which was mild and still, I.
came back prepared, as I thought, to unearth the
weasel and his treasures. I sat down where we
had sat the day before and awaited develop-
ments. I was curious to know if the weasel was
still carrying in his harvest. I had sat but a
TOSVOM

 

 

 

 

 

 
THE WEASEL 75

few minutes when I heard again the rustle in
the dry leaves, and saw the weasel coming home
with another mouse. I observed him till he had
made three trips; about every six or seven min-
utes, I calculated, he brought in a mouse. Then
I went and stood near his hole. This time he had
a fat meadow-mouse. He laid it down near the
entrance, went in and turned around, and reached
out and drew the mouse in after him. That
store of mice I am bound to see, I thought, and
then fell to with the heavy mattock. I followed
the hole down about two feet, when it turned
to the north. I kept the clue by thrusting into
the passage slender twigs; these it was easy to
follow. Two or three feet more and the hole
branched, one part going west, the other north-
east. I followed the west one a few feet till it
branched. Then I turned to the easterly tunnel,
and pursued it till it branched. I followed one
of these ways till it divided. I began to be em-
barrassed and hindered by the accumulations of
loose soil. Evidently this weasel had foreseen just
such an assault upon his castle as I was making,
and had planned it accordingly. He was not
to be caught napping. I found several enlarge-
ments in the various tunnels, breathing spaces,
or spaces to turn around in, or to meet and chat
with a companion, but nothing that looked like
76 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

a terminus, a permanent living-room. I tried
removing the soil a couple of paces away with
the mattock, but found it slow work. I was
getting warm and tired, and my task was appar-
ently only just begun. The farther I dug, the
more numerous and intricate became the pas-
sages. I concluded to stop, and come again the
next day, armed with a shovel in addition to the
mattock.

Accordingly, I came back on the morrow, and
fell to work vigorously. JI soon had quite a
large excavation ; I found the bank a labyrinth
of passages, with here and there a large cham-
ber. One of the latter I struck only six inches
under the surface, by making a fresh breach a
few feet away.

While I was leaning upon my shovel-handle
and recovering my breath, I heard some light-
footed creature tripping over the leaves above
me just out of view, which I fancied might be a
squirrel. Presently I heard the bay of a hound
and the yelp of a cur, and then knew that a
rabbit had passed near me. The dogs came
hurrying after, with a great rumpus, and then
presently the hunters followed. The dogs re-
mained barking not many rods south of me on
the edge of the swamp, and I knew the rabbit
had run to hole. For half an hour or more I
THE WEASEL 17

heard the hunters at work there, digging their
game out; then they came along and discovered
me at my work. They proved to be an old trap-
per and woodsman and his son. I told them what
I was in quest of. “A mountain weasel,” said
the old man. “Seven or eight years ago I used
to set deadfalls for rabbits just over there, and
the game was always partly eaten up. It must.
have been this weasel that visited my traps.”
So my game was evidently an old resident of the
place. This swamp, maybe, had been his hunt-
ing-ground for many years, and he had added
another hall to his dwelling each year. After
further digging, I struck at least one of his ban-
queting halls, a cavity about the size of one’s
hat, arched over by a network of fine tree-roots.
The occupant evidently lodged or rested here
also. There was a warm, dry nest, made of
leaves and the fur of mice and moles. I took
out two or three handfuls. In finding this
chamber I had followed one of the tunnels
around till it brought me within a foot of the
original entrance. A few inches to one side of
this cavity there was what I took to be a back
alley where the weasel threw his waste; there
were large masses of wet, decaying fur here, and
fur pellets such as are regurgitated by hawks and
owls. In the nest there was the tail of a flying
78 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

squirrel, showing that the weasel sometimes had
this game for supper or dinner.

I continued my digging with renewed energy ;
I should yet find the grand depot where all
these passages centred ; but the farther I exca-
vated, the more complex and baffling the prob-
lem became ; the ground was honeycombed with
passages. What enemy has this weasel, I said
to myself, that he should provide so many ways
of escape, that he should havea back door at
every turn? To corner him would be impossi-
ble; to be lost in his fortress was like being
lost in Mammoth Cave. How he could bewilder
his pursuer by appearing now at this door, now
at that ; now mocking him from the attic, now
defying him from the cellar! So far, I had dis-
covered but one entrance; but some of the
chambers were so near the surface that it looked
as if the planner had calculated upon an emer-
gency when he might want to reach daylight
quickly in a new place.

Finally I paused, rested upon my shovel a —
while, eased my aching back upon the ground,
and then gave it up, feeling as I never had be-
fore the force of the old saying, that you cannot
catch a weasel asleep. I had made an ugly hole
in the bank, had handled over two or three times
a ton or more of earth, and was apparently no
THE WEASEL 79

nearer the weasel and his store of mice than
when I began.

Then I regretted that I had broken into his
castle at all; that I had not contented myself
with coming day after day and counting his
mice as he carried them in, and continued my ob-
servation upon him each succeeding year. Now
the rent in his fortress could not be repaired,
and he would doubtless move away, as he most
certainly did, for his doors, which I had closed
with soil, remained unopened after winter had set
in.

But little seems known about the intimate pri-
vate lives of any of our lesser wild creatures. It
was news to me that any of the weasels lived in
dens in this way, and that they stored up provi- —
sion against a day of need. This species was
probably the little ermine, eight or nine inches
long, with tail about five inches. It was still in
its sunimer dress of dark chestnut-brown above
and whitish below.

It was a mystery where the creature had put
the earth which it must have removed in digging
its den; not a grain was to be seen anywhere,
and yet a bushel or more must have been taken
out. Externally, there was not the slightest sign
of that curious habitation there under the ground.
The entrance was hidden beneath dry leaves, and
80 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

was surrounded by little passages and flourishes
between the leaves and the ground. If any of
my readers find a weasel’s den, I hope they will
be wiser than I was, and observe his goings and
comings without disturbing his habitation.

A few years later I had another adventure
with a weasel that had its den in a bank on the
margin of a muck swamp in the same neighbor-
hood. We had cleared and drained and redeemed
the swamp and made it into a garden, and I had
built me a lodge there. The weasel’s hunting-
grounds, where doubtless he had been wont to
gather his supply of mice, had been destroyed,
and he had “got even” with me by preying
upon my young chickens. Night after night
the number of chickens grew less, till one day
we chanced to see the creature boldly chasing
one of the larger fowls along the road near the
henhouse. His career was cut short then and
there by one of the men. We were then igno-
rant of the den in the bank a few yards away.
The next season my chickens were preyed upon
again; they were killed upon the roost, and
their half-eaten bodies were found under the
floor. One night I was awakened about mid-
night by that loud, desperate ery which a barn
fowl gives when suddenly seized. upon its roost.
Was I dreaming, or was that a cry of murder
THE WEASEL 81

from my chickens? I seized my lantern, and
with my dog rushed out to where a pair of -
nearly grown roosters passed the nights upon a
low stump. They were both gone, and the action
of the dog betrayed the fresh scent of some ani-
mal. But we could get no clue to the chickens
or their enemy. I felt sure that only one of the
fowls had been seized, and that the other had
dashed away wildly in the darkness, which proved
to be the case. The dead chicken was there
under the edge of the stump, where I found it
in the morning, and its companion came forth
unhurt during the day. Thenceforth the chick-
ens, big and little, were all shut up in the hen-
house at night. On the third day the appetite
of the weasel was keen again, and it boldly gave
chase to a chicken before our eyes. I was stand-
ing in my porch with my dog, talking with my
neighbor and his wife, who, with their dog, were
standing in the road a few yards in front of me.
A chicken suddenly screamed in the bushes up
behind the rocks just beyond my friends. Then
it came rushing down over the rocks past them,
flying and screaming, closely pursued by a long,
slim red animal, that seemed to slide over the
rocks like a serpent. Its legs were so short that
one saw only the swift, gliding motion of its
body. Across the road into the garden, within
82 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

a yard of my friends, went the pursued and the
pursuer, and into the garden rushed I and my
dog. The weasel seized the chicken by the wing,
and was being dragged along by the latter in its
effort to escape, when I arrived upon the scene.
With a savage glee I had not felt for many a
day, I planted my foot upon the weasel. The
soft muck underneath yielded, and I held him
without hurting him. He let go his hold upon
the chicken and seized the sole of my shoe in his
teeth. Then I reached down and gripped him
with my thumb and forefinger just back of the
ears, and lifted him up, and looked his impotent
rage in the face. What gleaming eyes, what
an array of threatening teeth, what reaching of
vicious claws, what a wriggling and convulsed
body! But I held him firmly. He could only
scratch my hand and dart fire from his electric,
bead-like eyes. In the mean time my dog was
bounding up, begging to be allowed to have his
way with the weasel. But I knew what he did
not: I knew that in anything like a fair encoun-
ter the weasel would get the first hold, would
draw the first blood, and hence probably effect
his escape. So I carried the animal, writhing
and scratching, to a place in the road removed
from any near cover, and threw him violently
upon the ground, hoping thereby so to stun
THE WEASEL 83

and bewilder him'that the terrier could rush in
and crush him before he recovered his wits. But
I had miscalculated; the blow did indeed stun
and confuse him, but he was still too quick for
the dog, and had him by the lip like an electric
trap. Nip lifted up his head and swung the
weasel violently about in the air, trying to shake
him off, uttering a cry of rage and pain, but did
not succeed in loosening the animal’s hold for
some moments. When he had done so, and at-
tempted to seize him a second time, the weasel
was first again, but quickly released his hold and
darted about this way and that, seeking cover.
Three or four times the dog was upon him, but
found him each time too hot to be held. Seeing
that the creature was likely to escape, I. set my
foot upon him again, and made a finish of him.
The weasel is the boldest and most blood-
thirsty of our small mammals; indeed, none of
our larger beasts are more so. There is some-
thing devilish and uncanny about it. It persists
like fate; it eludes, but cannot be eluded. .The
terror it inspires in the smaller creatures — rats,
rabbits, chipmunks— is pitiful to behold. A rat
pursued by a weasel has been known to rush into
a room, uttering dismal cries, and seek the pro-
tection of a man in bed. A chipmunk will climb
to the top of a tall tree to elude it, and then,
84 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

when followed, let go its hold’ and drop with a
ery of despair toward the ground. A friend of
mine, walking along the road early one morning,
saw a rat rush over the fence and cross a few
yards ahead of him. Pressing it close came a
weasel, which seized the rat before it could gain
the opposite wall. My friend rushed to the aid
of the rat with his cane. But the weasel dodged
his blows, and in a moment or two turned fiercely
upon him. My friend aimed more blows at it
without effect, when the weasel began leaping
up before him, within a few feet of his face, its
eyes gleaming, its teeth threatening, and dodg-
ing every blow aimed at it. The effect, my
friend says, was singularly uncanny and start-
ling. It was like some infuriated imp of Satan
dancing before him, and watching for a chance
to seize him by the throat or to dash into his
eyes. He slowly backed off, beating the air
with his cane. Then the weasel returned to the
disabled rat and attempted to drag it into the
wall. My friend now began to hurl stones at
it, but it easily dodged them. Now he was joined
by another passer-by, and the two opened upon
the weasel with stones, till finally, in dodging
one, it was caught by the other, and so much
hurt that it gave up the rat and sought shelter
in the wall, where it was left waiting to secure
its game when its enemies should have gone on.
THE WEASEL 85

TI must give one more instance of the boldness
and ferocity of the weasel. A woman in north-
ern Vermont discovered that something was kill-
ing her hens, often on the nest. She watched
for the culprit, and at last caught a weasel in
the act. It had seized the hen, and refused to
let go when she tried to scare it away. Then
the woman laid hold of it and tried choking it,
when the weasel released its hold upon the hen
and fastened its teeth into her hand between the
thumb and forefinger. She could not choke it
off, and ran to a neighbor for help, but no one
. could remove it without tearing the flesh from
the woman’s hand. Then some one suggested a
pail of water ; into this the hand and weasel were
plunged, but the creature would not let go even
then, and did not until it was drowned.

The weasel is a subtle and destructive enemy of
the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with
great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it do so
on several occasions. One day my attention was
arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown
thrashers that were flitting from bush to bush
along an old stone wall in a remote field. Pre-
sently I saw what it was that excited them, —
three large red weasels, or ermines, coming along
the stone wall, and leisurely and half playfully
exploring every tree that stood near it. They
86 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS
had probably robbed the thrashers. They would

go up the trees with great ease, and glide ser-
pent-like out upon the main branches. When
‘they descended the tree, they were unable to
come straight down, like a squirrel, but went
around it spirally. How boldly they thrust their
heads out of the wall, and eyed me and sniffed
me as I drew near, —their round, thin ears, their
prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, and the
curving, snake-like motions of the head and neck
being very noticeable. They looked like blood-
suckers and egg-suckers. They suggested some-
thing extremely remorseless and cruel. One could
understand the alarm of the rats when they dis-
cover one of these fearless, subtle, and cireum-
venting creatures threading their holes. To
flee must be like trying to escape death itself.
I was one day standing in the woods upon a flat
stone, in what at certain seasons was the bed of
a stream, when one of these weasels came undu-
lating along and ran under the stone upon which
I was standing. As I remained motionless, he
thrust out his wedge-shaped head, and turned it
back above the stone as if half in mind to seize
my foot; then he drew back, and presently went
his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like _
the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father
one day armed me with an old musket and sent
THE WEASEL 87

me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. While
watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried
to cross a bar-way where I sat, and were so bent
on doing it that I fired at them,:boy-like, simply
to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels was
disabled by my shot, but the troop was not dis-
couraged, and, after making several feints to cross,
one of them seized the wounded one and bore it
over, and the pack disappeared in the wall on
the other side.

Let me conclude this chapter with two or three
more notes about this alert enemy of the birds
and lesser animals, the weasel.

A farmer one day heard a queer growling
sound in the grass: on approaching the spot
he saw two weasels contending over a mouse ;
both held the mouse, pulling in opposite direc-
tions, and they were so absorbed in the struggle
that the farmer cautiously put his hands down
and grabbed them both by the back of the neck.
He put them in a cage, and offered them bread
and other food. This they refused to eat, but in
a few days one of them had eaten the other up,
picking his bones clean, and leaving nothing but
the skeleton.

The same farmer was one day in his cellar
when two rats came out of a hole near him in
great haste, and ran up the cellar wall and along
88 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

its top till they came to a floor timber that stopped
their progress, when they turned at bay, and
looked excitedly back along the course they had
come. In a moment a weasel, evidently in hot
pursuit of them, came out of the hole, but, see-
ing the farmer, checked his course and darted
back. The rats had doubtless turned to give
him fight, and would probably have been a
match for him.

The weasel seems to track its game by scent.
A hunter of my acquaintance was one day sit-
ting in the woods, when he saw a red squirrel
run with great speed up a tree near him, and
out upon a long branch, from which he leaped
to some rocks, disappearing beneath them. In
a moment a weasel came in full course upon
his trail, ran up the tree, then out along the
branch, leaping from there to the rocks just as
the squirrel had done and pursuing him into
their recesses.

Doubtless the squirrel fell a prey to him. The
squirrel’s best game would have been to keep
to the higher treetops, where he could easily
have distanced the weasel. But beneath the
rocks he stood a very poor chance. I have
often wondered what keeps such an animal as
the weasel in check, for they are quite rare.
They never need go hungry, for rats and squir-
THE WEASEL 89

rels and mice and birds are everywhere. They
probably do not fall a prey to any other animal,
and they are very rarely captured or killed by
man. But the circumstances or agencies that
check the increase of any. species of animal
are, as Darwin says, very obscure and but little
known.
IX
THE MINK

In walking through the woods one day in
early winter, we read upon the newly fallen
snow the record of a mink’s fright the night
before. The mink had been traveling through
the woods post-haste, not along the watercourses
where one sees them by day, but over ridges
and across valleys. We followed his track some
distance to see what adventures he had met with.
We tracked him through a bushy swamp, and saw
where he had left it to explore a pile of rocks,
then where he had taken to the swamp again,
and where he had entered the more open woods.
Presently the track turned sharply about, and
doubled upon itself in long hurried strides.
What had caused the mink to change his mind
so suddenly? We explored a few paces ahead,
and came upon a fox track. The mink had prob-
ably seen the fox stalking stealthily through the
woods, and the sight had doubtless brought his
heart into his mouth. I think he climbed a tree,
and waited till the fox had passed. His track
 

 

 

 

MINK
THE MINK 91

disappeared amid a clump of hemlocks, and then
reappeared again a, little beyond them. It de-
scribed a big loop around, and then crossed the
fox track only a few yards from the point where
its course was interrupted. Then it followed a
little watercourse, went under a rude bridge in a
wood-road, then mingled with squirrel tracks in
a denser part of the thicket. If the mink met
a muskrat or a rabbit in his travels, or came
upon a grouse, or quail, or a farmer’s henroost,
he had the supper he was in quest of.

I followed a mink’s track one morning upon
the snow till I found where the prowler had
overtaken and killed a muskrat by a stone wall
near a little stream. The blood upon the snow
and the half-devoured body of the rat told the
whole story. The mink is very fond of musk-
rats, and trappers often use this flesh to bait
their traps. I wonder if he has learned to enter
the under-water hole to the muskrat’s den, and
then seek him in his chamber above, where the
poor rat would have little chance to escape,

The mink is only a larger weasel, and has
much of the boldness and bloodthirstiness of
that animal. One summer day my dog Lark and
I were sitting beside a small watercourse in the
woods, when I saw a mink coming up the stream
toward us. I sat motionless till the mink was
92 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

within a few feet of us, when the dog saw him.
As the dog sprang, the mink darted under a large
flat stone. Lark was very fierce, and seemed
to say to me, “Just lift up that stone and I will
show you my way with minks.’ This I quickly
did, and the dog sprang for the game, but he
as quickly withdrew with a cry of pain as if he
had touched something red-hot. The mink had
got in the first blow or bite, and then effected
his escape between my feet and the dog’s, as if
he had vanished in the air. Where he went to
was a mystery. There was no hole; no depth
of water; no hiding-place anywhere that I could
discover or that the dog could discover, and yet
the mink had disappeared. It was like some
conjurer’s trick.

Minks are fond of fish, and can capture them
in the water. This makes them very destruc-
tive along small trout streams and ponds. I
once saw a trout with an ugly gash in its side,
which was doubtless the work of a mink. With
a friend, I once had a camp by a trout stream in
the Catskills that we named “ Mink Camp,” by
reason of the number of minks that came every
night as soon as it was dark, to devour the fish-
heads and entrails that we threw over on the
opposite bank. We could often hear them dis-
puting over the spoils, and in the dim light of
the camp-fire could sometimes see them.
THE MINK 93

You may know the mink’s track upon the
snow from those of the squirrels at once. In
the squirrel-track the prints of the large hind
feet are ahead, with the prints of the smaller fore
feet just behind them, as in the case of the
rabbit. The mink, in running, usually plants
his hind feet exactly upon the track of his
fore feet, and closer together than the squirrel,
so that his trail upon the snow is something like

this : —
_
= o - o oo

The squirrel’s track, as well as those of the rab-
bit and the white-footed mouse, is in form like
this : — .

_- eo = = =
-e *o = “= “=<
One winter day I had a good view of a mink
running upon the snow and ice along the edge
of a stream. He had seen or heard me, and was
making a little extra speed. He bounded along
with his back much arched, in a curiously stiff
and mechanical sort of way, with none of the
grace and ease of the squirrel. He leaped high,
and cleared about two and a half feet at a bound.
X
THE RACCOON

In March that brief summary of a bear, the
raccoon, comes out of his den in the ledges,
and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
snow, — traveling not unfrequently in pairs, —
a lean, hungry couple, bent on pillage and
plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,
— feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating
in winter, and starving in spring. In April I
have found the young of the previous year
creeping about the fields, so reduced by starva-
tion as to be quite helpless, and offering no re-
sistance to my taking them up by the tail and
carrying them home.

The old ones also become very much emaci-
ated, and come boldly up to the barn or other
out-buildings in quest of food. I remember, one
morning in early spring, hearing old Cuff, the
farm-dog, barking vociferously before it was yet
light. When we got up we discovered him at
the foot of an ash-tree, which stood about thirty
rods from the house, looking up at some gray

-
THE RACCOON 95

object in the leafless branches, and by his man-
ners and his voice evincing great impatience
that we were so tardy in coming to his assist-
ance. Arrived on the spot, we saw in the tree
a coon of unusual size. One bold climber pro-
posed to go up and shake it down. This was
what old Cuff wanted, and he fairly bounded
with delight as he saw his young master shin-
ning up the tree. Approaching within eight or
ten feet of the coon, the climber seized the branch
to which it clung and shook long and fiercely.
But the coon was in no danger of losing its
hold; and when the climber paused to renew his
hold it turned toward him with a growl, and
showed very clearly a purpose to advance to the
attack. This caused its pursuer to descend to
the ground again with all speed. When the coon
was finally brought down with a gun, it fought
the dog, which was a large, powerful animal,
with great fury, returning bite for bite for some
moments; and after a quarter of an hour had
elapsed, and its unequal antagonist had shaken
it as a terrier does a rat, making his teeth meet
through the small of its back, the coon still
showed fight.

The coon is very tenacious of life, and like
the badger will always whip a dog of its own size
and weight. A woodchuck can bite severely,
96° SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

having teeth that cut like chisels, but a coon
has agility and power of limb as well.

Coons are considered game only in the fall, or
towards the close of summer, when they become
fat and their flesh sweet. At this time, cooning
is a famous pastime in the remote interior. As
these animals are entirely nocturnal in their hab-
its, they are hunted only at night. A piece of
corn on some remote side-hill near the mountain,
or between two pieces of woods, is most apt to
be frequented by them. While the corn is yet
green they pull the ears down like hogs, and,
tearing open the sheathing of husks, eat the
tender, succulent kernels, bruising and destroy-
ing much more than they devour. Sometimes —
their ravages are a matter of serious concern to
the farmer. But every such neighborhood has
its coon-dog, and the boys and young men
dearly love the sport. The party sets out about
eight or nine o’clock of a dark, moonless night,
and stealthily approaches the cornfield. The
dog knows his business, and when he is put into
a patch of corn and told to “hunt them up” he
makes a thorough search, and will not be misled
by any other scent. You hear him rattling
through the corn, hither and yon, with great
speed. The coons prick up their ears, and
quickly take themselves off on the opposite side
 

 

 

 

 

 

RACCOON
THE RACCOON 97

of the field. In the stillness you may sometimes
hear a single stone rattle on the wall as they
hurry toward the woods. If the dog finds no-
thing he comes back to his master in a short
time, and says in his dumb way, “No coon
there.” But if he strikes a trail you presently
hear a louder rattling on the stone wall, and
then a hurried bark as he enters the woods,
succeeded in a few minutes by loud and re-
peated barkings as he reaches the foot of the
tree in which the coon has taken refuge. Then
follows a pellmell rush as the cooning party dash
up the hill, into the woods, through the brush and
the darkness, falling over prostrate trees, pitch-
ing into gullies and hollows, losing hats and
tearing clothes, till finally, guided by the baying
of the faithful dog, they reach the tree. The
first thing now in order is to kindle a fire, and,
if its light reveals the coon, to shoot him ; if not,
to fell the tree with an axe, unless this last expe-
dient happens to be too great a sacrifice of timber
and of strength, in which case it is necessary
to sit down at the foot of the tree and wait till
morning.
XI
THE PORCUPINE

Among our wild animals there are three that
are slow-moving, dull-witted, and almost fearless,
— the skunk, the opossum, and the porcupine.
The two latter seem to be increasing in most
parts of the country. The opossum is becoming
quite common in the valley of the Hudson, and
the porcupine is frequently met with in parts of
the country where it was rarely or never seen
forty years ago.

When the boys in late fall now go cooning
where I used to go cooning in my youth, the
dogs often run on a porcupine or drive him up
a tree, and thus the sport is interrupted. Some-
times the dog comes to them with his mouth
stuck full of quills, and is then compelled to
submit to the painful operation of having them
withdrawn.

A sportsman relates that he once came upon
a dead porcupine and a dead bald eagle lying
upon the ground within a few yards of each
other. The eagle had partly torn the porcupine
THE PORCUPINE 99

to pieces, but in attacking it with its beak it had
driven numerous spines of the animal into its
throat, and from their effect had apparently died
as soon as its victim.

The quill of a porcupine is like a bad habit :
if it once gets hold it constantly works deeper
and deeper, though the quill has no power of
motion in itself; it is the live, active flesh of its
victim that draws it in by means of the barbed
point. One day my boy and I encountered a
porcupine on the top of one of the Catskills, and
we had a little circus with him; we wanted to
wake him up, and make him show a little excite-
ment, if possible. Without violence or injury
to him, we succeeded to the extent of making
his eyes fairly stand out from his head, but
quicken his motion he would not, — probably
could not.

What astonished and alarmed him seemed to
be that his quills had no effect upon his enemies ;
they laughed at his weapons. He stuck his head
under a rock and left his back and tail exposed.
This is the porcupine’s favorite position of de-
fense. “Now come if you dare,” he seems to
say. Touch his tail, and like a trap it springs
up and strikes -your hand full of little quills.
The tail is the active weapon of defense; with
this the animal strikes. It is the outpost that
100 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

delivers its fire before the citadel is reached. It
is doubtless this fact that has given rise to the
popular notion that the porcupine can shoot its
quills, which of course it cannot do.

With a rotten stick we sprang the animal’s
tail again and again, till its supply of quills be- .
gan to run low, and the creature grew uneasy.
“‘ What does this mean ?”’ he seemed to say, his
excitement rising. His shield upon his back, too,
we trifled with, and when we finally drew him
forth with a forked stick, his eyes were ready to
burst from his head. In what a peevish, injured
tone the creature did complain of our unfair tac-
ties! He protested and protested, and whim-
pered and scolded, like some infirm old man
tormented by boys. His game after we led him
forth was to keep himself as much as possible in
the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and a
cord we finally threw him over on his back and
exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side,
when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say,
“Now you may do with me as you like.” Then
we laughed in his face and went our way.

Before we had reached our camp I was sud-
denly seized with a strange, acute pain in one
of my feet. It seemed as if a large nerve was
being roughly sawed in two. I could not take
another step. Sitting down and removing my
THE PORCUPINE 101

shoe and stocking, I searched for the cause of
the paralyzing pain. The foot was free from
mark or injury, but what was that little thorn or
fang of thistle doing on the ankle? I pulled it
out and found it to be one of the lesser quills of
the porcupine. By some means, during our “ cir-
cus,” the quill had dropped. inside my stocking,
the thing had “taken,” and the porcupine had
his revenge for all the indignities we had put
upon him. I was well punished. The nerve
which the quill struck had unpleasant memories
of it for many months afterward.

When you come suddenly upon the porcupine
in his native haunts, he draws his head back and
down, puts up his shield, trails his broad tail, and
waddles slowly away. His shield is the sheaf of
larger quills upon his back, which he opens and
spreads out in a circular form so that the whole
body is quite hidden beneath it. The porcu-
pine’s great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as
formidable as those of the woodchuck, he does
not appear to use at all in his defense, but relies
entirely upon his quills, and when those fail him
he is done for.

I once passed a summer night alone upon the
highest peak of the Catskills, Slide Mountain. I
soon found there were numerous porcupines that
desired to keep me company. The news of my
102 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

arrival in the afternoon seemed to have spread
rapidly among them. They probably had
scented me. After resting awhile I set out to
look up the spring, and met a porcupine on his
way toward my camp. He turned out in the
grass, and then, as I paused, came back into the
path and passed directly over my feet. He evi-
dently felt that he had as good a right to the
road as I had; he had traveled it many times
before me. When I charged upon him with a
stick in my hand, he slowly climbed a small bal-
sam fir.

I soon found the place of the spring, and,
having dredged it and cleaned it, I sat down
upon a rock and waited for the water slowly to
seep in. Presently I heard something in the
near bushes, and in a moment a large porcupine
came into view. I thought that he, too, was
looking for water; but no, he was evidently on
his way to my camp. He, also, had heard the
latest rumor on the mountain-top. It was highly
amusing to watch his movements. He came tee-
tering along in the most aimless, idiotic way.
Now he drifted off a little to the right, then a
little to the left; his blunt nose seemed vaguely
to be feeling the air; he fumbled over the
ground, tossed about by loose boulders and little
hillocks; his eyes wandered stupidly about; I
 

 

 

 

 

 

PORCUPINE
THE PORCUPINE: 103

was in plain view within four or five yards of
him, but he heeded me not. Then he turned
back a few paces, but some slight obstacle in
his way caused him to change his mind. One
thought of a sleep-walker; uncertainty was
stamped upon every gesture and movement;
yet he was really drifting towards camp. After
a while he struck the well-defined trail, and his
gray, shapeless body slowly disappeared up the
slope. In five or six minutes I overtook him
shuffling along within sight of the big rock
upon which rested my blanket and lunch. As
I came up to him he depressed his tail, put up
his shield, and slowly pushed off into the wild
grass. While I was at lunch I heard a sound,
and there he was, looking up at me from the
path a few feet away. “An uninvited guest,”
I said; “but come on.” He hesitated, and
then turned aside into the bracken; he would
wait till I had finished and had gone to sleep,
or had moved off..

How much less wit have such animals, — ani-
mals like the porcupine, opossum, skunk, turtle,
— that nature has armed against all foes, than the
animals that have no such ready-made defenses,
and are preyed upon by a multitude of enemies!
The price paid for being shielded against all dan-
ger, for never feeling fear or anxiety, is stupidity.
104 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

If the porcupine were as vulnerable to its enemies
as, say, the woodchuck, it would probably soon
come to be as alert and swift of foot as that
marmot.

For an hour or more, that afternoon on the
mountain top, my attention was attracted by a
peculiar continuous sound that seemed to come
from far away to the east. I queried with my-
self, “Is it the sound of some workman in a
distant valley hidden by the mountains, or is its
source nearer by me on the mountain side?”
I could not determine. It was not a hammering
or a grating or the filing of a saw, though it
suggested such sounds. It had a vague, distant,
ventriloquial character. In the solitude of the
mountain top there was something welcome and
pleasing in it. Finally I set out to try to solve
the mystery. I had not gone fifty yards from
camp when I knew I was near the source of the
sound. Presently I saw a porcupine on a log, and
as I approached the sound ceased, and the animal
moved away. A curious kind of chant he made,
or note of wonder and surprise at my presence
on the mountain, —or was he calling together
the clan for a midnight raid upon my camp ?

I made my bed that night of ferns and bal-
sam boughs under an overhanging rock, where
the storm that swept across the mountain just
THE PORCUPINE: 105

after dark could not reach me. I lay down,
rolled in my blankets, with a long staff by my
side, in anticipation of visits from the porcu-
pines. In the middle of the night I was awak-
ened, and, looking out of my den, saw a por-
cupine outlined against the starlit sky. I made
a thrust at him with my staff, when, with a
grunt or grumble, he disappeared. A little later
I was awakened again by the same animal, or
another, which I repelled as before. At inter-
vals during the rest of the night they visited me
in this way; my sleep was by short stages from
one porcupine to another.

These animals are great gnawers. They seem
to be specially fond of gnawing any tool or ob-
ject that has been touched or used by human
hands. They would probably have gnawed my
shoes or lunch basket or staff had I lain still.
A settler at the foot of the mountain told me
they used to prove very annoying to him by
getting into his cellar or woodshed at night, and
indulging their ruling passion by chewing upon
his tool-handles or pails or harness. “ Kick one
of them outdoors,” he said, “and in half an
hour he is back again.” In winter they usually
live in trees, gnawing the bark and feeding upon
the inner layer. I have seen large hemlocks
quite denuded and killed in this way.
XII
THE OPOSSUM

A new track has appeared upon the snow in
my neighborhood here on the Hudson within
the past few years. It is a strange track, and
suggests some small, deformed human hand. If
the dwarfs or brownies we read of in childhood
were to walk abroad in winter, they might leave
such an imprint behind them as this.

This track, which we seldom see later than
December, is made by the opossum. This ani-
mal is evidently multiplying in the land, and is
extending its range northward. Ten years ago
they were rarely found here, and now they are
very common. I hear that they are very abun-
dant and troublesome on parts of Long Island.
The hind foot of the opossum has a sort of
thumb that opposes the other toes, and it is the
imprint of this member that looks so strange.
The under side of the foot is as naked as the
human hand, and this adds to the novel look of
the track in the snow.

Late in the fall, my hired man set a trap in a
hole in hopes of catching a skunk, but instead
THE OPOSSUM 107

he caught a possum by one of its fore feet.
The poor thing was badly crippled, and he kept
it in a barrel for a couple of weeks and fed it, to
try and make amends for the injury he had
done. Then he gave it its freedom, though the
injured foot had healed but little.

Soon after he set his trap in the same hole,
and to his annoyance caught the possum again,
this time by one of the hind feet. He brought
the quiet, uncomplaining creature to me by its
prehensile tail, and asked me what should be
done with or for it. I concluded to make a
hospital for it in one corner of my study. I
made it a nest behind a pile of magazines,
and fed and nursed it for several weeks. It
' never made a sound, or showed the least uneasi-
ness or sign of suffering, that I was aware of, in
all that time. By day it slept curled up in its
nest. If disturbed, it did not “ play possum,”
that is, did not feign sleep or death, but opened
its mouth and grinned up at you in a sort of
comical, idiotic way. At night it hobbled about
the study, and ate the meat and cake I had
placed for it. Sometimes by day it would come
out of the corner and eat food under the lounge,
eating very much after the manner of a pig,
though not so greedily. Indeed, all its motions
were very slow, like those of the skunk.
108 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

The skin of the opossum is said to be so fetid
that a dog will not touch it. A dog is always
suspicious of an animal that shows no fear and
makes no attempt to get out of his way. This
fetidness of the opossum is not apparent to my
sense.

After a while my patient began to be trouble-
some by climbing upon the book-shelves and in-
specting the books, so I concluded to discharge
him from the hospital. One night I carried
him to the open door by his tail, put him down
upon the door-sill, and told him to go forth.
He hesitated, looked back into the warm room,
then out into the winter night, then thought of
his maimed feet, and of traps in holes where un-
suspecting possums live, and could not reach a
decision. “Come,” I said, “I have done all I
can for you; go forth and shift for yourself.”
Slowly, like a very old man, he climbed down
out of the door and disappeared in the darkness.
_ Ihave no doubt he regained his freedom with a
sigh. It is highly probable that, if a trap is set
in his way again, he will put his zoe 1 in it as
innocently as before.

One day in March one of my neighbors
brought to me a handful of young possums,
very young, sixteen of them, like newly born
mice. The mother had been picked up dead on
 

 

 

 

OPOssUM
THE OPOSSUM 109

the railroad, killed, as so often happens to coons,
foxes, muskrats, and woodchucks, by the night
express. The young were in her pouch, each
clinging to its teat, dead. The young are car-
ried and nursed by the mothers in this curious
pocket till they are four or five weeks old, or of
the size of large mice. After this she frequently
carries them about, clinging to various parts of
her body, some with their tails wound around
hers.

The next winter, two or more possums and
a skunk took up their quarters under my study
floor. It was not altogether a happy family.
Just what their disagreements were about, I do
not know, but the skunk evidently tried to roast
the possums out. The possums stood it better
than Icould. I came heartily to wish they were
all roasted out. I was beginning to devise ways
and means, when I think the skunk took him-
self off. After that, my only annoyance was
from the quarreling of the possums among them-
selves, and their ceaseless fussing around under
there, both day and night. At times they made
sounds as if they were scratching matches on the
under side of the floor: then they seemed to be
remaking or shifting their beds from one side to
the other. Sometimes I think they snored in
their sleep. One night, as I was going from the
110 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

house to the study, I heard a rustling in the dry
leaves and grass, beside the path. Lighting a
match, I approached the spot, and found one
of the possums just setting out on his night’s ex-
cursions. I stooped down and stroked his head
and scratched his back, but he did not move; he
only opened his mouth a little and looked silly.
XT
WILD MICE

One of the prettiest and most abundant of
our native mice is the deer mouse, also called
the white-footed mouse; a very beautiful crea-
ture, nocturnal in his habits, with large ears,
and large, fine eyes full of a wild, harmless
look. He is daintily marked, with white feet
and a white belly. When disturbed by day he
is very easily captured, having none of the cun-
ning or viciousness of the common Old World .
mouse. He is found in both fields and woods.

It is he who, high in the hollow trunk of some
tree, lays by a store of beech-nuts for winter use.
Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity
that serves as storehouse lined with grass and
leaves. The wood-chopper frequently squanders
this precious store. I have seen half a peck
taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put
up by the most delicate hands, — as they were.
How long it must have taken the little creature
to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one,
and convey them up to his fifth-story chamber !
112 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

But the deer mice do not always carry their
supplies home in this manner ; they often hide
them in the nearest convenient place. I have
known them to carry a pint or more of hickory
nuts and deposit them in a pair of boots stand-
ing in the chamber of an outhouse. Near the
chestnut-trees they will fill little pocket-like de-
pressions in the ground with chestnuts; in a
grain-field they carry the grain under stones;
under some cover beneath cherry-trees they col-
lect great numbers of cherry-pits. Hence, when
cold weather comes, instead of staying at home
like the chipmunk, they gad about hither and
thither looking up their supplies. One may see
their tracks on the snow everywhere in the
- woods and fields and by the roadside. The
advantage of this way of living is that it leads
to activity, and probably to sociability.

One day, on my walk in the woods, I saw
at one point the mice-tracks unusually thick
around a small sugar-maple. It was doubtless
their granary ; they had beech-nuts stored there,
T’ll warrant. There were two entrances to the
cavity of the tree,— one at the base, and one
seven or eight feet up. At the upper one, which
was only just of the size of a mouse, a squir-
rel had been trying to break in. He had cut and
chiseled the solid wood to the depth of nearly an
 

 

 

 

WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE
WILD MICE 113

inch, and his chips strewed the snow all about.
He knew what was in there, and the mice knew
that he knew; hence their apparent consterna-
tion. They had rushed wildly about over the
snow, and, I doubt not, had given the piratical red
squirrel a piece of their minds. A few yards away
the mice had a hole down into the snow, which
perhaps led to some snug den under the ground.
Hither they may have been slyly removing their
stores while the squirrel was at work with his
back turned. One more night and he would
effect an entrance: what a good joke upon him
if he found the cavity empty! These native
mice, I imagine, have to take many precautions
to prevent their winter stores being plundered
by the squirrels, who live, as it were, from hand
to mouth.

The wild mice are fond of bees and of
honey, and they apparently like nothing better
than to be allowed to take up their quarters in
winter in some vacant space in a hive of bees.
A chamber just over the bees seems to be pre-
ferred, as here they get the benefit of the
warmth generated by the insects. One very
cold winter I wrapped up one of my hives with
a shawl. Before long I noticed that the shawl
was beginning to have a very torn and tattered
appearance. On examination, I found that a
114 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

native mouse had established itself in the top of
the hive, and had levied a ruinous tax upon the
shawl to make itself a nest. Never was a fabric
more completely reduced into its original ele-
ments than were large sections of that shawl.
It was a masterly piece of analysis. The work
of the wheel and the loom was exactly reversed,
and what was once shawl was now the finest and
softest of wool. :

The white-footed mouse is much more com-
mon along the fences and in the woods than
one would suspect. One winter day I set a
mouse-trap —the kind known as the delusion
trap — beneath some ledges in the edge of the
woods, to determine what species of mouse was
most active at this season. The snow fell so
deeply that I did not visit my trap for two or
three weeks. When I did so, it was literally
packed ‘full of white-footed mice. There were
seven in all, and not room for another. Our
woods are full of these little creatures, and they
appear to have a happy, social time of it, even in
the severest winters. Their little tunnels under
the snow and their hurried leaps upon its sur-
face may be noted everywhere. They link tree
and stump, or rock and tree, by their pretty
trails. They evidently travel for adventure and
to hear the news, as well as for food. They know
WILD MICE 115

that foxes and owls are about, and they keep
pretty close to cover. When they cross an ex-
posed place, they do it hurriedly.

The field or meadow mice doubtless welcome
the snow. They can now come out of their dens
in the ground or beneath the flat stones and lead
a more free and active life. The snow is their
friend. It keeps off the cold, and it shields their
movements from the eyes of their enemies, the
owls, hawks, and foxes. Now they can venture
abroad from their retreats without fear. They
make little tunnels and roadways everywhere
over the surface of the ground. They build
winter houses under the great drifts. They
found little mouse colonies in places where they
have never been in summer. The conditions of
life with them are entirely changed. They can
get at the roots of the grasses, or the various
herbs and seeds they feed upon, as well as in the
snowless seasons, and without exposure to their
enemies.

I fancy they have great times there beneath
the drifts. Maybe they have their picnics and
holidays then as we have ours in summer. When
the drifts disappear in spring, you may often see
where they have had their little encampments: a
few square yards of the pasture or meadow bot-
tom will look as if a map had been traced upon
116 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

it; tunnels and highways running and winding
in every direction and connecting the nests of
dry grass, which might stand for the cities and
towns on the map. These runways are smooth
and round like pipes, and only a little larger
than the bodies of the mice. I think it is only
the meadow field-mouse that lives in this way
beneath the snow.

I met one of these mice in my travels one day
under peculiar conditions. He was on his travels
also, and we met in the middle of a mountain
lake. I was casting my fly there, when I saw,
just sketched or etched upon the glassy surface,
a delicate V-shaped figure, the point of which
reached about to the middle of the lake, while
the two sides, as they diverged, faded out toward
the shore. I saw the point of this V was being
slowly pushed across the lake. I drew near in
my boat, and beheld a little mouse swimming
vigorously for the opposite shore. His little
legs appeared like swiftly revolving wheels be-
neath him. As I came near, he dived under
the water to escape me, but came up again like
a cork and just as quickly. It was laughable to
see him repeatedly duck beneath the surface and
pop back again in a twinkling. He could not
keep under water more than a second or two.
Presently I reached him my oar, when he ran up
WILD MICE 117

it and into the palm of my hand, where he sat
for some time and arranged his fur and warmed
himself. He did not show the slightest fear. It
was probably the first time he had ever shaken
hands with a human being. He had doubtless
lived all his life in the woods, and was strangely
unsophisticated. How his little round eyes did
shine, and how he sniffed me to find out if I
was more dangerous than I appeared to his
sight !

“After a while I put him down in the bottom
of the boat and resumed my fishing. But it
was not long before he became very restless, and
evidently wanted. to go about his business. He
would climb up to the edge of the boat and peer
down into the water. Finally he could brook the
delay no longer and plunged boldly overboard ;
but he had either changed his mind or lost his
reckoning, for he started back in the direction
from which he had come, and the last I saw of
him he was a mere speck vanishing in the shad-
ows near the shore.

Later on I saw another mouse, while we were
at work in the fields, that interested me also.
This one was our native white-footed mouse.
We disturbed the mother with her young in
her nest, and she rushed out with her little
ones clinging to her teats. A curious spectacle
118 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

she presented as she rushed along, as if slit and
torn into rags. Her pace was so hurried that
two of the young could not keep their hold and
were left in the weeds. We remained quiet, and
presently the mother came back looking for
them. When she had found one, she seized it
as a cat seizes her kitten and made off with it. —
In a moment or two she came back and found
the other one and carried it away. I was curi-
ous to see if the young would take hold of her
teats again as at first, and be dragged away in
that manner, but they did not. It would be
interesting to know if they seize hold of their
mother by instinct when danger threatens, or if
they simply retain the hold which they already
have. I believe the flight.of the family always
takes place in this manner with this species of
mouse.

I suspect that our white-footed mouse is capa-
ble of lending a hand to a fellow in distress ; at
least, the following incident looks like it. One
season they overran my cabin in the woods, and
gave me a good deal of annoyance; so much so
that I tried trapping them, using the ordinary
circular trap with four or five holes and wire
springs. One night I heard the trap spring in
the attic over my head, followed by the kicking
and struggling of the mouse. This continued
op 1
/ if 4 : '
) i WILD MICE 119

for a few moments, when all was still. “ There,”
I said, “that mouse is dead.” Presently the rat-

‘ ¢tling of the trap recommenced, and continued so
léng at short intervals that going to sleep was
out of the question. I fancied the mouse was
too strong for the trap, so I ‘went upstairs to.
investigate. The captive was dead, sure enough,
and I was more puzzled than ever. On examin-
ing him closely, I found the fur on his back was
wet and much rumpled. I concluded, therefore,
that his companions had seized him there, and
had been tugging away at him to drag him out
of the trap, causing the rattling I had heard.
No other explanation seems probable.

The least mammal in our woods is the little
mouse -like shrew, scarcely more than three
inches long, tail and all. And it is the shyest
and least known. One gets a glimpse of it
only at rare intervals, while sitting or standing
motionless in the woods. There is a slight
rustle under the leaves, and you may see a tiny

- form dart across a little opening in the leafy -
carpet. Its one dread seems to be exposure to
the light. If it were watched and waited for by
a hundred enemies, it could hardly be more hur-
ried and cautious in its movements. And when
once captured and fairly exposed to the light,
120 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

it soon dies, probably of fright. One night in —
midsummer, when I was camping in the woods,
one of them got into an empty tin pail and was
dead in the morning. A teacher caught one in
a delusion trap, and attemped to take it to her
school, to show her children, but it was dead
when she got there. In winter it makes little
tunnels. under the snow in the woods, now and
then coming to the surface, and, after a few
jumps, diving under the snow again. Its tracks
are like the most delicate stitching. I have
never found its nest or seen its young. Like
all the shrews, it lives mainly upon worms and
insects.

The track of one of our native mice we do not
‘see upon the snow, — that of the jumping mouse.
So far as I know, it is the only one of our mice
that hibernates. It is much more rare than its
cousin the deer mouse, or white-footed mouse,
and I have never known it to be found in barns
or dwellings. I think I have heard it called the
kangaroo mouse, because of its form and its
manner of running, which is in long leaps. Its
fore legs are small and short, and its hind legs
long and strong. It bounds along, leaping two
or more feet at a time. I used to see it when a
boy, but have not met with one for many years.
 

 

 

 

 

JUMPING MOUSE
WILD MICE 121

One summer, a boy who lives in Dutchess
County, across the Hudson from my house,
caught four of these mice in a wire trap, two
males and two females. The boy said that when
he picked up the trap the two males fell dead,
from fright he thought. One of the females
died in October, but the other lived and began
hibernating early in November. He took it to
his teacher in New York, who kept it through
the winter. She made a pocket for it in a
woolen sock, but it was not suited with it, for
in January it woke up and made itself a neat
little blanket from the wool which it nibbled
from the sock. In this it rolled itself and went
to sleep again. A week or two later I was at
the school, and the teacher showed me her sleep-
ing mouse. It was rolled up in a ball, with its
tail wrapped about its head. I held it in the
palm of my hand. It seemed almost as cold
as a dead mouse, and I could not see it breathe.
It was carefully put back in its blanket.

Not long after this, a small house-mouse was
put in the box with it. “It was the tiniest
little mouse,” says Miss Burt, “you ever saw.
It cuddled in with the hibernator, who got up
at once and took care of this baby. The baby
struck out independently and burrowed in the
sand, and stole some of the wool and feathers
122 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

from hibernator to line his own nest. But the
jumping mouse went in with him, enlarged the
nest, and cuddled down to him. They were
great friends. But the baby smelled dreadfully,
as all house-mice do, and I took him out. Then
the hibernator curled up again and went into
winter quarters.

“When the warm weather came on, she un-
curled and ate and drank. She preferred pecan
nuts and shredded-wheat biscuit, and ate corn.
I tried to tame her. I took a strong feather
and played with her. At first she resisted and
was frightened, but after a while she ‘stood it,’
and would even eat and clean herself while I
scratched her with this feather. But she was
always terribly frightened, when coming out of
her day’s sleep, if I began to play with her.
After being thoroughly waked up, she did not
mind it. She would let me smooth her with my
finger, and she would smell of my finger and go
on eating, keeping an eye out. Three times she
had a perfect fit of fright, lying on her back,
and kicking and trembling violently. On these
occasions she made a scuttling noise or cry, and
I thought each time she would die, so I grew
more and more cautious about meddling with
her. There was one interesting thing about it,
—she rose from these fits and ate heartily, and
WILD MICE 123

cleaned herself with great unconcern. I was
tempted to believe that she shammed dying.

“The most interesting thing I ever saw her do
was to climb up on her glass of water, sit on the
rim, and put both little paws down and scoop up
a big double-handful of water and wash her face
and head. She made her face very wet, just
like a person washing his face. She ate sunflower
seeds, and often kept one eye shut a long time
on first waking up. After the apple-blossoms
came, I kept her box supplied with flowers,
such as apple-blossoms, cherry, spruce, maple,
and so on. Also I kept her box disinfected,
with plenty of good, fresh country dirt. But
she stuck to the old wool and feathers, and the
little piano-duster.”

The mouse continued hibernating at intervals
till May. One damp, chilly morning Miss Burt
thought she would add to her pet’s coverings, the
creature seemed so cold to the touch. “ Little
by little, much of her bedding of wool had been
removed, although she had a pretty good blanket
of it left, and the feather duster over her, which
she appropriated long ago. So I resolved to carry
some bits of flannel to school, and, when I went
to her box to give her the extra clothing, again
found her as you saw her,.rolled up in a ball.
I covered her carefully, wrapped her all up, and
124 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

put her back. Later in the day I peeped in, and
she was awake. In the afternoon I took her
out in her little blanket and looked at her. She
was asleep, but started up, and, seeing herself out
of her box, put up her little paw in fright. She
trembled violently, and I hastily returned her to
her box, but before I could cover her she fell
back dead of fright.” Miss Burt adds: “J have
had her put in aleohol. One tiny paw is raised
imploringly, suggestive of the sensitive nerves
that caused her death.”
XIV
GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

So fond am I of seeing Nature reassert her-
self that I even found some compensation in the
loss of my chickens that bright November night
when some wild creature, coon or fox, swept two
of them out of the evergreens, and their squawk-
ing as they were hurried across the lawn called
me from my bed to shout good-by after them.
It gave a new interest to the hen-roost, this sud-
den incursion of wild nature. I feel bound to

‘caution the boys about disturbing the wild rab-
bits that in summer breed in my currant-patch,
and in autumn seek refuge under my study floor.
The occasional glimpses I get of them about the
lawn in the dusk, their cotton tails twinkling in
the dimness, afford me a genuine pleasure. I
have seen the time when I would go a good way
to shoot a partridge ; but I would not have killed,
if I could, the one that started out of the vines
that cover my rustic porch, as I approached that
side of the house one autumn morning. How
much of the woods, and of the untamable spirit
126 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

of wild nature, she brought to my very door!
It was tonic and exhilarating to see her whirl
away toward the vineyard. I also owe a mo-
ment’s pleasure to the gray squirrel that, finding
my summer-house in the line of his travels one
summer day, ran through it and almost over my
feet as I sat idling with a book.

I am sure my power of digestion was improved
that cold winter morning when, just as we were
sitting down to breakfast about sunrise, a red fox
loped along in front of the window, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, and disap-
peared amid the currant-bushes. What of the
wild and the cunning did he not bring! His
graceful form and motion were in my mind’s eye
all day. When you have seen a fox loping along
in that way, you have seen the poetry there is in
the canine tribe. It is to the eye what a flowing
measure is to the mind, so easy, so buoyant; the
furry creature drifting along like a large red
thistledown, or like a plume borne by the wind.
It is something to remember with pleasure, that
a muskrat sought my door one December night
when a cold wave was swooping down upon us.
Was he seeking shelter, or had he lost his reck-
oning? The dogs cornered him in the very door-
way, and set up a great hubbub. In the dark-
ness, thinking it was a cat, I put my hand down
GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 127

to feel it. The creature skipped to the other
corner of the doorway, hitting my hand with its
cold, rope-like tail. Lighting a match, I had a
glimpse of him sitting up on his haunches like a
woodchuck, confronting his enemies. I rushed
in for the lantern, with the hope of capturing
him alive, but before I returned, the dogs, grow-
ing bold, had finished him.

I have had but one call from a coon, that I am
aware of, and I fear we did not treat him with
due hospitality. He took up his. quarters for the
day in a Norway spruce, the branches of which
nearly brushed the house. I had noticed that
the dog was very curious about that tree all the
afternoon. After dinner his curiosity culmi-
nated in repeated loud and confident barking.
Then I began an investigation, expecting to
find a strange cat, or at most a red squirrel.
But a moment’s scrutiny revealed his coonship.
Then how to capture him became the problem.
A long pole was procured, and I sought to dis-
lodge him from his hold. The skill with which
he maintained himself amid the branches excited
our admiration. But after a time he dropped
lightly to the ground, not in the least discon-
certed, and at once on his guard against both
man and beast. The dog was a coward, and
dared not face him. When the coon’s attention
128 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

was diverted, the dog would rush in; then one
of us would attempt to seize the coon’s tail, but
he faced about so quickly, his black eyes gleam-
ing, that the hand was timid about seizing him.
But finally in his skirmishing with the dog I
caught him by the tail, and bore him safely to
an open flour-barrel, and he was our prisoner.

Much amusement my little boy and I antici-
pated with him. He partook of food that same
day, and on the second day would eat the chest-
nuts in our presence. Never did he show the
slightest fear of us or of anything, but he was
unwearied in his efforts to regain his freedom.
After a few days we put a strap upon his neck
and kept him tethered by a chain. But in the
night, by dint of some hocus-pocus, he got the
chain unsnapped and made off, and he is now, I
trust, a patriarch of his tribe, wearing a leather
necktie.

The skunk visits every farm sooner or later.
One night I came near shaking hands with one
on my very door-stone. I thought it was the
cat, and put down my hand to stroke it, when
the creature, probably appreciating my mistake,
moved off up the bank, revealing to me the
white stripe on its body and the kind of cat I
had saluted. The skunk is not easily ruffled,
and seems to employ excellent judgment in the
use of its terrible weapon.
GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 129

Several times I have had calls from wood-
chucks. One looked in at the open door of my
study one day, and, after sniffing a while, and
not liking the smell of such clover as I was com-
pelled to nibble there, moved on to better pas-
tures. Another one invaded the kitchen door
while we were at dinner. The dogs promptly
challenged him, and there was a lively scrimmage
upon the door-stone. I thought the dogs were
fighting, and rushed to part them. The inci-
dent broke in upon the drowsy summer noon,
as did the appearance of the muskrat upon the
frigid December night.

The woodchuck episode that afforded us the
most amusement occurred one midsummer. We
were at work in a newly-planted vineyard, when
the man with the cultivator saw, a few yards in
front of him, some large gray object that at first
puzzled him. He approached it, and found it to
be an old woodchuck with a young one in her
mouth. She was carrying her kitten as does a
cat, by the nape of the neck. Evidently she
was moving her family to pastures new. As
the man was in the line of her march, she
stopped and considered what was to be done.
He called to me, and I approached slowly. As
the mother saw me closing in on her flank,
she was suddenly seized with a panic, and, drop-
130 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

ping her young, she fled precipitately for the
cover of a large pile of grape-posts some ten
or twelve rods distant. We pursued hotly, and
overhauled her as she was within one jump of
the house of refuge. Taking her by the tail, I
carried her back to her baby; but she heeded it
not. It was only her own bacon now that she
was solicitous about. The young one remained
where he had been dropped, keeping up a brave,
reassuring whistle that was in ludicrous contrast
to his exposed and helpless condition. He was the
smallest woodchuck I had ever seen, not- much
larger than a large rat. His head and shoulders
were so large in proportion to the body as to give
him a comical look. He could not walk about
yet, and had never before been above ground.
Every moment or two he would whistle cheerily,
as the old one does when safe in his den with
the farm-dog fiercely baying outside.

We took the youngster home, and my little
boy was delighted over the prospect of a tame
woodchuck. Not till the next day would he eat.
Then, getting a taste of the milk, he clutched
the spoon that held it with great eagerness,
and sucked away like a little pig. We were all
immensely diverted by him. He ate eagerly,
grew rapidly, and was soon able to run about.

As the old one had been killed, we became
GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 131

curious as to the fate of the rest of her family,
for no doubt there were more. Had she moved
them, or had we intercepted her on her finst trip?
We knew where the old den was, but not the new.
So we would keep a lookout. Near the end of
the week, on passing by the old den, there were
three young ones creeping about a few feet from
its mouth. They were starved out, and had
come forth to see what could be found. We
captured them all, and the young family was
again united. How these poor, half-famished
creatures did lay hold of the spoon when they
got a taste of the milk! One could not help
laughing. Their little shining black paws were
so handy and so smooth; they seemed as if en-
cased in kid gloves. The captives throve well
upon milk, and then upon milk and clover.

But after the novelty of the thing had worn
off, the boy found he had incumbered himself
with serious duties in assuming the position of
foster-mother to this large family ; so he gave
them all away but one, the first one captured,
which had outstripped all the others in growth.
This soon became a very amusing pet, but he
always protested when handled, and always ob-
jected to confinement. I should mention that
the cat had a kitten about the age of the chuck,
and, as she had more milk than the kitten could
132 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

dispose of, the chuck, when we first got him, was
often placed in the nest with the kitten, and .
was regarded by the cat as tenderly as her own,
and allowed to nurse freely. Thus a friendship
sprang up between the kitten and the woodchuck,
which lasted as long as the latter lived. They
would play together precisely like two kittens,
—clinch and tumble about and roll upon the
grass in a very amusing way. Finally the wood-
chuck took up his abode under the floor of the
kitchen, and gradually relapsed into a half-wild
state. He would permit no familiarities from
any one save the kitten, but each day they would
have a turn or two at their old games of rough-
and-tumble. The chuck was now over half
grown, and procured his own living. One day
the dog, who had all along looked upon him
with a jealous eye, encountered him too far from
cover, and his career ended then and there.

In July the woodchuck was forgotten in our
interest in a little gray rabbit which we found
nearly famished. It was so small that it could
sit in the hollow of one’s hand. Some acci-
dent had probably befallen its mother. The
tiny creature looked spiritless and forlorn. We
had to force the milk into its mouth. But ina
day or two it began to revive, and would lap the
milk eagerly. Soon it took to grass and clover,
GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 133

and then to nibbling sweet apples and early
pears. It grew rapidly, and was one of the soft-
est and most harmless-looking pets I had ever
seen. For a month or more the little rabbit
was the only company I had, and it helped to
beguile the time immensely. In coming in from
the field or from my work, I seldom failed to
bring it a handful of red clover blossoms, of
which it became very fond. One day it fell
slyly to licking my hand, and I discovered it
wanted salt. I would then moisten my fingers,
dip them into the salt, and offer them to the
rabbit. How rapidly the delicate little tongue
would play upon them, darting out to the right
and left of the large front incisors, the slender
paws being pressed against my hand as if to
detain it !

But the rabbit proved really untamable ; its
wild nature could not be overcome. In its large
box-cage or prison, where it could see nothing
but the tree above it, it was tame, and would at
times frisk playfully about my hand and strike
it gently with its forefeet; but the moment it
was liberated in a room, or let down in the grass
with a string about its neck, all its wild nature
came forth. In the room it would run and hide;
in the open it would make desperate efforts to
escape, and leap and bound as you drew in the
1384 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

string that held it. At night, too, it never failed
to try to make its escape from the cage, and
finally, when two thirds grown, it succeeded,
and we saw it no more.
XV
A LIFE OF FEAR

As I sat looking from my window the other
morning upon a red squirrel gathering nuts from
a small hickory, and storing them up in his den
in the bank, I was forcibly reminded of the
state of constant fear and apprehension in which
the wild creatures live, and I tried to picture to
myself what life would be to me, or to any of
us, hedged about by so many dangers, real or
imaginary.

The squirrel would shoot up the tree, making
only a brown streak from the bottom to the
top; would seize his nut and rush down again in
the most hurried manner. Half way to his den,
which was not over three rods distant, he would
rush up the trunk of another tree for a few yards
to make an observation. No danger being near,
he would dive into his den and reappear again
in a twinkling.

Returning for another nut, he would mount
the second tree again for another observation.
Satisfied that the coast was clear, he would spin
186 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

along the top of the ground to the tree that bore
the nuts, shoot up it as before, seize the fruit,
and then back again to his retreat.

Never did he fail during the half hour or
more that I watched him to take an observation
on his way both to and from his nest. It was
“ snatch and run” with him. Something seemed
to say to him all the time: “Look out! look
out!” “The cat!” “The hawk!” “The
owl!” “The boy with the gun!”

It was a bleak December morning; the first
fine, flakes of a cold, driving snowstorm were just
beginning to sift down, and the squirrel was
eager to finish harvesting his nuts in time. It
was quite touching to see how hurried and anx-
ious and nervous he was. I felt like goimg out
and lending a hand. The nuts were small, poor
pig-nuts, and I thought of all the gnawing he
would have to do to get at the scanty meat they
held. My little boy once took pity on a squirrel
that lived in the wall near the gate, and cracked
the nuts for him, and put them upon a small
board shelf in the tree where he could sit and
eat them at his ease.

The red squirrel is not so provident as the
chipmunk. He lays up stores. irregularly, by
fits and starts; he never has enough put up to
carry him over the winter; hence he is more
 

 

 

 

 

RED SQUIRREL
A ‘LIFE OF FEAR 137

or less active all the season. Long before the
December snow, the chipmunk has for days been
making hourly trips to his den with full pockets
of nuts or corn or buckwheat, till his bin holds
enough to carry him through to April. He need
not, and I believe does not, set foot out of doors
during the whole winter. But the red squirrel
trusts more to luck.

As alert and watchful as the red squirrel is, he
is frequently caught by the cat. My Nig, as
black as ebony, knows well the taste of his flesh.
I have known him to be caught by the black
snake and successfully swallowed. The snake,
no doubt, lay in ambush for him.

This fear, this ever-present source of danger
of the wild creatures, we know little about. Prob-
ably the only person in the civilized countries
who is no better off than the animals in this
respect is the Czar of Russia. He would not
even dare gather nuts as openly as my squirrel.
A blacker and more terrible cat than Nig would
be lying in wait for him and would make a
meal of him. The early settlers in this country
must have experienced something of this dread of
apprehension from the Indians. Many African
tribes now live in the same state of constant
fear of the slave-catchers or of other hostile
tribes. Our ancestors, back in prehistoric times,
188 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

must have known fear as a constant feeling.
Hence the prominence of fear in infants and
children when compared with the youth or the
grown person. Babies are nearly always afraid
of strangers.

In the domestic animals also, fear is much
more active in the young than in the old.
Nearly every farm boy has seen a calf but a
day or two old, which its mother has secreted in
the woods or in a remote field, charge upon him
furiously with a wild bleat, when first discovered.
After this first ebullition of fear, it usually set-
tles down into the tame humdrum of its bovine
elders.

Eternal vigilance is the price of life with most
of the wild creatures. There is only one among
them whose wildness I cannot understand, and
that is the common water turtle. Why is this
creature so fearful? What are its enemies? I
know of nothing that preys upon it. Yet see
how watchful and suspicious these turtles are
as they sun themselves upon a log or a rock.
While you are yet many yards away from them,
they slide down into the water and are gone.

The land turtle, on the other hand, shows
scarcely a trace of fear. He will indeed pause
in his walk when you are very near him, but he
will not retreat into his shell till you have poked
A LIFE OF FEAR "189

him with your foot or your cane. He appears to
have no enemies ; but the little spotted water tur-
tle is as shy as if he were the delicate tidbit that
every creature was searching for. I did once
find one which a fox had dug out of the mud in
winter, and carried a few rods and dropped on the
snow, as if he had found he had no use for it.

One can understand the fearlessness of the

skunk. Nearly every creature but the farm-dog
yields to him the right of way. All dread his
terrible weapon. If you meet one in your walk
in the twilight fields, the chances are that you
will turn out for him, not he for you. He may
even pursue you, just for the fun of seeing you
run. He comes waltzing toward you, apparently
in the most hilarious spirits.
_ The coon is probably the most courageous
creature among our familiar wild animals. Who
ever saw a coon show the white feather? He
will face any odds with perfect composure. I
have seen a coon upon the ground, beset by four
men and two dogs, and never for a moment los-
ing his presence of mind, or showing a sign of
fear. The raccoon is clear grit.

The fox is a very wild and suspicious creature,
but curiously enough, when you suddenly come
face to face with him, when he is held by a trap,
or driven by the hound, his expression is not that
140 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

of fear, but of shame and guilt. He seems to
diminish in size and to be overwhelmed with
humiliation. Does he know himself to be an
old thief, and is that the reason of his embarrass-
ment? The fox has no enemies but man, and
when he is fairly outwitted he looks the shame
he evidently feels.

In the heart of the rabbit fear constantly
abides. How her eyes protrude! She can see
back and forward and on all sides as well as a
bird. The fox is after her, the owls are after
her, the gunners are after her, and she has no
defense but her speed. She always keeps well to
cover. The northern hare keeps in the thickest
brush. If the hare or rabbit crosses a broad open
exposure it does so hurriedly, like a mouse when
it crosses the road. The mouse is in danger of
being pounced upon by a hawk, and the hare or
rabbit by the snowy owl, or else the great horned
owl.

A friend of mine was following one morning
a fresh rabbit track through an open field. Sud-
denly the track came to an end, as if the creature
had taken wings, — as it had after an unpleasant
fashion. There, on either side of its last foot
imprint, were several parallel lines in the snow,
made by the wings of the great owl that had
swooped down and carried it off. What a little
A LIFE OF FEAR 141

tragedy was seen written there upon the white,
even surface of the field!

The rabbit has not much wit. Once, when a
boy, I saw one that had been recently caught,
liberated in an open field in the presence of a
dog that was being held a few yards away. The
poor thing lost all presence of mind, and was
quickly caught by the clumsy dog.

A hunter once saw a hare running upon the
ice along the shore of one of the Rangeley lakes.
Presently a lynx appeared in hot pursuit ; as soon
as the hare found it was being pursued, it began
to circle, foolish thing. This gave the lynx
greatly the advantage, as it could follow in a
much smaller circle. Soon the hare was run
down and seized.

I saw a similar experiment tried with a red
squirrel with quite opposite results. The boy
who had caught the squirrel in his wire trap
had a very bright and nimble dog about the
size of a fox, that seemed to be very sure he
could catch a red squirrel under any circum-
stances if only the trees were out of the way.
So the boy went to the middle of an open field
with his caged squirrel, the dog, who seemed to
know what was up, dancing and jumping about
him. It was in midwinter; the snow had a firm

crust that held boy and dog alike. The dog was
142 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

drawn back a few yards and the squirrel liber-
ated.

Then began one of the most exciting races
I have witnessed for a long time. It was im-
possible for the lookers-on not to be convulsed
with laughter, though neither dog nor squirrel
seemed to regard the matter as much of a joke.
The squirrel had all his wits about him, and kept
them ready for instant use. He did not show
the slightest confusion. He was no match for
the dog in fair running, and he discovered this
fact in less than three seconds; he must win, if
at all, by strategy. Not a straight course for
the nearest tree, but a zigzag course, yea, a
double or treble zigzag course. Every instant
the dog was sure the squirrel was his, and every
instant he was disappointed. It was incredible
and bewildering to him. The squirrel dodged
this way and that. The dog looked astonished
and vexed. Then the squirrel issued from be-
tween his enemy’s hind legs and made three
jumps towards the woods before he was discov-
ered. Our sides ached with laughter, cruel as it
may seem.

It was evident the squirrel would win. The
dog seemed to redouble his efforts. He would
overshoot the game, or shoot by it to the right
or left. The squirrel was the smaller craft, and
A LIFE OF FEAR 143

could out-tack him easily. One more leap and
the squirrel was up a tree, and the dog was over-
whelmed with confusion and disgust. He could
not believe his senses. ‘Not catch a squirrel in
such a field as that? Go to, I will have him
yet!” and he bounded up the tree as high as
one’s head, and then bit the bark of it in his
anger and chagrin.

The boy says his dog has never bragged since
about catching red squirrels “if only the trees
were out of reach!”

When any of the winged creatures are engaged
in a life and death race in that way, or in any
other race, the tactics of the squirrel do not
work ; the pursuer never overshoots nor shoots
by his mark. The flight of the two is timed as
if they were parts of one whole. A hawk will
pursue a sparrow or a robin through a zigzag
course and not lose a stroke or half a stroke of
the wing by reason of any darting to the right
or left. The clue is held with fatal precision.
No matter how quickly nor how often the spar-
row or the finch changes its course, its enemy
changes, simultaneously, as if every move was
known to it from the first.

‘The same thing may be noticed among the
birds in their love chasings; the pursuer seems
to know perfectly the mind of the pursued. This
144. SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS

concert of action among birds is very curious.
When they are on the alert, a flock of sparrows,
or pigeons, or cedar-birds, or snow buntings, or
blackbirds, will all take flight as if there were but
one bird, instead of a hundred. The same inm-
pulse seizes every individual bird at the same
instant, as if they were sprung by electricity.

Or when a flock of birds is in flight, it is still
one body, one will; it will rise, or circle, or swoop
with a unity that is truly astonishing.

A flock of snow buntings will seetitil their
aerial evolutions with a precision that the best-
trained soldiery cannot equal. Have the birds
an extra sense which we have not? A brood of
young partridges in the woods will start up like
an explosion, every brown particle and fragment
hurled into the air at the same instant. With-
out word or signal, how is it done ?
INDEX
INDEX

Birps, simultaneous action in
flight, 143, 144,

Calf, 138.

Cat, nursing a young woodchuck,
131, 182 ; catching red squirrels,
137.

Chipmunk, 10; its winter under-
ground and reappearance in the
spring, 15, 16; courting, 16; a
solitary creature, 16, 18; ner-
vousness of, 16, 18; chipping
and clucking, 16, 17; storing
food, 17, 18, 23, 31, 187; adven-
tures with cats, 18-21; digging
its hole, 21, 22; furnishing the
house, 22; food of, 238, 31; an
evidence of sociability, 23, 24;
an adventure with a weasel, 24—
26; attack by a sbrike, 27, 28;
eating strawberries, 29, 30; a
game of tag, 30; never more
than one jump from home, 80;
shifting quarters, 31; its fear
of the weasel, 83; its provi-
dence, 136, 137.

Coon. See Raccoon.

Dog, the churn-dog and the wood-
chucks, 34-386; farm-dog and

 

fox, 56, 57, 64, 65; moisture of
his nose, 67, 68; fight with a
weasel, 82, 83; encounter with
a mink, 91,92; farm-dog and
coon, 94, 95; coon-dog and
coon, 96, 97; farm-dog and
skunk, 139; a race with a red.
squirrel, 141-148. See Fox-
hound.

Fox, gray, 71.

Fos, red, tracks in the snow, 38,
389, 58, 54, 90, 91; bark of, 53 ;
gait of, 54, 126; the author’s
first meeting with, 54, 55;
chased by hounds, 56, 62, 64~
68; chased by the farm-dog,
56, 57, 64, 65; tail of, 57; me-
thod of trapping, 58-61; behav-
ior when trapped, 61, 189, 140;
farm-yard depredations, 62-64 ;
devices for eluding the hounds,
65-68 ; a method of calling, 68 ;
burrows and young of, 69, 70;
daylight naps of, 70; resem-
blance to the dog, 70, 71; a
young one in the market, 70,
71; and mink, 90, 91; beauty
and grace of, 126, 139 ; humili-
ation when captured, 139, 140.
148

Fox, silver-gray, 67.

Foxhound, baying of, 55, 56; the
chase of the fox, 56, 62, 64-68;
moisture of his nose, 67.

Hare, northern or varying, haunts
of, 38, 42; habits of, 41, 42;
tracks in the snow, 42; two
suits of fur, 42, 140; pursuit
and capture by a lynx, 141.

Lynx, 141.

Mink, eating a muskrat, 47;
tracks in the snow, 90, 91, 93;
encounter with a fox, 90, 91; an
enemy of the muskrat, 91;
an encounter with a dog and a
mysterious disappearance, 91,
92; as an eater of fish, 92; gait
of, 98.

Mouse, jumping, habits of, 120; a
captive, 121-124.

Mouse, meadow, life beneath the
snow, 115, 116; a bold swim-
mer, 116, 117. °

Mouse, white-footed or deer,
beauty of, 111; easily captured,
111; haunts of, 111; hoarding
habits of, 111, 112; thwarting
a piratical red squirrel, 112,
118; in the beehive, 113, 114;
reducing a shawl to its original
:elements, 113, 114; seven in a
trap, 114; tunnels and tracks
in the snow, 114, 115; a female
with young, 117, 118; an at-
tempt to assist a friend in dis-
tress, 118, 119.

Muskrat, nest-building. of, 43-47 ;

 

INDEX

burrows of, 47; winter activity
of, 47; devoured by a mink, 47 ;
a doorway visit, 126, 127.

Opossum, 98 ; tracks in the snow,
106; extending its range, 106;
foot of, 106; a captive, 106-
108 ; skin said to be fetid, 108 ;
young of, 108, 109; under the
study floor, 109, 110.

Partridge, 125, 126.

Poreupine, increasing in abun-
dance, 98 ; a fight with an eagle,
98; quills as weapons of de-
fense, 99-101; on Slide Moun-
tain, 101-105 ; stupidity of, 103;
sound made by, 104; propen-
sity for gnawing, 105.

Rabbit, gray, haunts of, 38 ; under
the study floor, 38; nest and
young of, 39,40; winter fare
of, 41, 125; a captive, 132-134;
her life full of fear, 140; a
tragedy ‘revealed by the snow,
140; stupidity of, 141.

Raccoon, reappearance after hi-
bernation, 94; a fight with the
farm-dog, 94, 95 ; fighting qual-
ities of, 95; coon-hunting, 96,
97; ravages in the corn-field,
96; a captive, 127, 128; cour-
age of, 139.

Rat, pursued by a weasel, 83, 84.

Shrew, 119, 120.

Shrike, 27, 28,

Skunk, tracks in the snow, 48;
awakening. from hibernation,
INDEX

48; habits of, 48-50; as a pet,
49 ; its weapon of defense, 50-
52; a plunderer of hen-roosts
and birds’ nests, 50, 51; an in-
stance of its fearlessness, 52,
98 ; under the study floor, 109;
at the doorstep, 128 ; not easily
ruffled, 128; fearlessness of,
139.

Snake, black, 137.

Squirrel, black, 8.

Squirrel, flying, flight of, 3, 5;
habits of, 5,6; nest of, 6.

Squirrel, gray, habits of, 6-8;
nest of, 7; hiding nuts, 10, 13,
126.

Squirrel, Mexican black, 3, 4.

Squirrel, red, a bold leap, 3, 4, 6;
habits of, 9,10; snickering of,
9,18, 14 ; food of, 11-18 ; hoard-
ing habits of, 12, 136, 187; his
song and dance, 13, 14, 15; a
game of tag,31; pursued by a
weasel, 88; a piratical raid by,
112, 118; his life full of fear,
185, 186; frequently caught by
the cat, 137; a race with a dog,
141-148.

Squirrels, gathering chestnuts, 1,
2; as parachutes, 2-5 ; tails of,
5; mirth and mockery of, 10.

Thrasher, brown, and weasels, 8).

 

149

Turkey, fox and, 68, 64,
Turtles, 138, 139.

Weasel, in pursuit of a chipmunk,
24-26; carrying food to its
den, 72-75; an exploration of
a weasel’s hole, 74-79; food of,
77,80, 85; depredations among
the chickens, 80-82; a fight
with a, 81-83 ; dog and, 82, 83;
its boldness and bloodthirsti-
ness, 83, 86 ; terror inspired by,
83, 86; a fight with a man over
arat, 84 ; a woman’s experience,
85; a destructive enemy of the
birds, 85; as a tree-climber, 86 ;
hunting in packs, 86, 87; acon-
tention over a mouse, 87; can-
nibalism, 87; pursuing two rats,
87, 88; tracks ‘its game by
scent, 88; pursuit of a red
squirrel, 88.

Woodchuck, 28, 29; haunts of,
32; adventure with a swim-
ming man, 32, 83; odor of, 33;
its whistle, 33, 130; form and
motions of, 33; a ehurn-dog’s
tactics, 34-36 ; hole of, 36 ; hi-
bernation of, 36, 37; about the
house and study, 129; a mother
with her young one, 129, 150;
captives, 130-132; a friendship
with a kitten, 132.
Che Rivergide press
Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass, U.S, A,
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