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THE MINK AT HIS FISHING

Meer ibkE BEASTS
OF FIELD & WOOD

William Everett erie

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-Pretace

LTHOUGH practically all the observations
A referred to in this book were made in New
Hampshire, they will, perhaps, on the whole apply
equally well to the wild creatures of eastern
Massachusetts, and in a more general way to the
whole of southern New England and New York.
The region which I have chiefly prowled over for
the last twenty years —a region, | may add, which
two delightful books of New England tales have
made, in a way, almost classic — is restricted to the
very southeastern corner of the State, and in gen-
eral character is decidedly not typical of New
Hampshire, being simply a quiet rolling farming
country, beautiful at all times, but hardly to be called
striking or impressive. Its chief claim to beauty 1s,
perhaps, the clearly marked quality of the landscape
generally, divided as it is between open fields and
_ pastures, and groves and forests of white pine and

1X

PREFACE

hemlocr in solid dark masses, which give it, particu-
larly in winter, a distinctive character not found in
regions where the woods are of a more varied make- —
up.

Ten years ago this region could boast a very re-
spectable area of old growth forest, not the original
uncleared primeval forest, to be sure, but the next
best thing to it, straight, smooth-stemmed pznes
whose tops were one hundred feet or more above the
earth; and, between these, shorter hemlocks wth
dense, almost impenetrable foliage and sturdy trunks
three or four feet tn diameter which sheltered in
their turn the coming generation of saplings spring-
ing into life between the prostrate forms of a still
older forest.

But by far the larger part of these woods has
been cleared since then, and that which remains un-
touched seems somehow to have lost much of its fas-
cinating wildness. Still as fast as the woods are
cleared away new -ones are constantly springing up

to take their place, so that the actual area covered

Xx

PREFACE

with trees has varied less than might be supposed,
while the swamps remain practically unchanged.

The swamps are evidently the basins of what
were once ponds or small lakes. These have become
filled with sediment or covered over with aquatic
growths of one kind and another which in time at-
tained sufficient thickness and stability to support,
first, the bulrushes and alders spreading out from the
shore, and, finally, forests of willows and water-ash
and maple. The tree-roots bound the whole together
and penetrated downward into the water beneath,
now steadily being filled up and confined to slowly
diminishing channels and underground basins, which
I believe are still in existence beneath many of our
swamps to an extent not generally suspected.

I know of one quite extensive swamp in this
vicinity, drained at one end by a brook which for the
Jirst part of its course is roofed over or bridged by
several feet of black loam, which breaks down here
and there for a few yards, and reveals the silent
course of the stream beneath. Although the water

XI

PREFACE

looks to be only afew inches deep, the sides and bottom
are certainly not well defined, if they exist at all.

I had a practical demonstration of this last autumn -
when I attempted to step across on a fallen maple
which had evidently been there longer than I had
supposed. It crumbled beneath me, and I went down
until the water reached my waist — but even then I
had failed to touch bottom. By grasping a convenient
sapling, I managed to get myself out without much
dificulty. In doing so, I kicked out beneath the
banks as far as my legs would reach without touch-
ing anything more substantial than water-soaked
roots and leaves, and further investigation along the
same brook convinced me that the greater part of
the swamp (which is several miles in extent) is still
in the earlier stages of growth, while most of the
other swamps in the vicinity are much farther
advanced in the process of earth-making.

The water courses of this region belong largely
to one type. They have their sources in damp woods,
among low-lying hills and pasture lands hardly fifty

X11

PREFACE

feet above sea level. But they are lazy, easy-
going little brooks that appear always to be seeking
the longest route to thetr final destination, as if loath
to exchange the fresh-water meadows and woodlands
for the salt marshes, and fearful of losing their
identity in the sea. The Squamscott River to the
north, and the Merrimack to the south, are merely
drawn on a larger scale, hardly differing, except in size,
from the little brooks that feed them.

I have watched the daily life of the wild creatures
of this locality at all times of year impartially, cer-
tainly having spent as much time in the woods in
midwinter as at any other season. In describing the
habits of the different species, I have endeavoured to
give the sum total of what I have seen at different
times, instead of trying to depict the life of any single
individual of each species.

In grouping my little beasts, I have followed “ no
law of God or man” beyond associating them as
nearly as possible as they are most commonly found

associated in their native state. I have begun with

Xl

PREFACE
the hunters, the foxes first, and then the weasels,
but without including all the weasels in the chapter
bearing that title: for the mink and otter I have
classed with the swimmers, along with the muskrat;
while the skunk, which is also a member of the
weasel family, must wait, because of his habits of
lethargy, to be classed with the raccoon, woodchuck,
chipmunk, and the rest of the hibernators. For a
future day, also, I have reserved the wild-mice, —
the meadow-mouse, woodmouse, and jumping-mouse, as
well as the little foreign pilferers of our store-houses and
cupboards whose aspect probably terrorises a greater
number of the members of our own species each year
than all the bears and wild cats within our borders.

The bats, moles, and shrews must also wait their
turn, together with the hares, and, in fact, all of the
little warm-blooded furry things which are still to be
found within the limits of a day's walk in this part
of the country, but for which I have found no space
in the present little book.

Even as I now write, I have only to look up from

XIV

PREFACE

my desk to see miles of pasture and woodland spread out
beneath a blazing August sun that seems to penetrate
to the very roots of the grass and the most secret
nooks of the forest, as if purposely to reveal anything
in hiding there; but I fail to catch even a glimpse of
any of the little beasts, though I know well enough
that hundreds of them are included within the range
of my vision. Only a few minutes ago I saw a
woodchuck sitting in his doorway and a chipmunk
playing about the roots of a maple, and yesterday, at
about this time in the morning, a red fox stood for
several moments at the edge of the corn, almost
within gunshot of the house, and scrutinised me as
inquisitively as I was scrutinising him. In all
probability be is hiding at this moment somewhere
beneath the shadow of the broad leaves of the corn,
waiting, half alseep, for some unwary chicken to

wander within his reach.

For permission to reprint portions of certain chap-
ters I am indebted to the kindness of the editors of

XV

PREFACE

the New England Magazine and the Popular
Science Monthly, — the greater part of the chapter
on red squirrels, as well as portions of the chapters
on the mink, otter, and muskrat, having already been
published in the New England. Magazine, while
much of the weasel chapters appeared in the pages
of the Popular Science Monthly.

The remainder of the text and most of the illustra-
tions are now printed for the first time.

WES
Hampton Falls, N. H.

August 15, S90.

Contents

CHAPTER I
PacE
LitTLe Beasts AND How To Finp THEM . . 3
CHAPTER II
I ng a eS ae my er DS
CHArtreR Til
EIEN eo a ee ee ee 05
CHAPTER IV
I ee ee TOF
CHAPTER V
Bupeeeees CONCLUDED . . ww. ww el 152
CHAPTER VI
SQUIRRELS 195
CHAPTER VII
More SquirreELs 229

XV11

List of Jllustrations

: PaGE
Mee MINK AT HIS FIisHING . . . . - .~_. Frontispiece
‘TRACKS IN THE SNOW 9
0 eee ee 24
SHE Fox AND YOUNG 29
een SILVER FOX . . . «+ 47
IPEMEoe wn ll 59
Meme IN SUMMER... ... . 64
PeEEESEON SABLE 2 2 1 - + 69
Least WEASEL 2. SE ale Era A 77
ERMINE IN WINTER 89
ERMINE IN SPRING (SHOWING CHANGE FROM WHITE TO

UIE oe ee ae 95
MINK IN SUMMER : 106
MINK IN WINTER tea ate im, van ahs : 113
OTTER | 137
MusguasH OR MUSKRAT 152

x1X

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PacE
‘THe CaBin. OF THE MUSKRAT .. 22 22.0 oe eee
SFARTLED (10a 02 7800. oe oe, eS
GATHERING MAPLE SEEDS 22 .4°.5 (wos. er
JLUNCHEON,. 0-6) 4s, a Be
‘TAPPING THE MAPLE 2.) .00 920° 3
Gray SQUIRRELS . CSS PO eee
BLack VARIETY OF GRAY SQUIRREL . =. < 292 ees
FLYING SQUIRRELS Je le Oe le he 6 ae ee
FLYING SQUIRREL 0 20 Se) se

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Little Beasts of Field
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| Chapter I
Little Beasts and How to Find Them

O my thinking, the small beasts that still

inhabit our woods have been altogether
too much neglected by the student of nature,
though really much nearer to us and much
more easily comprehended than birds, when you
have once succeeded in finding them. For that
they are more difficult to observe than birds is

undeniable.

LITTLE BEASTS OF. FIELD AND Wao

I am persuaded that most of us would be
surprised to learn how many wild animals of
the bigness of a cat and upwards pass their
lives in the midst of cultivated districts without |
ever having been seen by men,-to die at last of
old age, their existence even unsuspected by the
owners of the land they dwelt upon.

In studying quadrupeds, the chief thing to
bear in mind is that, with the exception of
squirrels and woodchucks, and possibly one or
two others, all of them have comparatively poor
eyesight, at all events for daylight, and appar-
ently not much better for twilight or darkness.

But even with the best of eyes they could
only see in one direction at a time, while the
slightest screen of grass or foliage conceals every-
thing beyond it. But with a sense of smell and
hearing such as theirs, they are instantly aware _
of anything that takes place in their immediate
vicinity, with the exception of the one point
towards which the wind blows. And here 1s

A

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

where better eyesight would often stand them
in good stead, for eyes are more serviceable away
from the wind than against it, and the wonder
is that in all these generations of hunting and
being hunted, their eyes have not reached a
higher degree of perfection ; but perhaps any gain
in that direction would mean a corresponding
loss in the other senses, and so the least import-
ant was sacrificed; and it certainly seems to be
true that in no living creature are all of these
senses perfect.

While the wind is at your back, you will only
get the most unsatisfactory glimpses of any of
the fox and weasel tribes; but with it in the
opposite direction, you may study them at your
leisure ; and to a certain degree this is true of all
our wild animals.

In one sense winter is the best time for study-
ing them, for when the snow 1s in the right con-
dition, you may follow the footsteps of all those
that are abroad at that season, and see for your-

S

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

self just how they have been spending their time.
On snow that is twenty-four hours old you can
hardly go a dozen rods without crossing the
track of one creature or another, and of course
they multiply each night so long as the weather
is favourable, until in many places it becomes
dificult to distinguish between them. Perhaps
the best snow on which to study footprints is a
good firm crust, not too slippery, with half an inch
of fine snow spread on its surface.

Snow that has been blown about a good deal,
and then packed by the wind, takes the clearest
imprints, showing the exact mould of the feet
that made them; but such tracks are apt to be
shallow, often little more than scratches, and hard
to see at a distance. If the crust is icy and the
surface snow very light, most animals slip about
on it more or less, often making it difficult to
identify their tracks. Very light snow, if more
than an inch or two in depth, falls back into

the footprint just made, obliterating the outline
6

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

of the foot and giving the impression of the
track of a much larger animal. A damp snow is
nearly always satisfactory for tracking, though
decidedly unpleasant to walk in; and it often
happens that the clearest tracks will be found
in snow that has been almost wasted away by
the rains.

For some reason or other, the first snow of the
season usually shows few tracks upon its surface ;
perhaps because the feet of the wild creatures have
not become toughened against its chill, and they
avoid moving about any more than 1s necessary.
At all events, the number of tracks is apt to in-
crease with each successive snow-storm until the
last of the season, so that snow in the last of
April is sure to present a perfect crisscross of
tracks before it is many hours old, partly owing,
no doubt, to the hibernating animals, who have
nearly all waked up by that time. |

When snow is melting rapidly, it 1s easy to
tell at a glance just how long each of the more

7

LIPTLE BEASTS’. OF FIELD AND Woe

recent tracks has been made; but in cold weather —
it is somewhat more difficult. If the air is not
utterly devoid of moisture, you can judge pretty
closely by the size of the frost crystals formed |
at the edge of each footprint.. You may also,
by taking up a handful of snow around it, tell
something from the readiness with which it
falls together, but this last method is likely to
prove pretty wild guessing, with any but an
old hunter or an Indian. In thick woods you
must look for hemlock leaves or anything of
the kind, and calculate from the comparative fre-
quency with which they occur in the track and
on the surrounding snow, and from the strength
of the wind and the age of the snow, about how
far you are behind your quarry.

But above all things, you must have your eye
in readiness to see that which you are not look-
ing for, as on every track there 1s something for
every few rods that can tell you conclusively

what you wish to know, if you can only read
8

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RED GRAY FLYING
MINK OTTER MUSK- RAT SQUIRREL SQUIRREL SQUIRREL

\

TRACKS IN THE SNOW

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

it aright. It is simply the game played by the
detective, and just as intensely fascinating when
once you have learned the first few moves. For
as the track grows fresher as you follow it, you
must’ stop looking for it at your feet, but away in
front of you, for the further you can discern it
in its windings among the trees, the more pros-
pect there is of coming upon the one that made
it unawares, and with this in view the best track
to follow is one that leads you towards the wind.

The snow often reveals curious and interesting
things that would otherwise escape notice. Some-
times I have observed that practically all the
freshly made tracks in a certain locality pointed
the same way, — foxes, weasels, rabbits, squirrels,
and partridges, all headed in the same direction
without any apparent cause and independent of
the season.

The birds of prey in their hunting write the
most entertaining histories of their successes and

failures on its surface; sometimes just the marks

EE

LITTLE -BEASTS -OF FIELD AND Ao

made by the tips of their wing feathers several
feet apart on the snow, while half-way between
them a mouse track terminates abruptly, though
much oftener the hunter plunges deep into the
snow in its anxiety to secure its prey.

Last winter | observed where a great horned-
owl had dashed at a rabbit and, missing, gone
sprawling along the snow-crust, helpless before .
the velocity of its charge, stripping the leaves
from the ground laurel in its endeavours to check
its speed, until finally brought to a full stop by
the drooping boughs of a hemlock frozen into the
snow. Whereupon it regained its feet and walked
off a few yards before taking flight, while the
rabbit bounded away to cover.

The tracks of a pair of foxes hunting rabbits
together make interesting reading, but when
weasels have been the hunters, they generally
leave such a muddle of intersecting tracks as to
make it difficult to follow the course of events.

Many people appear to take it for granted that

12

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

the lives of wild animals, especially the rarer
kinds and those that are persistently hunted,
must be spent in practically unending terror.
But judging from what I have seen, I doubt very
much if even those that lead the most precarious
lives suffer to any great extent from fear. For
one thing, I am pretty thoroughly persuaded
that even the wisest of them have no actual
comprehension or fear of death, and only avoid
danger instinctively. Most animals on finding
one of their own kind dead in a trap will ex-
amine it casually without exhibiting any marked
symptoms of alarm, and will perhaps return later
to be caught in the same trap, if nothing further
arouses their suspicion. But let one of them be
caught insecurely and escape, even if but slightly
hurt, and that particular trap, or any other like
it near by, will be strictly avoided for months, or
else carefully approached and sprung in such a

way as to make it harmless.
As to the danger that comes to them through
13

LITTLE -BEASTS OF FIELD: AND Weoe

being pursued by other beasts or birds, or by
man, I should say, judging from my own obser-
vations, that comparatively few of them experience
more than two or three really narrow escapes in
the course of a year.

Of course this is only guess work, but may in
part serve to correct what I believe to be a gener-
ally faise impression in the other direction. But
I doubt if it matters very much to the creatures
themselves whether these adventures are few or
many. For danger that brings with it action
and excitement is nearly always found to be, on
the whole, enjoyable instead of the reverse, and
must be doubly so when the knowledge and fear
of death are lacking.

When one animal finds itself pursued by an-
other more powerful, it naturally puts forth all its
energy in order to escape or defend itself; but I
am unable to believe from what I have seen that
in any case it ever enters its mind that the out-
come can possibly: prove serious. For it seems

14

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

unlikely that any of them, however intelligent,
can imagine, except in the vaguest way, anything
beyond its own personal experience, and so at
most can only dread a few bites or scratches more
or less serious. And in times of excitement one
never thinks of such things or feels them when
they are inflicted, for that matter. And in the
case of wild animals, the combat is apt to be short
and sharp, and has usually terminated one way or
the other before it is time for the pain to set in.
That animals frequently escape after having been
seized and more or less injured is undeniable,
while a still larger number are wounded by shot,
but these almost invariably heal with the most
astonishing rapidity. I believe that nearly all
wild animals forget absolutely whatever fear they

may have felt immediately the danger is over, |
and never think of it again until a similar danger
arises, for most of them will resume uncon-
cernedly whatever they were doing as soon as
they fancy themselves secure, and there is not a

15

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

shadow of a doubt in my mind that the sensations
of an animal fleeing from a hawk or fox, or even
struggling in its grasp, are much the same as
those of the foot-ball player or the fencer, neither
of whom is exactly to be pitied. So that on the
whole it seems safe to conclude that the life of
our wild animals is happy in spite of occasional
periods of hunger and thirst. Cold appears
hardly to affect them at all, except when they are
weakened by hunger; and though ill-health is not
by any means unknown among them, it would
appear to be almost wholly confined to the vege-
table-eaters whose food-supply is most abundant
and easily procured. ‘The flesh-eaters, probably
owing to their more active lives, enjoy apparently
unbroken health, though the habit most of them
have of gorging themselves to the utmost extent
of their capacity after a successful kill would
ruin any ordinary digestion; but probably their
frequent periods of enforced fasting counteract

the effects of over-eating.
16

LIT TLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

Hares, muskrats, gray squirrels, and chipmunks
are perhaps the most frequent victims of disease ;
while curiously enough woodchucks and skunks,
which never take an unnecessary step, apparently,
and are enormous eaters at all times, except when
dormant in the winter, are astonishingly healthy.
Few of the smaller animals seem to be greatly
inconvenienced by the loss of a leg after the first
few weeks. About the only noticeable change
is that an animal with only three legs prefers to
escape by hiding wherever it may happen to be,
instead of running away, though when necessity
requires it, such an one will nearly always be
found capable of making as good time as its
uninjured fellows.

Although the majority of them are classed as
nocturnal, there are very few of our little beasts
that do not appreciate the sunlight sufficiently to
seek out sunny nooks beneath stumps and ledges
for their mid-day naps, even at mid-summer ; just
as cats, which are probably about as nocturnal as

2 7

LITTLE BEASTS. OF FIELD AND WOOD

any of them, are notoriously fond of sunning

themselves on every occasion.
And this I believe to be a pretty fair example

of the pleasure they find in existence, life for them
being evidently divided into but two stages, youth
and extreme old age, without the intermediate
period of work and responsibility and worry,
which we of the present day are taught to look
upon as the most important part of human life.

For though there are plenty of hard workers
among the rodents, at least, it seems to be work
of a wholly irresponsible nature, done for the fun
of the thing, as children build forts in the sand.
And like children, too, they are certainly fond of
pretending. With dead leaves and sticks for play-
things some furry little chap will spend hours all
alone under the shadows of the leaves, perfectly
happy, and, to all outward appearances, just as
deeply interested and as much in earnest as when
engaged in gathering stores of food for the ensu-
ing winter.

18

DITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

And then they get such an immense amount
of satisfaction from the simple matter of eating.
Not like birds, most of whom swallow their food
whole, and apparently only snatch what fleeting
enjoyment they may from its passage down
their throats, and the sense of fulness which
follows, but like true gastronomers, tasting each
morsel appreciatively, even if not much given to
lingering over their meals, for the table manners
of most of them are, to say the least, decidedly
greedy.

Just how much their personal comfort is affected
by the weather is of course wholly a matter of
conjecture; but I, for my own part at least, have
often envied the smaller ones their lot. When
tramping across windswept areas of country,
without any adequate shelter from the gale for
miles perhaps, I have been struck by the abun-
dance of little sun-warmed nooks and hollows
where a meadow-mouse, or a hare, or even a fox,
might crouch out of the reach of the wind. And

19

LITTLE: BEASTS .OF FIELD AND WOOD

in summer, any bush or broad-leaved herb serves
to protect them from the sun. Almost every-.
where, too, there are plenty of holes in the earth,
or the decaying trunks of trees, where they can
find shelter and where neither of the extremes of
heat or cold can ever penetrate.

I should say that by far the greater part of
their discomfort is caused by drought and exces-
sive rainfall or the sudden melting of snow.
There are few sights more pathetic than that of
some little animal whose fur was never meant
to shed water for any length of time, swimming
painfully about among rattling ice-cakes and
sodden snow, with no more cheering prospect
before it in the immediate future than that of
climbing out into the still colder atmosphere, or
squeezing itself away all wet in the damp interior
of a floating log. The sudden overwhelming
of a thunderstorm in summer, when undoubtedly
many of them perish, seems desirable by contrast.

Snow by itself is unquestionably a protection

20

LITTLE BEASTS AND HOW TO FIND THEM

and benefit to practically all the lesser inhabi-
tants of the woods, and only after it has become
saturated with water does it become a menace
to their welfare.

It is hardly likely that the droughts we get in
this part of the country ever very seriously affect
any animal larger than a mole or chipmunk,
though a few weeks without rain would prob-
ably compel most of the others to seek out
new places of abode. But this in itself is not
by any means a matter of much consequence
to any of them. For I believe that, contrary to
general opinion, most of them are decidedly
nomadic by preference, and forever wandering
from place to place, even when hampered by

families of helpless young ones.

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Chapter II

Foxes
Red Fox — Black Fox — Gray Fox.

ia view of the extent to which the habits of
foxes have been chronicled, almost since
the dawn of history, it would seem somewhat
presumptuous to attempt to add anything new.
In fact, the sentence just written strikes me now
as hackneyed and worn-out.

But for all that, every encounter with the
creature itself, at liberty and living out its own
free life as it will, is bound to be a surprise and
a revelation to the observer. Not but what the
various accounts of fox habits are accurate enough
so far as facts go, but all the literature on the
subject, it seems to me, has failed signally to
render the image of the fox as he really is.

The common red fox of this country is larger
and more wolfish than his cousin of the Old

25

LITTLE BEASTS ‘OF FIEED AND Weop

World. His fur is longer and more brightly
coloured, and his nose less sharply pointed.
Otherwise there seems to be no very striking
difference.

My first actual experience with foxes occurred
when I was perhaps a dozen years old. I was
climbing a thickly-wooded knoll one evening
about sunset, when, on coming out into an
opening among the young pines, I caught sight
of a little yellowish-gray beast as it bolted down
into the mouth of a newly made burrow. Sup-
posing it to be a woodchuck or perhaps a
rabbit, I let fly an arrow after it, and hurried
toward the hole, and then stopped short in my
tracks for very fear, because of a cry that issued
from the shadow of the trees to one side. I
had always been used to hearing the barking
of foxes in the distance on still nights in the
winter, but this was of so utterly different a
character that I failed to associate the two sounds
“in the least. A harsh, vibrating screech, rising
26

FOXES

and dying out in a kind of snarling wail, with
a weird menacing: inflection towards the end,
which for the moment scared me beyond any
experience I had ever had. And it was getting
dark, too, on the east side of the hill, and I had
always been a little too fond of reading popular
natural history to feel perfectly at ease under
the circumstances, so I started for home, but
failed to leave that horrible creature behind as
I had hoped, for it still skulked along beside
me, and its yell rose at regular intervals on the
still air, sometimes almost in front.

It was lighter in the more open timber on
top of the hill, and here for the first time I
obtained a sight of the enemy, following within
half a gunshot. I was a good deal relieved to
see that it was smaller than its voice had led
me to anticipate. So I fired another arrow at
it and ran back, causing it to retreat again to
the cover of the young growth. But I was not
to get rid of it so easily, for when I turned back

27

LITTLE .BEASTS OF “FIELD AND wees

again, it turned also and followed me to the foot
of the hill, still yelling. Most wild animals are
bold enough in defence of their young, and
the fox is no exception; but I have never since
then seen one carry it to quite that degree
of recklessness, though recklessness 1s beyond
question one of the prominent traits of fox
nature, and its wildness is, I am confident, the
result of careful calculation, and not timidity.

It is difficult to understand how so keen an
observer as Thoreau should have seen so little
of them. [I recall but two or three places in all
his writings where he mentions having seen one,
and in one place he says, “It is remarkable
how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near
the village, where they have been in the night,
and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one
oftener than once in eight or ten years.” Now
it is hardly likely that they are very much more
abundant- here at present than they were in Con-

cord in Thoreau’s day; yet I remember four
: 28

SNNOA GNV XO4d 3HS

S
SSS

ANA
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——>——

|

Wein

FOXES

that I saw in 1898, in broad daylight, without
counting those chased by dogs, and at least as
many the year before, and I think perhaps that
that is about an average, for most farmers inter-
ested in such matters whom I have asked, can
recall at least one or more that they have seen
each season. |

_ Foxes possess in the highest degree the love
of hunting, and under the excitement of the
chase are apt to throw caution to the winds.
The swallows drew my attention one morning
to a fox creeping towards the barn under cover
of a stone wall, and evidently intent on mischief.
Presently he sprung over the wall at a hen that
had strayed away from the yard, and the next
instant both came hurtling toward me across
the field, the hen cackling hysterically, and the
fox bounding along after her in silence, with
his yellow fur and bushy tail flashing in the
sunlight. It was one of the most beautiful and
really thrilling scenes I have ever witnessed, and

31

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WoOeeE
I wonder now I had the heart to interrupt it.
But I did, and chased the fox away, and then
returned to the house for a gun, though without
much idea of seeing anything more of the fox,
who I supposed was miles- away in the woods
and still running.

But he was not so_ badly scared as I had

fancied, for on coming back with the gun I

encountered him unexpectedly, close to the hen-—

yard fence, in the act of swinging the hen
across his shoulders with its neck in his teeth.
It was the regular thing for him to do of course,
though this only made it all the more sur-
prising in real life. And he did it so perfectly,
too, — just as he is represented as doing in pic-
ture-books, and as if he had been in the habit
of doing it every day of his life.

J have never seen a more perfect personi-
fication of justifiable pride and satisfaction over
a successful kill than he exhibited, marching
down the garden with the utmost deliberation,

32

FOXES

as though time was of no consequence to him.
And then I felt that it was my turn, for he
was hardly forty yards away, and I sighted fairly
at his shoulder; but just then my foot slipped
on the grass and I sat down very suddenly, while
the fox bolted off with his prize still over his
shoulder.

By the time I had regained my feet, he was
ninety yards away or more; but I sent the heavy
shot spinning after him just for the moral effect
it might have, and at least it caused him to drop
the hen, and put on a fresh spurt of speed for
the woods, which in the next instant swallowed
him from sight. |

From what I have seen, I am inclined to think
that the foxes get even more poultry than they
have credit for, as they hunt at all hours of the
day; and wherever there is a field of corn in
which chickens are allowed to wander, you can
nearly always find fresh fox tracks in the soft
earth, often almost under the farmer’s windows.

3 oO

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

It is no very uncommon thing to see foxes
trotting along at their ease across the meadows,
either in summer or winter, and at all hours of
the day, and their barking also is often heard in
the daytime. I have seen one cross the field
on a rainy afternoon in the spring within one
hundred yards of my window, barking as he
went, and occasionally pausing to sniff — for
mice apparently —in the dead grass.

Last June at about ten in the morning of one
of the hottest, brightest days we had, I heard the
crows cawing uneasily, and looking in their direc-
tion I saw a large fox trotting lazily along about
a quarter of a mile from the house, though from
the direction he was taking he must have been
much nearer a few minutes before. As he passed
among the cattle, I noticed that each turned its
head to look at him, but paid him no further
attention.

A little further on, he jumped the brook and
stopped for a few seconds to nose about at the

34

FOXES

edge of the water, or perhaps to drink, and then
on again until out of sight. If he kept to the
course he was following, he must have gone pretty
nearly two miles before reaching the woods, but
evidently from choice, for most of the time there
were thick evergreen woods within a quarter of a
mile or less on either side of him.

On the 2oth of last July I heard a general out-
cry from the robins and thrushes among the
sweet-fern and young pines in the pasture, and
pushing toward the sound, caught a glimpse of a
young fox evidently about to help himself to the
contents of a brown thrush’s nest just in front of
his nose, containing three young birds nearly
grown. At my approach he slipped away among
the bushes, and I saw no more of him. The
young birds crouched down in the nest in silence
until I touched them, when one shrieked wildly
and scrambled over the edge, and falling caught
one foot in the fork of a twig and hung suspended, |
stopping its outcry immediately. When [I re-

39

LITTLE -BEASTS OF - FIELD AND @a3Ge

placed it in the nest, 1t proceeded to clamber over
the others and tumble out the other side, while
the rest seemed to take it all as a matter of course,
and refused to stir.

Two days later as I turned the corner of a
clump of young pines near there, I saw an old fox
standing perfectly motionless, facing me not
twenty yards away in the open, closely-cropped
pasture without so much as a thistle to hide
behind. It was then about five in the after-
noon and the sun shone full on him as he
stood on the further bank of a little brook that
flowed between us. In that position he had the
appearance of being of a very pale yellowish
buff, the black on his legs not being at all
noticeable, probably owing to the season. I was
particularly struck at the time by the size of ears,
which were erected to their utmost extent and
_ appeared to come together over the top of his
head almost to their tips. After we had eyed
each other for a few moments, he swung round

36

FOXES

and stood side to me, with his eyes still turned in
my direction. In that bright sunlight his fur
lighted up to a most brilliant red on his back and
tail, and was so short and close as to give him a
singularly lean appearance.

Presently he turned and cantered slowly away
with much of the movement of a trotting horse,
slowly veering around toward me however, and
coming back along the sheep-path to almost his
original position. The birds were scolding him
more or less all the time, and a song-sparrow that
had alighted in the grass at no great distance
seemed to catch his eye, for he at once crouched
and attempted to crawl to within springing dis-
tance, but without success; then he sat down in
the path and proceeded to scratch his ribs with
his hind foot, after which he stood up and walked
off along the sheep-path toward the woods, every
now and then stopping to look back over his
- shoulder at me as if still in doubt as to my
identity. Whenever his head was turned away

af

LITTLE. BEASTS ._OF FIELD AND Aes

I followed, stopping instantly at the first sign of
his looking back, and he failed to take alarm so
long as he only saw me motionless. When he
had reached the shadow of the pines, he trotted
up the bank and sat down beside a tree to scruti-
nise me; I now intentionally moved my hand
while he was looking, and instantly he was off,
bounding through the underbrush at a tremen-
dous rate.

The next fox that I saw, or at any rate made
a note of, was on the 23d of September. It had
been showery all the morning, but at noon the
sun came out calm and sultry. This fox was
pursuing a gray squirrel by the edge of an or-
chard; he jumped over a stone wall within fifty
_ yards of me, and stood looking in my direction
for several seconds before taking alarm, and then
turned and trotted away, while the squirrel ran
along the fence and up the branch of an oak-
tree. This was hardly one hundred and fifty
yards from a farmhouse where men were at work

38

FOXES

hammering on empty apple barrels; and the
fox when he started off ran directly toward them
for some ways before turning aside among the
trees.

_ The foxes’ den is usually an abandoned wood-
chuck burrow in a sandy hillside. It is always
enlarged and extended considerably so that the
big pile of new earth thrown up before the
entrance is sure to make it rather conspicuous.
The old male, I am told, never enters it, except
perhaps to carry food to the cubs; his bed-
room is in the open air, usually on a flat rock
or ledge, though I have started them from their
naps at mid-day on flat stumps in a clearing,
among the blueberry bushes in a swamp, or be-
neath the shelving bank of a stream.

Last winter some hunters captured a fox in
the hollow trunk of a large elm that stands alone
in the meadows near here. The only opening
was through a large hollow root, while inside
was a space three or four feet in diameter reach-

39

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

ing well up into the tree; and the hunters told
me that to all appearances the fox had not taken
refuge there from the dogs, but had gone in of ©
his own accord, probably intending to pass the
day there. I once noticed a peculiar-looking
dark-coloured ball five or six inches in diameter
near the entrance of a fox burrow, and at first
was at.a loss as to its make-up. But on being
knocked to pieces, it proved to consist of a num-
ber of small animals rolled together so com-
pactly as to be indistinguishable at first glance.
I cannot recall exactly the kinds or number of
creatures of which it was composed, but I know
that there were a star-nosed mole, a long-tailed
jumping-mouse, several meadow-mice, and, I
think, a shrew, besides a black-and-white creep-
ing warbler and two or three half-fledged birds
evidently belonging to the same family, some
bits of rabbit fur, and a toad. The young foxes
had evidently been rolling it about in sport, and
it certainly indicated an abundance of food at
Ke)

FOXES

the time. I have seen fox burrows where the
ground for a considerable space on all sides was
fairly carpeted with hen’s feathers, and others
where partly eaten muskrats and skunks were
decidedly in evidence.

Although foxes roam impartially over all sorts
of country, high or low, forest or open, they
have their established runways, as they are called,
where the majority of them travel in going from
Meace.tO place.

These are not paths like the paths of deer
and rabbits, but are in places a quarter of a
mile or more in width, and conform to a certain
extent to the relative position of farmhouses and
bridges; for though fond of hunting by the edge
of the water, foxes have a most decided aversion
to wet feet, and, except in the winter, have be-
come largely dependent on bridges for crossing
even the smaller streams, and their runways
seldom pass between houses that are not at
least half a mile apart. The course of one of

AI

LITTLE -BEASTS OF FIELD AND Ween

these passes within twenty or thirty rods of my
window, and there are comparatively few nights
in the year when at least one fox does not pass.
along it, and often half a dozen, judging from
the tracks in the snow. But the fox is a good
deal of a tramp, and sometimes for days together
there will not be a fox track to be: found for
miles about. = =

From what I can learn, fox-hunting, as it 1s
practised in this part of the country, isa science
that requires years of study to make it a success.
And the novice, though his dogs are of the best,
may not even get a shot for the first season or
two. Different hunters probably follow different
methods; but I know one, at least, who bears the
reputation of being the most successful in the
region. I don’t know how he manages it when
the ground is bare, though he seems to be just as
successful at such times. But when there is a
good tracking snow, he follows the most promis-
ing trail, examining it carefully from time to time,

42

FOXES

until satisfied that he is near his quarry, when he
makes a wide circuit, counting all the tracks he
crosses in coming round to his former position;
and if the one he is following is among them, he
makes another circuit, and so on until he feels
sure that the fox is inside his last circle. Then
he calculates, from the general lay of the land and
his knowledge of the ways of foxes, just what
course this particular one will be most likely to
take when started, and then for the first time
allows his dogs to take the track, while he hurries
to the position he has fixed upon. Sometimes
he finds that while the fox he is after has passed
out of his magic circle, another has entered it, or
that both may be inside, which increases the
interest. If, as is bound to happen at times, the
fox starts off by some other than the expected
course, the hunter must ascertain which way he
is circling, for they seldom follow a direct course,
and attempt to head him off at the nearest run-
way in that direction. He tells me that in winter
43

x

LITTLE BEASTS: OF FIELD AND Ae

a favourite trick of the fox is to lead the hounds
on to thin ice over deep water, and that dogs are
often drowned in this manner. Although follow-
ing a totally different style of hunting, and one
which is tabooed 1n England and our own more
southern States, he still entertains ptetty much
the same feeling towards the object of his pursuit,

looking upon it not as vermin to be destroyed on

all occasions, but as game worthy of being pro- —

tected at proper seasons. Accordingly, he never
allows his dogs to follow a she-fox during the
latter part of the winter, and beyond a shadow of
a doubt would suffer his last chicken to disappear
rather than shoot one in the summer. The fox
seems to have little instinctive fear of the dog, and
it is not an uncommon thing to see them playing
together in the pastures on the most friendly
terms; while there are very few dogs that dare
to engage an old fox in single combat. Last
spring I heard a hound baying on the track of a
fox, and soon after saw him emerge from the

44

FOXES

woods not far from me, accompanied by a large
St. Bernard, who seemed to be decidedly new to
the business of fox-hunting. The two crossed
over a little bridge together and climbed up the
path beyond among the pines. Ai little later the
hound’s voice stopped abruptly to be superseded
by the shrill barking of a fox, and in another
minute both dogs came hurrying back with the
fox pursuing them. The latter stopped at the
top of the bank overlooking the bridge, while
the dogs crossed over, and then turned to look
back at him. ‘They acted at first exactly as if
puzzled to know just what they ought to do about
it, and then the hound took up the track again
and started towards the fox, baying, while the fox
slipped back out of sight in the shadow.

But in a few minutes the performance was re-
peated, the hound being driven back to where
his companion stood waiting. And then they
turned together and trotted away in an opposite
direction, leaving the fox victorious. He stood

45

LITTLE BEASTS. OF FIELD AND Woes

at the top of the bank watching their retreat,
and barking at intervals, until my approach drove
him back into the woods. In all probability his
family was near there, and he felt it his duty to
protect it from invaders.

It must add immensely to the fascination of
fox-hunting to know that at any time you may
draw that inestimable prize, a black or silver
fox. This is now believed to be merely a variety —
of the common red fox, only with long black fur
of an entirely different quality. The white-
tipped over-hair varies in amount in different
specimens, so that the colour varies from pale
silvery gray to absolute black, and other things
being equal, the darker the skin, the more valu-
able it is.

Although occasionally found wherever the
red fox is abundant, it is everywhere decidedly ©
‘rare; and I cannot discover that an undoubted
specimen has ever been killed hereabouts. But,
a few years ago, all the hunters agreed that

46

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FOXES

there was one in the vicinity. Most of them
claimed to have seen it; and several to have shot
at it, yet none of them succeeded in bagging it;
and after two seasons of such rumours it ceased
to be talked about, probably having been driven
out of the region.

It seems remarkable that one fox should have
been seen so frequently, yet most of the accounts
appeared trustworthy enough ; and I myself, on
two occasions, the first winter saw a fox that
certainly looked quite black. It seems hardly
likely that there should have been more than one
black fox in the neighbourhood at the time;
unless, perhaps, they are in the habit of roaming
about over the country together, attracted by their
similarity of colouring.

Or if, as is said to be the case in most instances,
they were born of red parents, there may have
been several reared in this part of the country at
that time, just as black lambs appear for some
inexplicable cause among the flocks of a certain

4 49

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

locality during the same season. Last year, for
instance, nearly every flock near me had black or
brown lambs, though no black or brown sheep had
been known here for years. In our own flock
were two black twin lambs. One of them had ordi-
nary wool like the rest of the sheep, and from the
first showed a slight shade of brown in certain
lights, which increased during the summer toa
decided brown at the surface; while the fleece of
the other was nearly twice as long, and at first
more nearly resembled fine silky hair than wool,
and for several months was as absolutely black as”
anything well could be; even now, it only shows
a faint coppery tinge at the tips.

Red lambs were also common last year, and in
most instances exhibited the same peculiar quality
of fleece; but like the brown and some of the
black ones, they faded out in course of time to
resemble their mothers both in colour and in
quality of wool.

Is it possible that the birth of ieee and silver

590

FOXES

foxes is of the same nature as that of the black
and brown lambs, and that they have the same
tendency to grow paler as they grow older? — for
foxes are killed in all the varying shades and
qualities of fur, from the black to the common
red. One variety known by furriers as the cross
fox has the fur of the ordinary colour, while the
long over-hair is black, the points falling together
on the shoulder in the pattern of a cross.

My theory might be made to account for the
fact that the black fox or foxes disappeared so
quickly from the neighbourhood, without any
having been taken by the hunters.

The first one that I saw crossed the road about
one hundred yards from me, and trotted along by
the edge of a field on the snow-crust, giving me
a good opportunity to observe him, sometimes
against a background of dark pines, and at no
time did he show any other colour than black,
theugh the sun, which was near setting, was at my
back all the time. A few weeks later, on coming

a

LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD. AND - Woon

_ out of some woods into the open, I saw a fox
that looked quite black running before me up
the hill-side; he stopped for a moment to look
back at me, and then disappeared round the hill.
I followed his track in the snow, and found that
he circled round to the woods I had just left, and
from there he refused to be driven, though I fol-
lowed his track until it crossed and recrossed so
often as to be indecipherable, but I was only able
to get the merest glimpse of him between the
trees. When I saw him first, I was looking ~
north, and, as it was nearly noon, the sun must
have been at my back, though it may have been
hidden by clouds at the time. Now every
one is aware that an object on the snow looks a
great deal darker than it really is, by contrast ;
but I have never seen anything so light as a red
fox look black, unless the sun was directly beyond
it. All of the foxes that I have ever seen when
the ground was bare have been of the ordinary
kind; but other persons appear to have been
52

FOXES
more fortunate, and one of these told me that
he saw a red and a black fox together.

Every few years it is reported that a black or
silver fox has been killed in one or another
of the neighbouring towns; but just what propor-
tion of these reports is true ] am unable to say.

The gray fox is a wholly distinct species which
does not intergrade with the others, being smaller
and of decidedly different build. Its colour is
dull yellowish gray, and it usually lacks the white
tip on the tail so characteristic of the others.
Although a southern species whose habitat is
commonly given as “ Pennsylvania and south-
ward,” it appears to possess the wandering habits
of its tribe, and, unless | am very much mistaken,
is not infrequently found much further north. |
have received accounts of two foxes shot within a
few miles of me recently, the description of which
agreed perfectly with this species. The hunter
that killed one of them supposed for a time that
he had killed a genuine silver fox.

53

LITTLE -BEASTS OF FIELD AND Woon
March 6, 1899, 8 p. mM. A fox has been bark-

ing, or squalling rather, at no great distance from
the house, though in all probability he is farther
away than he sounds, that being usually the case.
I doubt if at any time he is less than a quarter of
a mile away, though his voice sounds about as loud
at that distance as the caterwauling of cats in the
door-yard, which sound, in fact, it strikingly
resembles at times, as if several foxes were fight-
ing and snarling together. At other times it 1s
simply a shrill snarl uttered at intervals of per-
haps a minute, with occasional longer intervals ;
finally he seemed to go off towards the southeast,
still barking periodically. March 7. It certainly
seems as though the fox last night was barking at
the approaching storm, as they are said to do, for
though it was perfectly clear and calm at the
time, before morning it was blowing a gale, with
snow-squalls that rendered it impossible to see
any distance, and it has been increasing ever since
and bids fair to be a blizzard to be remembered.
54

FOXES

We have experienced three memorable snow-
storms this winter, and before each of them the
owls and foxes hooted or barked in a wholly
unusual manner, and before the first one, the
celebrated November storm, the owls were flying
about and hooting before the middle of the after-
noon. Now | have never believed the barking
of foxes or the hooting of owls to be a reliable
forecast of stormy weather on every occasion; but
I am fully persuaded that animals are affected
by the approach of a storm of unusual violence,
and at such times are apt to utter cries unlike
their ordinary ones.

Before the storm set in last night, I heard the
mice in the walls squeaking as | have not heard
them before for months, as if they, too, like the

foxes, were excited by its approach.

The footprints of a fox rather resemble those
of a small dog, and are ordinarily placed in a
straight line, one directly in front of another, and

55

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

perhaps ten inches apart in the line. Sometimes
for short distances, and oftenest in very shallow
snow, they are in pairs quite close together, and
one slightly in advance, the pairs two or three
feet apart. In deep snow they are sometimes 1n
groups, separated by much longer intervals.

The track of a large cat is sometimes mis-
taken for that of a fox, but the separate foot-
prints of the cat are always shorter and rounder,
with the toes gathered together in front and a
distinct pad behind, while the footprint of a
fox appears to have been made by four pads of
equal size, and shows distinctly the marks of the
claws in front. And, moreover, the cat’s tracks
are generally nearer together, and are seldom in a

straight line for any great distance.

April 4, 1899. When I awoke this morning I
heard the barking of a fox not far away, and he
continued to bark at intervals all the time I

was dressing. On going to the door I saw him
56

FOXES

about one hundred and fifty yards away, and at
least fifty yards from the edge of the woods.

‘He was apparently coming towards the house,
but the opening of the door must have alarmed
him, for he instantly became silent, and, turning,
ran a little way towards the woods before stop-
ping to look back at me, and then went loping off
across the snow, keeping mostly in the shadow of
the woods, though without actually entering them.

The sky was perfectly clear and the sun at
least an hour and a half high; but though I
was looking towards the east and saw the fox
both in sunlight and shadow against a_back-
ground of snow, I failed to see that he looked
much darker by contrast with the white surface,
all of which helps to convince me that the one

I saw three years ago was actually a black fox.

But to go back to the gray fox. I have never
had any opportunity for observing its habits when
at liberty. “Those who have, speak of it as the in-

57

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

ferior of the red fox in every way, except perhaps
in the matter of tree climbing, for which it appears
to be rather better adapted than the other, |
though I am unable to learn that it ever does
much more than take refuge among the lower
branches when closely pursued, which 1s really
ne more than the red fox will do on occasion,
though more rarely.

In the open country the gray fox appears to be
at a decided disadvantage. And even in those
parts of the country where it was originally
most abundant, it quickly disappears with the
clearing away of the forest.

That it is a most intelligent animal is beyond
dispute; but both in intelligence and general
appearance, it seems to me from what I can.
gather to be a much more commonplace sort of
little beast, to be classed with the woodchucks
and hares, whose appearance in the woods and
fields seems perfectly natural and hardly likely

to attract especial attention.
58

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We
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GRAY FOX

FOXES

The sight of the more distinguished-looking
red fox, on the contrary, with his long legs and
brilliant colouring, always fills me with surprise in
spite of myself, as if it were some strange creature
escaped from confinement, and not just a com-
mon fox, reared perhaps in my own pasture, and
whose ancestors were dwelling here, for all that
I know to the contrary, ages before my own
crossed the seas. For although certain writers
have tried to prove that ours is only a variation
of the European red fox brought to this country
_ by the first settlers, there seems to be but slight
argument on their side. And J, for my part, shall
always associate the red fox and the red Indian
as co-inhabitants of the old forests that once

stood here.

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Chapter [II
Weasels
Ermine Weasel— American Sable— Least Weasel

HY is it that while popular fancy has
attributed all sorts of uncanny and
supernatural qualities to owls and cats, and no
ghost story or tale of horrid murder has been
considered quite complete without its rat peering
from some dark corner, or spider with expanded
legs suddenly spinning down from among the
rafters, no such grewsome association has ever
attached itself to the weasels, creatures whose
: every habit and characteristic would seem to sug-
gest something of the sort? Now, fond as I am
of cats, 1 should never think of denying that they
are uncanny creatures, to say the least. But,
suppose it was the custom of our domestic tabbies
to vanish abruptly, or even gradually on occasion,
like the Cheshire cat after its interview with Alice;
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

that would at least furnish some excuse for the
general prejudice against them, but would really
be no more than some of our commonest weasels
do whenever it serves their purpose. I remem-
ber one summer afternoon I was trout-fishing
along a little brook that ran between pine-cov- _
* ered hills. As I lay stretched on the bank at the
foot of a great maple I saw a weasel run along
in the brush fence some distance away. A few
seconds later he was standing on the exposed root
of the tree hardly a yard from my eyes. I lay
motionless and examined the beautiful creature
minutely, till suddenly I found myself staring at
the smooth greenish gray root of the maple with
no weasel in sight. Judging from my own expe-
rience, I should say that this is the usual ter-
mination of any chance observations of either
weasels or minks.

| Occasionally they may be seen to dart into
the bushes or behind some log or projecting

bank, but much more frequently they vanish
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WEASELS

with a suddenness that defies the keenest eye-
sight.

In all probability this vanishing 1s accomplished
by extreme rapidity of motion, but if this is the
case then the creature succeeds in doing some-
thing utterly impossible to any other warm-
blooded animal of its size. Mice, squirrels, and
some of the smaller birds are all of them swift
enough at times, but except in the case of the
humming-bird none of them, I believe, succeeds in
accomplishing the result achieved by the weasels.
The humming-bird, in spite of its small size,
leaves us a pretty definite impression of the
direction it has taken when it darts away; but
when a mink, half a yard in length and weighing |
several pounds, stands motionless before one with
his dark coat conspicuous against almost any
background, and the next instant is gone without
a rustle or the tremor of a blade of grass, it leaves
" one with an impression of witchcraft difficult to

dispel, and best appreciated when one has seen for
67

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Weems

one’s self. Nor is the everyday life of the weasel
quiet or commonplace; his one object in life
apparently is to kill, first to appease his hunger,
then to satisfy his thirst for warm blood, and after
that for the mere joy of killing.

The few opportunities I have had for observing
these animals have never shown them occupied in
any other way, nor can any hint of anything dif-
ferent be gained from the various writers on the
subject, while accounts of their attacking and even
killing human beings in a kind of blind fury are
too numerous and apparently too well authenti-
cated to be entirely ignored. These attacks are
said usually to be made by a number of weasels
acting in concert, and the motive would appear to
be revenge for some injury done to one of their
number. There seems to be something peculiar
about the entire family of weasels. The Amer-
ican sable or pine marten is said to have strange
ways that have puzzled naturalists and hunters

for years. In the wilderness no amount of trap-
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WEASELS

ping has any effect on their numbers, nor do they
show any especial fear of man or his works, occa-
sionally even coming into lumber camps at night,
and being especially fond of old logging roads
and woods that have been swept by fire; but at
the slightest hint of approaching civilisation they
disappear, not gradually, but at once and forever,
and the woods know them no more. If there is
anything in the theory of the survival of the fit-
test, why is it that not one marten has: discovered
that, like other animals of its size, it could ‘man-
age to live comfortably enough in the vicinity of
man? ‘The mink and otter still follow the course
of every brook and river and manage to avoid the
keen eyes of the duck hunter, while for six
months in the year their paths are sprinkled with
steel traps set either especially for them or for
the more plebeian muskrat. If a pair of sables
could be persuaded to take up their quarters in
some parts of New England, they could travel for
dozens of miles through dark evergreen woods
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Wool

with hollow and decaying trees 1n abundance,
and at present there are almost no traps set in a
manner that need disturb creatures of their habits.
Partridges, rabbits, and squirrels, which form their
principal food, are nearly if not quite as abundant
as before the country was settled, so that it. would
certainly not require any very decided change of
habits to enable them to exist; but evidently the
root of the matter goes deeper than that, and, like
some tribes of Indians, it is impossible for them
to multiply or flourish except in the primeval
forest.

The common weasel or ermine, which is the
the only kind I have seen hereabouts, would
seem to have everything on its side in the
struggle for existence, and when one happens
to be killed by some larger inhabitant of the
woods it must be due entirely to its own care-
lessness. Nevertheless, they do occasionally fall
victims to owls and foxes, and I once shot a red-
tailed hawk that was in the act of devouring one.

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WEASELS

Still, these casualties among weasels are probably
few and far between. Fortunately, however, they
never increase to any great extent. Occasionally
in the winter the snow for miles will be covered
with their tracks, all made in a single night, and
then for weeks not a track is to be seen; but
usually they prefer to hunt alone, each having
its beat, a mile or more in length, over which it
travels back and forth throughout the season,
passing any given point at intervals of two or
three days. This habit of keeping to the same
route instead of wandering at random about the
woods is characteristic of the family, the length
of the route depending to a certain extent on the
size of the animal. The mink is usually about
a week in going his rounds, and may cover a
dozen miles in that time, while the otter is gen-
erally gone a fortnight or three weeks. When
it is possible, the ermine prefers to follow the
course of old tumble-down stone walls, and lays
its course accordingly. In favourable districts he
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LITTLE: BEASTS OF- FIELD AND 43

is able to keep to these for miles together,
squeezing into the smallest crevices in pursuit
of mice or chipmunks. All the weasels travel
in a similar manner — that 1s, by a series of leaps
or bounds in such a way that the hind feet strike
exactly in the prints made by the fore-paws, so
that the tracks left in the snow are peculiar and
bear a strong family resemblance. On soft snow
the slender body of the ermine leaves its imprint
extending from one pair of footprints to the
next, and as these are from four to six-feet apart,
or even more, the impression left in the snow 1s
like the track of some extremely long and slen-
der serpent with pairs of short legs at intervals
along its body. I have said that the ermine 1s
the only weasel I have found in this vicinity, but
this is not strictly true. One winter I repeat-
edly noticed the tracks of an exceedingly large
weasel — they were so very large, in fact, that
I was almost forced to believe that they were
those of a mink. The impression of its body in

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WEASELS

the snow was quite as large as that made by a
small mink, but the footprints themselves were
smaller, and the creature appeared to avoid the
water in a manner quite at variance with the well-
known habits of its more amphibious cousin,
while, unlike the common weasel, it never fol-
lowed stone walls or fences. I put my entire
mind to the capture of the little beast, and set
dozens of traps, but it was well along in the
month of March before I succeeded. It proved
to be a typical specimen of the Western long-
tailed weasel, though I can find no account of any
other having been taken east of the Mississipp1.
Its entire length was about eighteen inches; the
tail, which was a little over six, gave the effect
at first glance of being tipped with gray instead
of black, but a closer inspection showed that the
‘black hairs were confined to the very extremity
and were partly concealed by the overlying white
ones ; the rest of the fur was white, with a slight
reddish tinge, and much longer and coarser than
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

that of an ermine. Since then I have occa-
sionally seen similar tracks, but have not suc-
ceeded in capturing a second specimen. In all
probability the least weasel is also to be found

here if one has the patience to search carefully

enough; none, however, has come under my :

observation as yet. All the small weasels that I
have seen have proved on close inspection to be
young ermines with thickly furred black-tipped
tails ; in the least weasel the tail 1s thinly covered
with short hair and without any black whatever.
Late in the autumn or early in the winter the
ermine changes from reddish brown to white,
sometimes slightly washed with greenish yellow
or cream colour, and again as brilliantly white as
anything in Nature or art; the end of the tail,
however, remains intensely black, and at first
thought might be supposed to make the animal
conspicuous on the white background of snow,

but in reality has just the opposite effect. Place

an ermine on new-fallen snow in such a way that .

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LEAST WEASEL

WEASELS

it casts no shadow, and you will find that the
black point holds your eye in spite of yourself,
and that at a little distance it is quite impossible
to follow the outline of the weasel itself. Cover
the tail with snow, and you can begin to make
out the position of the rest of the animal; but
as long as the tip of the tail is in sight you see_
that and that only. The ptarmigan and northern
hare also retain some spot or point of dark colour
when they take on their winter dress, and these
dark points undoubtedly serve the same purpose
as in the case of the ermine.

I base my statement that weasels ordinarily
travel by a series of leaps wholly on the appear-
ance of their tracks, being unable to imagine any
other mode of progression that could produce
them. But at the same time I am bound to
confess that I have never seen one moving in
that manner. In fact I have only seen three or
four living specimens in all, and these only for
a few seconds at a time at most, and they seemed

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LITTLE “BEASTS. OF FIELD AND Woo

to glide along rather, with unarched backs, like
serpents, and invariably vanished for good and
all before going many feet. |

I remember that before I had formed any very
definite impression of the nature of a weasel,
I was informed by another boy of about my own
age, that a weasel had three pairs of legs, which
may have been his way of accounting for their
peculiar manner of running, for he claimed to

have chased and killed two that morning.

Yesterday, March 12, 1899, { found an ermine
caught in a box-trap which I had set for the
purpose, hoping to keep one in confinement
during the spring months in order to observe
closely the change from white to red which
occurs each spring. i:

On first looking into the trap I supposed it
to be empty; but opening it pretty wide, I dis-
covered a weasel crouched in one corner and
partly hidden behind the rabbit’s head which

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WEASELS

had served to entice it into the trap, and I con-
fess that, judging from past experiences, I half
expected that it would vanish on the instant and
leave me with the empty trap in my hands. But
this one made no attempt even to escape by
darting out of the opening, though a red squirrel
or even a chipmunk would hardly have let such
an opportunity slip. So I closed the trap hur-
riedly and carried it to the house, where I trans-
ferred my prisoner to a cage where it could be
observed more satisfactorily.

It proved to be a female, and her fur looked
as white and thick as that of a mid-winter
specimen. What chiefly surprised me was her
quietness and apparent docility, there being no
exhibition of fear on her part at any time,
though her big black eyes occasionally took on-
an expression of alarm at some sudden and unac-
customed noise or movement of the cage.

Whenever I touched the cage, she would ap-

proach as if to examine my hand, but without
6 81 |

LITTLE BEASTS OF. FIELD AND Sy

attempting to bite it, seldom making any rapid
or impetuous movement, but moving in a lithe,
serpentine manner, sometimes with arched back,
and at others with her body held nearly straight
and close to the floor of the cage.

Almost any other of our small animals under
similar circumstances would have flown at the
sides of the cage, breaking either its teeth or the
wires in its endeavours to force an opening. But
the only effort of the kind that I witnessed was
after she had been confined for several hours,
when I found her trying her teeth on the wires
in a most careful and business-like manner, but
without much apparent enthusiasm. At my ap-
proach, she promptly desisted, appearing to dis-
miss the project entirely from her mind, though,
as subsequent events proved, not wholly giving
over her plans for escape by any means.

Being desirous of observing her manner of
eating, | took my gun and went into the woods,
and was lucky enough to start a gray rabbit

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WEASELS

within a few minutes’ walk of the house, and get
back with it while it was still warm. Cutting off
its head, I tried to push it through the door of
the cage, which, however, proved a little too
small. But my weasel showed not the slightest
hesitation about coming to my assistance, but,
seizing it wherever she could most conveniently,
she tugged and shook it until, between us, we
managed to get it through.

Then after dragging it to the middle of the
cage she returned to lap up the blood spilled
near the entrance; after which she drank that
which nearly filled one of the ears as it lay with
the concave side uppermost; then she turned her
attention to the large veins of the neck, appear-
ing to suck them dry before turning away.

By the time she had ‘carefully licked off all
the scattered drops from the rabbit’s fur, and
tasted a little of the spinal-cord where it projected
from the vertebrae of the neck, she seemed to
have pretty well satisfied her hunger, though

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LITTLE -BEASTS..OF FIELD AND WoGes

she did make one half-hearted attempt to gnaw
into the brain at the base of the skull, soon
pausing, however, to yawn widely and lick her
chops like a cat; and I noticed that throughout
the entire meal she had somehow managed to
keep herself surprisingly clean and dry, carrying
her tail cross-wise over her back or shoulders,
as if to keep it off the floor of the.cage, which
had become uncomfortably wet through the
upsetting of her dish of water while we were
struggling with the rabbit’s head.

She now began to exhibit a desire for sleep,
crouching on a dry spot with her chin and throat
resting on the floor and her eyes half closed,
but without showing signs of curling up, as most
small animals do when about to go to sleep.

Remembering the very common belief that
weasels and hares sleep with their eyes open, I
watched her for some time in silence; and it is
true that I did not see her eyes close, except to
wink, at any time, and though to all appearances

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WEASELS

asleep, she always raised her head instantly at
my slightest movement. Still, the test was hardly
sufficient to prove the correctness of the saying.

I now opened the door into the other part of
the cage, which was smaller and filled with dry
grass for a bed. After a cautious scrutiny of
the entrance, she went in and began vigorously
rearranging the grass to suit her taste. So I
left her to enjoy her nap in peace, but a few
minutes later was startled by a strange and rapid
knocking from the direction of the cage, and
going to see what was the matter, found her
endeavouring to carry the rabbit’s head into her
sleeping apartment, probably realising that al-
though she was unable to eat any more just
then, she was likely to wake up at any time and
feel hungry, and determining to have her break-
fast within reach, and not be dependent on my
_ tender mercies for the future. But the doorway
to her chamber was altogether too narrow; and

here she exhibited the first real signs of being
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

possessed of a temper, apparently being pro-
voked beyond all endurance by her repeated
failures.

Fearing that she might finally succeed, I got a
good stiff wire with the end bent up into a hook,
and getting a firm hold on the rabbit’s head,
pulled in an opposite direction, and was surprised
at the strength exhibited by the slim little beast.

Just as often as I succeeded in dragging it
half-way across the cage, she would come whisk-
ing after it, and, twisting loose the wire, go
staggering back in triumph with her prize; and
when I at last got it as far as the doorway,
where I could grasp it with my fingers, she still
struggled with it, sometimes even touching my
fingers with her nose, but never offering to bite
them; though I was rather more careless than
was perhaps wise, for a weasel bite is said some-
times to prove rather serious. Realising at last
that she was struggling against odds too heavy

for her, she concluded to abandon the uneven
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WEASELS

contest, and retired to resume her slumbers; and
I saw no more of her for the day.

This morning we found the two cats sitting
beside the cage, which they had evidently been
dragging about in the night in their endeavours
to get at the inmate, who was peering from the
door of her chamber, evidently not greatly
alarmed by the episode.

When the cats had been driven away, she
withdrew her head and spent the rest of the
morning apparently curled up in her nest, refus-
ing to come out, though I held tempting bits at
the entrance of the cage and squeaked like a
mouse to attract her attention.

When I poked her with a spear of grass, she
refused to stir or take any notice of me, only
once uttering a sharp chip like the alarm notes
of certain species of warblers. This was the only
noise she made, except to hiss softly while
struggling with me for the possession of her be-
loved rabbit-head.

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LITTLE BEASTS--OF FIELD AND Woop

Soon after noon, I found the cage empty, with
an opening of about her size forced between the
wires at the spot where she had made her first.
attempt at escape. And as nothing is to be
found of her, I am forced to conclude that she
made her exit from the room through a mouse-
hole in the bottom of a cupboard, and is now in
all probability chasing the mice somewhere about
the walls of the house.

To-day, I caught a large male ermine in a rat-
trap, and, like the last, its fur was as thick and

white as in mid-winter.

And for- my part,-F*have never sec ‘ome
between November and April that showed more
than a faint greenish or creamy tint, and this
only on the under surface. And I have taken
probably a dozen winter specimens at one time
and another. And unless my memory 1s very
much at fault, this includes one perfectly white

specimen taken in November, before we had
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ERMINE IN WINTER

WEASELS

had any snow whatever. An ermine under such
circumstances must find its white coat undesirably
conspicuous; but I have never so much as caught
a glimpse of one at such times, though we often
have whole weeks together, even in mid-winter,
when the woods are practically free from snow.

Yet the change to white seems to be as com-
plete here, and of almost the same duration, as
about Hudson’s Bay, for example; though only
about two hundred miles to the south of us they
are said seldom to turn white at all.

And this peculiarity seems to be just as clearly
defined geographically in the Old World, —in
Scotland, for instance, the change is said to be
complete; while in England, especially in the
more southern districts, white specimens are of
rare occurrence, though piebald and parti-coloured
specimens are not uncommon in winter.

And now to go back to the long-tailed weasel.
The different works which I have consulted
agree in placing the eastern limit of this species at

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LITTLE “BEASTS: OF FIELD AND A¥aae

Minnesota or thereabouts; but Thoreau, under
date of February 22, 1855, writes:

“’T. Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he
caught in a trap three or four weeks ago.

“They are not very uncommon about his
barns. All white but the tip of the tail. Two
conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw.

“In summer they are distinguished from the red
weasel, which is a little smaller, by the length of
their tails, particularly, six or more inches, while
the red ones are not more than two inches long.”

Now this description, especially as regards the
conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw, and the
length of the tail, applies perfectly to the long-
tailed weasel and not to the ermine, the length of
whose tail 1s invariably given as three or four

inches. Still it seems hardly likely that this

family of weasels should have inhabited this part —

of New England all these years without having
been catalogued before; but one hardly knows
what else to think under the circumstances.

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WEASELS

It is surprising how rapidly the ermine changes
from white to brown after the process is once
begun; one that I caught in a trap recently
showed the transformation nearly complete, the
back being of a peculiar shade of reddish buff
with only one or two little spots of pure white
fur, while the sides were thickly sprinkled with
long white hairs, which were already detached from
the skin and constantly shedding. The tail was
divided irito three distinct sections of colour, black
at the tip for about an inch, as in winter, then
white for the same distance, and brown next the
body. The white of the tail was confined to
the long coarse hairs overlying the soft under-
fur, which was already brown. The feet were
still white, like the under surface of the body
and throat, which remain so throughout the
season. It was then the 14th of April, and only
two or three weeks ago those that I caught
showed no sign of changing colour. The new
brown fur must have grown out with great

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

rapidity, for it was already about as long as it ever
would be. —

In fact, I am not yet fully convinced that it
was new fur, but rather the old under-fur of the
last winter turned brown, and ‘that only-the long
over-hair is shed in the spring. The more
carefully I examined the fur of the specimen
before me, the more I was persuaded that this
was actually the case, and that the ermine habit-
ually goes about with only its under-fur on dur-
ing the spring and early summer, and that this 1s
shed late in the summer, to give place to a new |
coat of short hair, which grows longer and is
re-enforced by thick under-fur in the autumn;
while the whole turns white in November,
through some inexplicable process which works
alike with weasel and northern hare and ptarmi-
gan, while the coats of other animals remain prac-
tically unchanged as far as colour is concerned.

The nursery where the young weasels are.
raised is, in most instances, beneath a stump, or

94

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WEASELS

in the burrow of a chipmunk, probably enlarged
and remodelled to some extent; though it is
doubtful if weasels of any kind ever dig entirely
new burrows,—an undertaking that would hardly
seem called for anyway in most sections of
country, in view of the general abundance of
chipmunks; for not only 1s the chipmunk’s home
perfectly adapted to the weasel’s purpose, but
the rightful owners themselves when caught at
home serve to furnish the newcomers with their
favourite food.

I recall one instance where an ermine was
caught in a trap set in the mouth of a wood-
chuck’s burrow, and although he may only have
been poking about in search of mice or rabbits,
which frequently take up their abode in bur-
rows which the woodchucks have abandoned, it
seems quite as probable that the ermine itself
had its home there, for in Europe they are said
often to inhabit rabbit warrens, and even the
underground tunnels of the mole,—so that one

7 97

LITTLE BEASTS--OF FIELD AND WoGe

would suppose that a creature so easily suited
would find little trouble in obtaining lodgings in
any part of this country where burrowing animals
of one kind and another are so abundant.

From what little I have seen of them, I should
certainly never credit ermines with being possessed
of a frolicsome disposition. But they are said,
on good authority, to engage frequently in the
most grotesque antics and gambollings, apparently —
for their own amusement, though sometimes
even approaching their prey in that manner, as
if to allay any suspicion of their evil intention,
or possibly in the hope that curiosity may tempt
their quarry within reach.

A common habit with them seems to be that of
storing up the dead bodies of their victims, after
having satisfied their immediate appetites. Dozens
of mice and young rabbits and the like some-
times have been found packed away in weasels’
dens, something which would account for the fact
that while following weasel-tracks about the woods

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W EASELS

where they have been hunting, one almost never
comes across any of the remains of the creatures
they have killed, though these are often so much
larger than the weasels themselves. For while all
weasels undoubtedly live largely upon mice, they
seldom appear to exhibit much hesitation about
attacking larger game.

It is easy to imagine the ermine starting out
on his hunting trips, moving by leisurely, silent
bounds over the pine-needles, ready for anything
that may turn up. Judging from what I have“
seen, I should say that he depended largely upon
his tireless muscles for success, together with the
fact that few creatures are able to find refuge in
quarters too narrow for him to follow.

I have known gray rabbits when pursued by
ermines to leave the woods and rush frantically
out into the open fields, as if aware that their
enemy was even better suited than themselves for
rapid progress through the thicket and brambles
which the rabbit usually looks upon as its chief

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LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD AND Wess

protection. And it seems as though it knew what
it was about in seeking the open at such times,
as I have never known the ermine to leave the —
woods in order to follow it, though really much
more a creature of the open fields than the other.

The ermine is particularly fond of white-footed
mice, and in winter kills large numbers of them
about the stone walls and rotten stumps where
the mice have their homes. The chase must be
a very exciting one, for the woodmouse is scarcely
inferior to the weasel itself in leaping powers, be-
sides being a most skilful and erratic dodger, as
any one who has ever tried to corner one will
bear witness. The slow, fat-bodied meadow-mice
should prove much easier victims; but I have
seen but little evidence that the ermine depends
on them, to any great extent, for food.

In many places the ermine ts said to frequent
barns and farm buildings, living on mice and rats
and, incidentally, on chickens as well. But those

that I have studied have been almost without ex-

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WEASELS

ception dwellers of woodlands and rocky pastures
and brier-grown roadsides. ‘he chief service that
they can claim credit for is the destruction of
wild mice, and their worst crime the murder of
partridges and song-birds.

In summer they catch insects and reptiles, and
rob birds’ nests by the dozen, and have even been
seen to spring into the air and catch birds on the
wing, though in all probability most of the birds
they capture are surprised on the ground, either by
the ermine’s creeping silently upon them, or lying
hidden in the grass near where they are feed-
ing, until one happens to come within springing
distance. At night they must frequently succeed
in surprising those that roost near the ground, and
pounce upon them before they have time to take
alarm.

At times they frequent the banks of small
brooks, after the manner of minks, especially those
brooks that have rocky shores and a quick current ;
and it is not by any means impossible that they

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LITTLE ~BEASTS OF -FIELD AND

may occasionally catch small fish in the shallows

at the edge of the rapids.

I have never witnessed an exhibition of their

swimming powers, but have no doubt that they

would prove fairly adept on occasion, being, to

all outward appearance at least, much better
adapted for it than most of our land animals.

Weasels of all kinds have always borne the
reputation of being the most extravagantly cruel
and bloodthirsty creatures living; and this 1s
undoubtedly true of them in the sense that, ac-
cording to their size, they kill more of their
fellow-creatures than any other inhabitant of
the woods.

But they never appear to exhibit any of that
wanton, idle, cold-blooded cruelty inherent in
the cat and fox tribes, the various members of
which are so fond of deliberately torturing any
little beast or bird that is so unfortunate as to
fall into their clutches.

The flesh of the ermine, like that of the mink,

102

Pe eee ee, ee So Se ee ey

WEASELS

consists wholly of bands of dark rubbery muscles
laid on rather sparingly, except about the head
and neck, where they swell out in a manner that
lacks but little of spoiling the general symmetry
of form displayed by these creatures. Those
that control the movements of the head and
jaws, in particular, strike one as almost abnormal
in their development, — like those of a bull-dog,
for example, — though without displaying any of
the clumsiness of structure characteristic of that

animal.

WE-C

1

\
\
HiPXt . \ \
ft A
h

it NN

\\
N

MINK IN SUMMER

Chapter I V
Swimmers
Mink — Otter

HE mink closely resembles the otter, but

is only about two feet in length. © Its
habits are similar, but it is much more generally
known, the sale of its fur forming no inconsider-
able portion of the income of many a trapper
and farmer’s boy during the winter ; for, unlike
its larger relative, it has not yet learned to avoid
traps to any great extent. Its food consists
largely of earth-worms and fish, especially eels,
which it captures in warm springs and mudholes
where they are bedded for the winter. I know
of one spring under the steep river bank where
the minks watch patiently until some unfortunate
eel is brought into sight by the constant upward
movement of the water, when it is quickly

seized and dragged out upon the snow. But

107

LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD AND -3yoGm

the struggle does not end here, for when the
mink prepares to bear its victim away in tri-
umph, the latter is apt to wind its body around
that of its captor, and generally succeeds in
throwing him end over end more than once
before being finally subdued and hauled away,
limp and unresisting, across the snow, which
when soft holds faithfully the entire history of
the contest, from the first confused and hysterical
flounderings at the edge of the water, to the
triumphal march of the mink up the steep bank,
with the eel dragging alongside.

I have never succeeded in discovering how
they go to work to get earth-worms in winter,
but that they manage it in one way or another
is evident enough, for I have examined the
stomachs of half a dozen or more killed when
the ground, except around springs and similar _
places, was frozen hard and covered with snow,
and most of them contained large red earth-

worms that had been swallowed whole.

108

SWIMMERS

If the angler who laboriously chops decaying
logs to pieces in order to obtain a few borers
for bait for fishing through the ice could learn
of the minks how to get such worms as these,
he would probably consider himself among the
favoured of mortals. But the mink does not
always confine himself to such insignificant game,
by any manner of means; he not infrequently
kills birds and animals as large or larger than
himself, neither ducks, partridges, chickens,
rabbits, or muskrats being ever wholly safe
where minks are abundant.

For the minks are less restricted in their hunt-
ing-grounds than the others, especially in winter,
when they adopt many of the ways of the ermine
and sable, wandering about the woods at random
in pursuit of game of any kind, from wild mice
to rabbits, travelling with the easy, undulating
movement of their family until game is sighted,
when they pursue it with rapid bounds and
arched back, like a frightened kitten.

I0Q

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND 4V@0m@

Like the otter, they slide down every slope

they come to, or worm their way about beneath the

snow, like moles, creeping along under fence rails.

and fallen trees whenever the opportunity offers.
They are said to climb trees like squirrels; and
one reliable hunter told me that he once shot
one in the top of a tall elm; but for my own
part I have never seen one do more than clamber
about the leaning trunk of a willow, a few feet
from the ground.

One winter the minks discovered a swarm of
wild bees in the hollow trunk of a fallen hem-
lock near here, and for a short time simply feasted
on bees and honey. When I visited the place,
the snow about the log was scattered over with
frozen bees and bits of comb; and the one who
first told me about it said that he had carried

home several pounds of the best honey, and _ bees.

enough, as he thought, to stock a hive, but they
all died before spring.

A mink will nearly always follow any open

110

a ee a ee ee ee

———E—————

SWIMMERS

brook it comes to, even if obliged to change its
course in order to do so, alternately swimming
and wading or walking along the bank. On
reaching the limit of the unfrozen water, he will
often keep on beneath the ice, especially if the
water has fallen away from it so as to leave an
air space, and perhaps a narrow strip of turf un-
covered along the edge of the water. For it ts
in just such places that meadow-mice spend the
winter, their burrows opening out from the banks
in the same manner as muskrat holes. And
even the smallest brooks harbour young pickerel
and eels, as well as frogs and lizards.

One of the most characteristic traits of the
mink is his fondness for squeezing through nar-
row places, —a feat for which he 1s especially
adapted, for wherever his head can go the rest
of his body follows easily enough ; and it is sur-
prising to see how many small passages he
manages to wriggle through in the course of a

night. Every exposed root or fallen tree, tilted

[it

LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD AND Weon

ice cake or stone wall furnishes one or more
opportunities which he is sure to improve, to the
indignation of the trappers, who declare that if.
the minks would only be a little more careful
of their clothes, their fur would be just as valu-
able in March as in December. But before the
last of the winter most of them have so worn
away the glossy over-hair on their shoulders as
to have materially reduced the selling price of
their skins, besides having recklessly exposed
themselves to the increasing sunlight, which
causes the tips of the fur to curl over in little
hooks invisible to the untrained eye, but instantly
seized upon and condemned by the furrier, so
that by the time the season for trapping musk-
rats has fairly opened, minks are worth only about
half as much as they were in the fall, and soon
become practically valueless, though with char-
acteristic obstinacy they persist 1n stepping into
traps never intended for them. The trapper

_ who, in November, growled because the musk-

Ii2

YALNIM NI YNIW

SWIMMERS

rats kept getting into his mink traps when they
still needed several months to become “ prime”
in, now growls on finding the mink which had
so exasperatingly avoided his traps all winter,
when his pelt would have sold for several dollars
perhaps, caught ignominously in a muskrat trap
in April, his faded coat already showing little
tufts of pale under-fur detaching themselves from
the skin. For in the spring minks haunt the
muskrat grounds more than at any other time,
penetrating their burrows and climbing over their
cabins, or wading along their paths in the shal-
low water, and robbing the muskrat traps of their
victims.

They never appear to have any established
homes, but sleep wherever it is most convenient,
often in the nest of a muskrat, after having killed |
or driven off the owner. A favourite place is
beneath a stump, or in the hollow root of a tree,
or among rocks, their taste in such matters being
very similar to that of the otter.

1I5

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

In April the female raises her family in some
such place, or else she digs out a short burrow
under the overhanging bank, probably making
sure that the entrance, whether natural or arti-
ficial, is only just big enough to admit her ; for
most male animals of the weasel family are ad-
dicted to the unfortunate habit of dining on the
young of their own race,—a habit which may
perhaps explain the pronounced difference in the
size of the sexes, the females averaging little
more than half as long as their mates, and being
much slenderer in proportion to their length;
and it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose
that when the males first adopted the custom
of seeking out and devouring their offspring,
the smallest females would have a decided ad-
vantage in being able to have their nurseries in
quarters so narrow as to make it difficult or
impossible for the males to gain admission, so
that those families which exhibited the greatest

variation in size between sons and daughters
T16

SWIMMERS

would increase the fastest, and the females of the
race be smaller with each succeeding generation.

I have no positive evidence that the male
minks possess this cannibal instinct, but, about
the time the young are brought forth, they sud-
denly begin to follow the females about every-
where they go, in a way which might be attrib-
uted to solicitude for their welfare and a desire
to afford them protection, but which I am very
much afraid only indicates hunger and a depraved
appetite. And the fact that so many of the family
of weasels have been convicted of a similar crime
is certainly against them.

Trout brooks, tumbling over rocky beds, be-
tween wooded hills, are commonly supposed to
be the favourite haunts of minks; but they seem
to be equally abundant along the more sluggish
reed-grown streams and mill-ponds of the low
lands, and in tangled swamps, or out on the tide-
swept marshes within sound of the breakers,
where they usually make their homes in_hay-

117

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Weaee

stacks in order to be above the reach of the tide,
digging cosey tunnels in the soft hay, like rat-
holes in a haymow in the barn. At low tide
they ramble along the bottoms of the intersecting
ditches that drain the marsh, where they find an
abundant supply of small fry and shell-fish and
eels, with an occasional muskrat, bound on the
same errand as themselves; or else they slip
between the stems of the coarse marsh grass on
the borders of the shallow ponds, to waylay
the marsh birds feeding there, and pick up the
wounded ones left by the sportsmen.

The ditches are a yard or more in depth, and
only six or eight inches wide, and are cut at first
with perpendicular sides which, after a few years,
come together at the top, leaving underground
passages where the minks can travel in safety,
except in the late fall and winter, when the pro-
fessional trapper is on the war-path.

But the trapper has only to place his traps

on the bottoms of the ditches, and visit them
16

SWIMMERS

between tides whenever it is convenient, know-
ing. that twice each day the tide will overflow
them and drown any mink that may have been
so unfortunate as to put his foot into one of
them in the mean time.

Minks exhibit much of the playful humour
of otters, and even when alone are often seen
playing about in the sun like kittens. They
swim rapidly, either under water or on the sur-
face, using all four feet like a dog, and from time
to time raising their long necks and triangular,
snake-like heads several inches above the surface,
to look about them. I have never seen one
chasing fish under water, but have no doubt that
they do it just as otters do, following their prey
through all its frantic twisting and dodging until
it is captured.

Most birds exhibit curiosity rather than alarm
at sight of a mink, or at all events they express
their emotions, whatever they are, in a different
manner. Instead of screaming as they do when

119

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND wWwoon

a fox or bird of prey is in sight, they gather
in the neighbouring trees without any unusual
outcry, while from time to time one of their -
number flies along slowly just over the mink,
as if to examine it, at times approaching quite
close, — and then away again to join its fellows.

I once saw a mink trying to catch some robins
in an open pasture, and though they were careful
to keep out of his way, there was no general
alarm given, as would have been the case if the
enemy had been a hawk or fox, or even a cat.

In most districts minks vary greatly in abun-
dance from year to year, their numbers depend-
ing largely on the value fashion chooses to bestow
upon their fur. Some thirty years ago they rose
in favour until their skins brought five or ten dol-
lars each, and they were killed in such numbers
that in a short time they became almost extinct
throughout the country. But, fortunately for
them, mink fur soon after became unfashionable.

again, and remained so for ten or fifteen years,

I20

SWIMMERS

the best skins bringing only fifty or seventy-five
cents apiece at that time. And as muskrat fur
belonging to the same class was correspondingly
cheap, very few traps were set for either animal,
so that the minks were able to roam about in
comparative safety. At that time I remember
that their tracks were to be seen about every-
where in the winter, along the road-sides and by
every brook and mill-pond.

For the last few years, however, their fur has
been steadily advancing in favour and their num-
bers have decreased accordingly ; and even where
they are reasonably abundant in summer and
early fall, there are usually few to be found after
the first of the winter. Last season, for example,
there were several families of them, apparently, in
this immediate vicinity, as I repeatedly noticed
their footprints about the water, and had two
or three good opportunities for observing the
animals themselves.

But I heard of at least ten that were killed

EZT

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

within a mile of this place during the last of
October and the first part of November, and, by
the time the snow came, there was not a mink
track to be found for miles about, though until
the streams had frozen to the depth of a foot or
more I found otter tracks after every snow-fall.
The only mink tracks that I have seen this winter
have been in an extensive swamp, two or three miles
to the north, and these only on two occasions.

In December I noticed the tracks of a large
weasel near a brook, and, following them, found
where it had dug down into the snow beneath a
little hemlock and uncovered the dead body of a
female mink. There was no sign, as far as I
could see, that the mink had been shot, or killed
by any of the larger beasts or birds of prey; it was
simply curled up as if asleep, and I could not
help wondering if it could possibly have been
hibernating, as some hunters claim that they do,
and drowned by the freshet that had flooded the

hollow a few weeks before.

122

SWIMMERS

The white spot that so frequently marks the
chin or throat of the mink ts a peculiar feature, it
is so perfectly white and sharply defined against
the dark brown fur that surrounds it. It does
not seem to depend in any way on age or sex,
about one mink in ten being wholly without any
- white marking whatever. A rather larger number
have one half of the chin, as far back as the angle
of the mouth, white and the other half brown, the
dividing line between the two colours being straight
and .clear-cut down the exact middle of the chin.

Perhaps three out of four have the chin wholly
white, and of these nearly half have a white spot
on the throat or breast as well, usually just be-
tween the fore-legs, though often in the form of
a narrow stripe along the throat, sometimes
extending all the way from the chin to the breast
or even further, and again broken into a series of
spots of varying size, while I have heard of at
least one mink marked with a row of spots down
its back as well.

123

LITTLE BEASTS. OF: - FIELD AND 4G 0e

These markings, together with the great range
of size and colour of adult specimens, for a long
time led trappers and naturalists alike to the
opinion that there were two distinct species, —a
belief firmly held by many, and not absolutely
denied by naturalists until comparatively recent
times.

They distinguished them as the black or moun-
tain-brook mink, and the common mink or
marten, which they claimed was much larger and
heavier, with lighter coloured fur and white throat.

Only about fifteen years ago I remember few
appeared to doubt the existence of the two species,
though how they went to work to classify them
as they did is hard to imagine; for judging from
scores of skins that I have examined at one
time and another, I should say that the smaller
specimens are just about as likely to be light
coloured with white throats as the largest, and that
the white markings are as often found on dark

coloured minks as on light ones.

124

SWIMMERS

Yesterday, March ro, 7899, I found the tracks
of a large mink in some hemlock woods by the
edge of a swamp; he appeared to have been
chasing rabbits back and forth among the trees,
sometimes following in their tracks, and again
evidently trying to head them off as they ran in
circles; and, judging from the wild leaps they
often made, he must have been quite near them
at times, though I found no actual evidence of
success on the part of the mink.

What surprised me a good deal at first was
the fact that he seemed purposely to avoid the
water, as there was an open brook only a few
rods away which was formerly a great favourite of
theirs in winter, since it never freezes and flows
for a large part of the way underground, whole

reaches of it being roofed over by the trunks of
| fallen trees and dead leaves and vegetable mould,
held together by the roots of the living forest.

But yesterday there were no mink tracks any-
where along its banks, nor have there been any

125

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Woon

there this winter as far as I know, though I have
found them on two or three occasions at no great
_ distance away in the swamp.

It certainly begins to look as if the minks
have. at last learned that that particular brook
is dangerous to them, in winter at least; for there
have been traps set there every winter, and all
winter, for the last six years or more, and dozens
of minks have met their fate there, though I
have not heard of any having been taken at that

place within the last year or two.

It is a pretty well-known fact among hunters
that most flesh-eating animals can be more readily
called by imitating the squeaking of mice than
in any other way; and it would seem to prove
conclusively enough that these creatures depend
largely upon the sense of hearing in their strug-
gle for a livelihood.

Standing one day beside an old tumble-down

rail-fence that ran along between the woods and
126

SWIMMERS

‘salt marshes, half-hidden among the brambles
and tall grass, I caught the merest glimpse of a
mink slipping along between the bottom rails.
As he was evidently unaware of my presence,
I determined to see more of him, and began
squeaking in imitation of a mouse, and quickly
had the satisfaction of seeing him make his
appearance on a projecting stake much nearer
than when I had first seen him.

Stretching himself along a projecting stake,
he appeared to listen and look in my direction ;
but although I was standing in plain sight on
the edge of the marsh hardly a rod away, the fact
that he was obliged to look directly into the
sun evidently made it quite impossible for him
to distinguish clearly what he saw.

At the end of a few moments he dropped into
the grass and started in my direction, the trem-
bling grass-blades clearly indicating his progress
as he approached nearer and nearer until, almost
at my feet, he vanished, and, in spite of the most

127

LITTLE: BEASTS OF FIELD AND Wooo

patient waiting on my part, absolutely refused
to show himself again.

The tracks of a mink are in pairs, two or
three inches apart, and one decidedly in advance,
the pairs from one to four or five feet apart.
About the only other track with which this one
is likely to be confused is that of the musk-

rat. But in wet snow the muskrat’s toes are

seen to be more distinct and separate, and when-

ever the hind-feet are brought down fairly on the
snow, they make a much larger print than the
forefeet; while a mink’s feet are all practically
of the same size.

In deep soft snow, the impression made by
the body of the animal serves as a distinction ;
for the mink’s body makes a narrow, rounded
mark, while the muskrat’s is wide and usually
with upright sides and flat bottom. The same
distinction holds good whenever the creature bur-
rows into soft snow or forces its way through

melting ice at the edge of the water.
128

Oe a ee

SWIMMERS

But the most distinctive feature 1s the mark
made by the muskrat’s tail, which is often
dragged continuously, marking a distinct and un-
broken line between the footprints several rods
in length, and when this is not the case, is nearly
always found to touch here and there at intervals,
either between the tracks or at one. side.

In summer and early autumn when the streams
are low and the leaves are at their thickest; minks
are particularly fond of prowling about swamps
and wet woodlands, keeping to the lowest level
with all the pertinacity of running water, and fol-
lowing the drying channels of the smaller brooks
for miles together, where the reduced waters just
linger along through the depressions in the black
mud mottled with whatever of sunlight or moon-
light manages to find its way between the leaves.

Here they undoubtedly capture insects and
birds in abundance, as well as frogs and small fish.
For in times .of drought practically all the wild

life of the woods congregates about such places, or

9 ) 129

LITTLE -BEASTS: OF FIBLED AND 372

visits them at certain times of the day, * water
being one of the things which none of our wild
creatures appear willing to go without for many
hours at a time.

Along the larger streams- the minks keep
beneath the over-hanging banks as much as pos-
sible, sometimes crawling out along low-growing
branches or fallen tree-trunks to watch for fish
beneath.

When the alewives run up into the fresh water
in June, the minks must find the food problem a
very easy matter, as they have only to wait at
the edge of the shallows above tide-water until
a school comes along, and seize whatever fish are
crowded out of the water by their fellows, or
become stranded among the pebbles by their own
carelessness and impetuosity.

For a few weeks before the alewives run, the
suckers are going through practically the same
performance, so that for the first few weeks of
summer the minks must have more fish at their

130

SWIMMERS

disposal than they can possibly eat, even though
it does come at a time when there are little minks
to support.

And I have noticed that the females nearly
always choose the immediate vicinity of such
places for bringing up their families. These
families usually keep together, apparently with-
out wandering to any great extent until cold
weather, with the exception of perhaps the old
males, who may spend the summer roving about
the country at random, as they do in winter
and spring, though I frequently find them in
company with the others in the autumn, all
having been brought together, perhaps, by the
abundance of fish or game at some particular
spot.

For the last three or four centuries, the race of
minks has probably had heavier odds to fight
against in the struggle for existence than most of
our small animals; and the fact that they are still
to be found everywhere, in more or less abun-’

131

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

dance, even within the limits of many of our
smaller towns and villages, might well be taken to
indicate the possession of superior intelligence on —
their part. But I am inclined to think that they
really owe more to their physical perfection than
to their wits, which, 1t seems to me, hardly corre-
spond to the agile and vivacious movements of
the creatures themselves, but are rather of the
stubborn, slow-working order, quite incapable of
grasping any new and unforeseen situation, though
never failing their owners in a crisis.

I have seen minks face death in all sorts of
situations, but have never witnessed any exhibi-
tion of fear or panic on their part, and am almost
tempted to believe that the race is actually devoid
of any such emotion. z |

They belong to the tribe of fishers and
hunters, equally at home on the land or in the
water, and ready at any moment to plunge into
the rapids and grapple with fish as large as them-
selves, or chase and pull down a hare among the

132

SWIMMERS

birches, and have inherited their tough and elastic
bodies from countless generations of ancestors
who gained their living in a similar manner.

While they unquestionably experience the
same wild joy in hunting and fishing and fight-
ing as other flesh-eating animals, including man
himself, I am unable to discover that they are
in the habit of carrying it to the extreme that
some of the others do, being content to stop
killing when they have satisfied their immediate
hunger in most instances.

In warm weather they often leave the fish they
have caught lying about on the bank, having
satisfied themselves with a few bits from the
head or back, or whatever part they find most
to their taste. But in winter I have never found
anything of the kind, and believe that they are
in the way of carrying off and hiding for future
use whatever they are unable to eat at the time,
though there seems to be no evidence of their
storing up the dead bodies of their victims by

133

LITTLE’ BEASTS OF FILED 2 WOOD

the dozen, as their cousins the ermines and pole-
Cats ate, said fo do.

When a mink finds a muskrat caught in a ~
trap, he usually manages to eat pretty nearly half
of it the first night, and returns the following
night for some more. And it is quite possible
that in many instances when the trapper finds his
trap holding the foot of a muskrat only, and
concludes that the latter was determined to get
away, even if it cost a leg, that he has really been
' robbed by a mink that has succeeded 1n dragging
away what was left after his meal. |

An old hunter, one of the closest observers of
nature I have ever known, once told me that
female minks hibernated in winter in the same
manner as bears, though it was his belief that,
unlike the bears, they never brought forth their
young at that season. At first I refused to take
the slightest stock in what he said, the whole
thing appeared so absurd and so utterly at vari-
ance with the teachings of those naturalists who

134

SWIMMERS

have made the closest possible study of the
habits of minks. Since then, however, I have
kept my eyes open for any hint that might have
the slightest bearing on the subject, and to my
surprise have found many things that would
seem to point to the correctness of the old
hunter's theory. To begin with, he said that
late in the winter he had repeatedly known
female minks to make their appearance from
beneath snow that had lain undisturbed for days
or even weeks, the tracks apparently beginning
where he first observed them, the difference in
size between the two sexes being sufficient to
make it easy to distinguish between their tracks
at a glance; and, moreover, since he first began
trapping he had noticed that while the sexes were
bout equally abundant in the autumn, the
females always became very scarce at the ap-
proach of winter, and remained so until spring,
when they suddenly increased in numbers, and
became much the more abundant of the two.
135

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

This is also the experience of trappers in
general, and may be verified by any one who
cares to take the trouble to look into the matter. —
Evidently no one has ever discovered a mink in
a state of hibernation, —at any rate, no such
case appears ever to have been reported; but
this does not necessarily prove that it is not a
regular habit among them.

The cry of the mink 1s seldom heard, even in
places where they are fairly abundant, as they
have evidently learned that the greatest safety
lies in silence. It is a peculiarly shrill, rattling,
whistle-like scream that can be heard at a con-
siderable distance.

It is remarkable that so large an animal as
the otter should still hold its own in com-
paratively thickly settled -districts throughout
the country, and be practically unknown to any
except naturalists and a few others. I have
talked with old trappers who have followed the

business for years, and could tell correctly at a
136

yIJLLO

\N
SS

WATS
XN
A hs

SWIMMERS

glance the age and sex of the creature that made
each mink and fox track on the snow, and how
long each track had been made; but though
they knew that otters were killed in their
neighbourhood nearly every season, and that
they occasionally destroyed or carried off their
traps, they had but the vaguest idea of the
animal itself or its habits, nor could they describe
or recognise its track in the snow, though it is
quite unlike that made by any other creature in
these parts, and once seen and recognised cannot
be mistaken for anything else. Thoreau in his
diary, under date of December 6, 1856, gives
probably the best description ever written of
otter tracks. He saw them on the ice of Fair-
haven Pond and Concord River. After reading
it, one seems to have learned all that there is to
learn concerning the winter habits of otters. In
Thoreau’s day, otters were evidently no more
aoundant or generally known than at present;
nor do their habits appear to have changed in
139

LITTLE~- BEASTS .OF FIELD AND WOOD

any way since then. They still follow in the
footsteps of their ancestors, though part of their
course may lie between cultivated fields, instead
of tangled swamps and forests where trees that
had died of sheer old age far outnumbered the

living ones. In winter they still coast down hill

on the snow crust by moonlight, as they did

before the country was settled, but keeping a
sharper lookout for steel-traps than formerly,
their wariness in this direction at the present
day being something wonderful, and probably
accounting for the fact of their not having been
entirely exterminated. A century or more ago
they were very abundant in all parts of the
country, but were so persistently trapped and
hunted that at last the race seemed on the direct
road to extinction. Hunters no longer found
their pursuit profitable, and took it for granted
that they were extinct in reality, giving them a
chance to breathe in comparative safety. At
the present day whenever one 1s killed it has

140

SWIMMERS

usually strayed by mere chance into some mink
or muskrat trap, concealed by freshet or rising
tide more successfully than its owner could ever
have hoped, or it has fallen to the lucky snapshot
of a duck or fox hunter who is hardly aware of
the value of his prize when he has secured it.

But the ordinary mink or muskrat trap stands
but a slight chance of holding so powerful an
animal as an otter; while, judging from a late
experience of mine, a shot-gun as ordinarily
loaded is not much better.

One week last winter we had a warm rain in
the night that carried away most of the snow,
and broke up the ice on the streams; and one
morning I found the track of an otter within a
quarter of a mile of the house, evidently made
during the last part of the night.

The animal had gone up-stream, and for the
first half mile, which was through a comparatively
treeless pasture, only landed two or three times;
but farther on, where the stream flowed between

141

LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD AND Ween

higher banks covered with a dense growth of
young pines, the tracks were much more numer-
ous and wandered farther from the water at times,
showing where the otter had been nosing about
rabbit holes and beneath decaying logs; and here
it was joined by another much more recently
made, which I followed until I felt sure from the
appearance of the trodden snow that the otter
could be only a very few minutes ahead of me.
So I stopped and waited motionless, hoping
to get sight of the animal. In perhaps twenty
minutes an otter came to the surface of the water
hardly thirty yards away, and came swimming
almost directly towards me with the whole out-
line of his head, back, and tail straight and level

with the water, reminding me of a piece of drift-

wood pushed along rapidly by the current. After
swimming for a few yards, he sank out of sight,
but almost immediately poked his head up again
through the soft ice still nearer, and for a little

while busied himself wallowing about in the

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shallow water among the alders and young pines
where the stream had overflowed its banks.

He seemed to progress as swiftly and easily
through the water-soaked snow as in the clear
water, and sometimes came up beneath soft ice
several inches thick, breaking up through it with
his whole length at once.

He soon disappeared beneath the ice, to come
in sight again out in the open current, swimming
down-stream on the further side of the top rails
of a fence almost submerged by the freshet, and
climbed upon the buttressed trunk of a willow
about forty yards from me. As soon as he was
fairly out of the water, I fired both barrels at
him, and he slid off into the water, but, contrary
to my expectations, failed to come to the top
again, at least at that place, though a few min-
utes after I saw an otter swim for a few yards
between two willows a hundred yards further
down-stream.

I could hardly believe at the time that I had

143

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

failed to kill him, for I had number four shot in
my right barrel, and number one in my left, and
a gun that shoots close and hard. But I have
since talked with an old hunter who claims to
have killed several, and he tells me that I might
as well have loaded with sand. According to his
accounts, buckshot is the only suitable size for
shooting otters with, and even then one must get
as close as possible. I certainly hope that what |
he says is true, and that the otter is still able to
attend to his fishing.

That was the only time that I am certain of
having seen a live otter at liberty in his native
haunts ; but several years ago I followed one’s
tracks until it terminated at a slide on the bank
of a tide-water stream, where a space several
yards wide, reaching from the top of the high
_bank to the water, was swept clear of snow by
their sliding.

The top of the bank was covered with trees,
beneath whose roots a kind of natural cavern

144

SWIMMERS

had been hollowed out by the water, perhaps a
foot high and twenty or thirty feet wide at the
entrance, and extending back indefinitely into the
gloom.

As I stood there in the margin of the stream
examining the tracks, I was startled by a low but
very distinct growling not wholly unlike that of
a cat with a mouse, though deeper. It issued
from the cave above my head, not ten feet away,
and continued for several minutes; but whether
the creature was growling at me or at one of its
own kind, or over its dinner, I was unable to
determine.

The following summer I was fishing with two
companions along the fresh water reaches of the
same stream, when something entered the water
not far from us, with a noise exactly like that
made by a good-sized dog plunging after a stick ;
but, though only a few rods away, the foliage was
so dense that none of us was able to catch so
much as a glimpse of the creature that made it,

10 145

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

and by the time we had reached the spot there
were only the disturbed water and trodden grass
to be seen.

The otter subsists almost entirely upon fish,
and has the reputation of being-a veritable epicure
in his preference for certain kinds, catching only
salmon or trout where these are to be obtained,
and when fish are sufficiently abundant, taking
only a few bites from the shoulder of each. But |
those about here are of necessity forced to con-
tent themselves with much plainer fare, though I
fancy they get their share of brook trout even
now, and probably enjoy them all the more on
account of their rarity ; and who knows but their
ancestors got just as tired of an everlasting diet
of salmon and trout as some of our own ances-
tors are said to have done? Even at the present
day the otters probably never suffer from hunger,
as there are always plenty of the more common-
place fish to be had, not to mention frogs of
half-a-dozen species. And there are indications

146

SWIMMERS

that point to a still humbler diet of insects; for

wherever there are otters, there are sure to be
- numerous places to be found where they have
been clawing up the moss, pine-needles, or turf,
as the case may be, often working over several
rods in one night. Such spots are often spoken
of as playing grounds, and perhaps that 1s what
they really are, as they certainly often look as
if made in sport, particularly when, as is often
the case, the pine-needles, etc., have been piled in
little heaps, with dry and broken sticks showing
the marks of teeth scattered about.. I have
known them to do this sort of thing at all
seasons, and even when there were several inches
of snow on the ground, but I think that they
are much more in the way of it in the spring
and fall than at any other time.

The only genuine otter slides that I am
familiar with are collected within the space of
a mile, though almost every brook has its steep
banks here and there down which otters slide

147

LITTLE BEASTS OF. FIELD AND Woun

from time to time when going back to the
water.

But the regular slides, although each may not
be used more than a dozen times each year, look
after they have been used as if several otters had
been sliding there for hours; and there can be
little doubt that they do it wholly for the fun
of the thing, for I have never found any sign of —
their having eaten anything at the top of the
slide, and those that are most frequently used
are not near good fishing-holes, but on shallow
reaches of the streams where fish are seldom to be
found at any season, owing to the clayey bottom
and rapid current. In most instances there is a
round-about path from the water to the top of
the slide, and sometimes the upper part of the
slide itself twists about among the tree-trunks
for several yards before the final pitch is reached
down the slippery bank to the water.

The incline for the last part of the way is
usually something like forty-five degrees, and

148

SWIMMERS

the speed attained must be something startling,
though only for a few yards, especially on an icy
snow crust.

The slides that I have been describing, of
which there are four or five, are all on tide-water
streams which remain open long after the fresh
waters are frozen over, which may account for
their popularity. Whenever an otter is travel-
ling across lots through the snow, and comes to
an incline of sufficient steepness, he takes advan-
tage of it and slides to the bottom, just as a fox
or mink will; but I have never known them to
amuse themselves by repeatedly sliding down
the same snow-bank unless there was open water
at its foot.

In cold weather they spend most of their time
beneath the ice, after the manner of muskrats,
and are said to be fond of forcing their way up
little brooks hardly large enough to admit them,
probably driving all the fish before them, or
snapping up those that try to get by.

149

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

It is generally denied that otters ever occupy
real burrows ; but in nearly every stream there are
burrows to be found with the openings under
water, like muskrat holes, only a great deal larger,
perhaps eight or ten inches in diameter, and
not inhabited by muskrats. I have always be-
lieved that they were muskrat holes that had
been enlarged by otters to be used as occasion
offered, when fishing under the ice perhaps, but I
have no positive evidence to that effect.

The young are said to be reared in natural
caves in the bank above high water, or in hollow
logs, or at the bottoms of hollow trees, for in the
matter of lodgings they seem usually to prefer
putting up with whatever presents itself to exert-
ing themselves in the way of making improve-
ments, —a trait that seems to be characteristic of

most carnivorous animals.

150

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Chapter V

Swimmers Concluded

Muskrat

EW people, probably, realise that if the
muskrat were suddenly to become extinct,

it would mean a clear loss of something like half
a million dollars annually to this country and
Canada. For that is the estimated value of the
year’s crop of raw skins, which has not varied
materially in amount since the country was first
settled, as the muskrat refuses to be driven off
by the most constant persecution, and though at
times considerably reduced in numbers in certain
districts, a single season suffices to bring them
to their former abundance. Wherever there is a
_ stream or pond with reed-grown shores, and yellow-
lily roots or clams to be had by diving, muskrats
are sure to be found; and their numbers usually
depend more on the food-supply than on free-

153

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

dom from trappers. For after a few months of
experience with traps, the survivors learn to
avoid them so successfully as to render their
further pursuit unprofitable, and the trapper must
move on to new hunting-grounds — though they
generally forget. their cautiousness during the
succeeding summer, and by autumn are as un-
suspecting as ever. |

In summer they live in burrows reaching well
up into the banks and only a few inches below the
turf. When the water is very low at midsummer,
they dig canals from the lowest openings to the
channel, or perhaps these canals are simply
burrows that have caved in, —at any rate, they
serve as paths down which the muskrats swim or
wade to their feeding-grounds. Most of the
burrows are dug in August or September, and at
that season I often come upon streams roiled by
their digging, and, following up the bank, some-
times for a dozen rods or more, I have discovered
them at work at it.

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SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

The beginning usually appears to be the most
difficult part of the job, as they begin at the bottom
of the stream, and, owing to the buoyancy of the
water, probably find considerable difficulty in
holding themselves down to their work; for they
keep rising to the surface, to all appearances com-
pletely exhausted, and float about on the water
puffing like toy steam-launches, sometimes rest-
ing their chins on any support that offers,— a
low-growing alder branch, or the root of a tree, or
else they climb ashore to dry their fur in the air.

As the work progresses, they come up less
frequently, until at last you might watch for
hours and only see the loose earth and muddy
water pushed out of the hole and swept away by
the current. ‘The hole is continued high up into
the bank, beyond the reach of ordinary freshets,
where it ends in a chamber filled with soft grass
and rushes. Several burrows often branch off
from this chamber, and as a general thing all their
openings are under water, those higher up in the

155

LITTLE BEASTS. OF FIELD AND yee

bank being mostly accidental; but in some in-
stances a door-way 1s dug out beneath the roots
of a tree, probably for convenience at times of
high water, though used more or less at all
seasons when the stream is free from ice.

Their food varies little during the season, their
main stand-by being aquatic plants and shell-fish;
and these are equally accessible, winter or summer.
The roots of the common yellow water-lily are
several inches 1n diameter, and yards in length, |
looking like great wrinkled green-and-white
reptiles sprawled along the bottom, which 1s
almost covered with them in places. Inside, they
are white and crisp, but have a watery, character-
less sort of flavour, which appears to suit the
muskrats well enough, however, as they constitute
a very considerable portion of their food.

A muskrat will frequently dig up and tow
ashore a piece larger and heavier than himself, and
settle down for a good square meal; and it 1s
astonishing to see what an insignificant remnant

156

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

is left when he has finished. I know of no other
creature of similar size capable of eating so much
in a given time, or of spending so much time in
eating.

It has always seemed to me that, in his own
quiet way, the muskrat enjoys existence as largely
as any animal in nature. It is true he lacks the
excitement of the chase, which forms so large a
part of the lives of the fox, weasel, and cat tribes;
but then he almost never suffers from hunger,
and any one who has ever watched him enjoying a
swim is bound to envy him ever after.

One would suppose that where he is 1n the way
of swimming for every meal he takes, and almost
everywhere he goes, he might get a little bored
at it and look upon itas work. But itis the com-
monest thing in the world to see them in hot
weather rolling over and over in deep water, and
floating lazily about, as if the opportunity only
offered once in a life-time.

All summer long they swim and wade and

157

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Woon

paddle about in the shrunken streams and ponds,
or doze, huddled into a ball, on the edge of the
bank, hidden by the rank growth of flags and
bulrushes among which they have well-trodden
paths leading from place to place. The young
are born and brought up in the burrows, but_only

spend a short time there; for they grow with

amazing rapidity, and learn to shift for themselves

in a remarkably short time.

Once when I was wading across a stream about
knee-deep, a little fellow, somewhat less than half
grown, came swimming along close to the bottom;
on coming to the place where my boots had
stirred up the mud, he seemed bewildered, and
rose to the surface to get his bearings, and, after a
look around, dived again, and in so doing exposed
his tail, which I immediately grasped, lifting him
half out of water. He did not appear to be
greatly alarmed at the circumstance, and, after
some futile attempts at climbing up his own tail
to bite my hand, seemed perfectly resigned to

158

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

await the course of events, resting quietly on the
water, which slipped away from his nose as the
current swirled past him.

When I released him, he Bcd as though he
had been expecting it all along, and, diving, con-
tinued his travels down-stream as 1f nothing had
happened. When the fall rains come, the musk-
rats are able to swim about their feeding-grounds,
where before they were obliged to walk; and
now they begin to have their regular feeding
places, to which they carry their roots, or what-
ever else they find to eat, —anything that they
can clamber upon answers, an old log or a
tussock, or the ruins of a last year’s cabin.

Sometimes they carry a few sticks and pieces
of sod to some chosen spot, and build up a
resting-place in shallow water. ‘They build their
cabins in October and November; and there
seem to be about as many methods of building
as cabins. Some that I have seen started ap-
peared to be simply solid heaps of sod without

159

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Ween

any cavity inside at first, but hollowed out later.
This, however, would seem a very impracticable
way of working when the difficulty of disposing
of the material removed 1s considered ; but per-
haps they simply dig down from the top and add
whatever is removed to the exterior, for the upper
chamber is often close to the surface, with only
a shallow covering of material, which allows a
passage for the air and sometimes for the inhabi-
tants themselves. [he chamber is usually less
than a foot in diameter, and lined with soft grass
and moss; a passage extends from this chamber
downwards and to one side, to another larger
one, more or less filled with water, and from
here down to still another, below the bed of the
stream itself. The last 1s formed metely by the
junction of several burrows, some of which extend
up into the bank, and others to the deepest part
of the channel.

This is the commonest type of cabin that I

have examined. Some of the smaller ones have

160

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SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

only the upper chamber, without any downward
passage whatever; others have it in the centre or
near the bottom, with a foot or more of material
above; while some that I have seen were large
enough to have four or five apartments. One
that I saw in a little pond in the woods last
November must have been at least four or five
feet high, and nearly twice as long. Many of
them are built in willow-trees, or on platforms
of sticks which the muskrats arrange among the
alders; and here they exhibit a good deal of the
constructive ability of the beaver, cutting their
wood on shore in a similar manner, and often
towing it long distances to their building sites,
where they wattle it firmly between the alder
stems for a foundation.

Cabins so placed are generally composed
largely of cat-tail stalks and green twigs, while
those on the ground are more often built of mud
and pieces of sod. I know of one large one,

supported among the alders directly over deep
163

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

water, that has been in existence at least eight
years, and though partly destroyed from time to
time by trappers and freshets, has been regularly
remodelled each fall, and is still in good condi-
tion ; while two others near by among the willows
have been so interlaced by the fibrous roots of
these trees as to be practically indestructible.
They have not changed in outward appearance
in the slightest degree for fifteen years or more ;
and I have not the shadow of a doubt that they
are fully twice as old as that, and I am unable to
see why they should not last indefinitely. They
are perfectly smooth and dome-shaped outside,
like the popularly accepted idea of a beaver
cabin; and though once or twice the muskrats
have attempted to raise a second story, or a
lean-to at one side, it has always been washed
away sooner or later, leaving the cabin as it was
before. One of the cabins appears to be always
occupied; but the other, being placed much
lower, is under water so much of the time that
164

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

it has to serve more as a resting-place than a
dwelling. |

Muskrats will sometimes fix up a hollow stump
by merely roofing over the top and having an
entrance among the roots beneath; and I know
of one placed on a large leaning willow-tree,
where I think the passage-way opens directly
into the hollow trunk, which is made to serve as
a stairway to the bottom of the stream.

The cabins are not much used except at times
of high water and in winter, though I doubt if
they are wholly abandoned at any season.

So long as the streams remain well frozen, the
muskrat is practically free from care and danger.
The temperature about him hardly varies a
degree, whatever the weather may be above the
ice. He knows nothing of snowstorms or sleet
or high wind, while the ice holds firm, though
there may be several feet of rushing, foaming
water over the ice in times of freshet. Down

where he is at work, it flows with the same gentle
165

LITTLE “BEASTS. OF FILLD Ane WOOD

motion as in summer, barely swaying the water-
weed and cresses as it slips between them. He
is capable of holding his breath for a surprisingly
long time, and when compelled to renew it, has
only to come up and breathe it out beneath the
ice, where it soon becomes oxygenated by the
water. here are always bubbles of varying size
just under the ice, but whether they contain
oxygen, or only hydrogen gas generated by the
decomposing vegetable matter at the bottom, I
am unable to say; if the former, they must add
materially to the muskrat’s air-supply, and, theo-
retically, contact with freezing water should
render them fit to breathe. But there is gen-
erally plenty of air to be had close up under
the edge of the bank, where the water has re-
ceded; and when the muskrat has captured a
clam, or succeeded in digging up the root he
wants, he swims with it to his cabin, or to his
hole in the bank, to devour it at his leisure.

Occasionally a foot or more of ice will form
166

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

when the water is very high, and when the
stream has finally withdrawn again to its channel
a space is left beneath the ice high enough at
times for a man to stand erect in; and here the
muskrats have room to wander about as they
please, until it settles of its own weight, and even
then the inequalities of the river-bed usually
leave them room enough. These open ways
beneath the ice are of much more frequent oc-
currence on the little brooks, less than a foot
across, that flow into the larger ones here and
there, and up these the muskrats occasionally
travel, sometimes even to the open springs at
their sources, but not nearly as often as might
be expected ; for there is always plenty of food
to be had along these brooks, and room enough
to move about in. But they form the regular
runways of the minks in winter, which would
naturally deter the muskrats to a certain extent ;
for at this season minks are almost their only

enemies, and to meet one alone in this narrow
167

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

_ way would be very embarrassing, to say the least.
The mink 1s really the smaller in most instariees:
but his long snake-like body and wiry muscles
give him a decided advantage, and his fondness
for muskrat flesh 1s notorious. This may also in
part account for the fact that in winter muskrats
rather avoid those shallow portions of the stream
that are prevented from freezing by warm springs
or a rapid current.

There is such a place near here, where, for
nearly a quarter of a mile, the stream only freezes
in the most severe weather, and as a consequence
has always been a favorite resort of the minks.
But though muskrats are often there at other
seasons, there is no trace of them to be found
there in winter. Still there must be an exception
to every rule, and on the sixth of January I have
found the tracks of muskrats in the snow at this
place. They had been going back and forth along
a little muddy brook near where it joins the main

stream. One track struck off by itself, and as it
168

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

was evidently but just made, I followed for
several hundred yards, and observed where the
animal had climbed the high bank into the woods
and dug down into the snow in several places,
apparently in search of green stuff, nearly a dozen
rods from the water. Then the track turned
about and led me back to the stream, appearing |
again on the opposite bank, and stretching right
across the narrow meadow to a little springy
bog-hole or quagmire, half-a-dozen rods long
and only a few feet wide, and almost free from
ice. Ihe muskrat was sitting in the edge of
the water here, and we evidently became aware
of each other’s presence at about the same time.
He at once waded out into the water and al-
lowed himself to rest on the dead leaves and
sediment at the bottom, with just his back and
the top of his head above the surface, and his
little black eyes fixed intently on me. The
motion of his breathing kept the surface of the
water trembling all about him; but he made no
169

LITTLE BEASTS OF -FIELD AND Ween

other motion of any kind for several minutes ;
then he began to turn his head slightly from
side to side, and at the end of ten minutes evi-
dently decided that I was some kind of inani-
mate natural object, and sat up in the water to
stare at me, then turned about and swam a
few feet and dived, but without entirely disap-
pearing beneath the surface, and coming up im-
mediately with a morsel of some kind, which he
proceeded to devour.

Diving again, he got hold of something wdGek
required his utmost exertion to dislodge ; but he
finally succeeded, and came up with his face plas-
tered all over with clinging wet leaves and mud,
which appeared almost to stifle him, and carrying a
big bulrush or flag-root of some kind, with white
roots and green inner leaves, firmly grasped in his
teeth. He swam with this to the partly sub-
merged root of a tree, where he sat bolt upright
and fell to gobbling away at his prize, as if almost
famished. After finishing, he leaned over and

170

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

felt all about in the water for any fragments he
might have dropped, and when he found anything
raised it to his mouth with one hand. Presently
he began to wash himself, after the manner of a
squirrel, combing his fur with his claws, and rub-
bing his face and ears with both paws at the same
time.

Any one who has ever handled a muskrat must
have observed how loosely they are put together,
as if put into a skin several times too large, and
hardly attached anywhere ; and this sort of struct-
ure certainly has its advantages, for the little
chap I was observing deliberately reached his
right hind-foot across his back and scratched him-
self behind his left shoulder. He also appeared
able to reach any part of his body with either of
his fore-paws, or with his mouth, and would
sometimes grasp a fold of skin and pull it
around into a more convenient position to work
upon. In a surprisingly short time, he looked

as dry and fluffy as if he had never been near the

171

LITFLE BEASTS “OF FIELD AND wooD

water. And then, just as he had completed his
toilet, he lost his balance and slipped backward
into the muddy water, and had it all to do over
again; though it is hard to imagine why he was so
particular, for, as soon as he had finished, he went
back to his diving and was soon just as untidy as
ever.

At first he would pause every little while to
stare at me, as if still mistrusting something. |
But although I had advanced a few steps every ©
time he dived, until I was on the very edge
of the ice, and at last crouched so mear that
could have touched him with my hand, he failed
to take alarm, and finally ceased to pay any
attention whatever to my presence. After he had
exhausted the supply of roots where he was at
work, he swam a few yards and began in another
place, where they were more abundant; and when
these were gone, he commenced crowding in
under the ice at the edge of the water, and back-
ing out again, dragging the roots after him.

172

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

He appeared a good deal put out whenever the
leaves stuck to his face, and would sit upright and
hurl them in all directions with his paws, or slap
them off with a side-stroke. His appetite seemed
perfectly inexhaustible, and, finally, as my muscles
began to rebel at being obliged to maintain the
same cramped position for so long without relief,
I purposely moved my head slightly, to see what
effect it might have on him. He dived instantly
with a splash, and sank to the bottom, where the
water was about six inches deep, and refused to
come to the surface, though I tried to raise him
with a stick. There he lay, and as often as I
tried to lift him, simply slipped off the stick to
one side or the other, in the most aggravating
manner, but apparently with no intentional effort
on his part. So, fearing that he might persist too
long for his own good, I left him in order that he
might have a chance to come up into the air and
resume his breathing. | |

The muskrats that dwell in the tide-water

173

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

meadows lead a somewhat different life from
those I have been describing, at least in the sum-
mer. Their holes are back in the high bank
at the edge of the woods, and are especially
numerous where the river creeps in close to the
upland; but where it keeps its distance, they live
at the heads of the ditches that drain the meadows,
and at ebb-tide follow these down to the main ~
stream, where they hunt for shell-fish until the
returning tide drives them back. They also dig
temporary holes in the banks at considerable
distances from the upland, probably for use at
periods of low-running tides. They appear to
subsist almost entirely on shell-fish, at least I
have never caught them feeding on any of the
salt-water plants, and there is not much indication
about their burrows of their browsing upon the
fresh water and upland vegetation. Where they
pass the winter, I am unable to determine. In
the section with which I am most familiar, and
which extends for a mile or more below fresh

174

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

water, they nearly always disappear 1n November
or earlier, and seldom put in an appearance again
before April. And certainly the salt marshes,
with their flood-tides and drifting ice-cakes, would
make anything but desirable winter resorts for
such: ease-loving creatures as muskrats. On the
whole, the most probable explanation seems to be
that they spend the winter in the fresh waters,
though if that were the case the number of musk-
rats in the fresh-water streams and ponds would
be materially increased,—in fact more than
doubled if all those from the marshes stopped as
soon as they found suitable conditions for spend-
ing the winter. But it has always seemed to me
that they were really least abundant in the fresh
waters at just the time when they are absent from
the salt meadows. In this latitude the ice above
the muskrats’ haunts commonly remains unbroken
for three or four months at least.
On the rivers the ice often breaks up during
heavy rains late in the winter, and is swept sea-
175

LITTLE. ‘BEASTS _OF> FIELD AND 120Ge

ward by the freshet, so that the muskrats see their
protecting roof vanish in a single night, and are
compelled to change their habits abruptly to suit
the changed conditions. But on the smaller
streams and ponds the change is much more
gradual. The ice, by virtue of its smaller
surface, is able to hold its own against the
floods that sweep over it, permitting the musk=
rats to continue their uneventful life below, until
in March the sun begins to beat down more
directly and for longer hours each day, and
in protected places under the edge of the
evergreens, and especially where the compara-
tively warm water of spring brooks flows in,
the ice slowly withdraws, revealing a narrow strip
of clear brown water above unfrozen turf or sand,
with water-cress and caddis-worms that somehow
serve to make drifting snow and all its associa-
tions fabulous and incredible.

Rocks and tree-trunks that rise to the surface

collect the heat and melt the ice about them, and
176

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

to such places the muskrats resort with their
roots and clams, to enjoy them in the open air.
Sometimes when the snow is unusually deep in
the early spring, and it is difficult even to guess
at the whereabouts of well-known streams, the
warmth of the earth, prevented from radiating
by the thick blanket of snow, raises the tempera-
ture of the water so that the ice is melted from
beneath. And at such times I have known
whole reaches of a stream a rod or more in width
to open unexpectedly, showing black smooth water
between white banks, accomplishing in a few hours
what I had supposed would require weeks at
least. Asa general thing, the muskrats content
‘themselves with merely climbing to the edge, or
occasionally striking off across the snow to the
nearest open water or spring hole. But some-
times when there is an inch or less of snow on
the ice, they seem to be simultaneously possessed
with a desire to run about on its surface; and in
a single night the snow will be covered with
12 . 177

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

their tracks, meandering about in a purposeless
manner, as if they were only out for the air.

The various openings broaden and extend
their boundaries, and run together until the ice
is reduced to a rapidly diminishing border along
each bank. So long asthe streams are kept full by
the melting snow and the spring rains, the musk-
rats are somewhat restricted in their choice of
landing-places, and every projecting fence-rail
and stump, or leaning willow-tree, is taken advan-
tage of. As the water recedes, they resort to the
tussocks, as fast as these are uncovered ; and when
the stream 1s finally confined again to its original
channel, they make their feeding-places beneath
the roots of trees close to the water, or on pieces
of driftwood still partly afloat, or in hollows in
the bank, having wholly resumed their summer
habits. They often travel for long distances
under water, sticking their noses out from time
to time, with a sneeze, for a new supply of air,

which is obtained in considerably less than a
178

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

second, so that at such times they are apt to be
mistaken for fish rising for insects. A muskrat
presents rather a curious appearance when swim-
ming beneath the surface, the long over-hair
being plastered thickly down over silky fur that
is still dry and filled with air, which bulges out
between the long hairs in the form of glistening
bubbles.

I recall some years when the ice melted in
long spells of fair weather that would have passed
for Indian summer a few months earlier, and when
there was not enough rain or melting snow to
fill the brooks, which constantly receded between
tinkling shelves of ice that dripped continually
like eaves in rainy weather; and at such times,
of course, the muskrats were compelled to adopt
their summer ways almost before the ice vanished
from their haunts.

As is said to be the case with beavers, there
are here and there muskrats that appear to take
a dislike to the social habits of their race, and

179

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

wander away by themselves, usually following
the course of some little brook near the source
of which they take up their lonely abode. One
of these hermits made his burrow beneath a
little bridge in our pasture one spring, and lived
there for several months. I frequently saw him
swimming up or down the brook, which, except
immediately beneath the bridge, was only just
big enough for his passage, so that 1n order to
turn round he was under the necessity of climbing
out on the bank. When alarmed, he generally
sank at once to the bottom, completely damming
the stream, which rose and poured over him in
a miniature cascade. In swimming down-stream
he adjusted his speed to that of the current, and
so was able to pass along with comparatively little
disturbance ; but going in the opposite direction,
he made a spectacle of himself sure to attract the
attention of any one who might be near by.

The excessive rainfall of the summer of 1898
evidently deluded certain of the more inexperi-

180

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

enced muskrats into establishing themselves
about merely temporary ponds which are ordi-
narily only damp hollows, and which must have
frozen almost to the bottom with the first severe
cold weather. Near the middle of one of these |
found a newly-made cabin which appeared to be
still inhabited when the shallow water surround-
ing it became frozen over in November. It was
in a little tussocky depression without any per-
manent water-supply, and half a mile or more
from any regular haunt of the muskrats, though -
forty or fifty rods away there was an isolated frog-
pond, surrounded by cat-tails and rushes, where
muskrats are occasionally to be found.

The males evidently do a good deal of fighting
among themselves in the early spring, each ap-
parently endeavoring to lacerate the tail of his
opponent as severely as possible, this member
being the one most frequently injured, in most
cases showing at least one ugly cut, and oftener —

three or four, of a pattern only to be made by
181

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

the chisel-like teeth of a muskrat. They are
also occasionally bitten on the back or shoulders,
and less frequently about the head, evidently not
being at all particular about having all their
wounds in front.

I have never had the opportunity of witnessing
one of these combats, all the meetings that I have
seen between them having -been of a friendly ©
nature. Last spring, for example, I was sitting on |
the side of a hill above a stream that wound around
its base, when I saw two muskrats, a dozen rods
apart, swimming towards each other, but each
evidently wholly unaware of the other’s presence
on account of the windings of the stream. On.
meeting, they appeared to touch noses, and then
one immediately turned about in the water and
swam back down-stream, while the other landed
on a tussock of grass with something in its teeth
which it proceeded to devour, and which I felt
certain it had received from the other.

In swimming, the muskrat depends almost
182

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

entirely on its hind-feet and muscular tail for
propellers. The tail, which 1s almost as long as
the body and head together, is flattened for the
greater part of its length, measures an inch or
more in width at the widest part, and is nearly
naked. The hind-feet, although not truly webbed,
are unusually large and peculiarly adapted for
swimming, the toes being so arranged that when
the foot is brought forward, they fall back one
behind another so as to present but little resist-
ance to the water; but in kicking back the whole
foot spreads out, and the spaces between the
_ toes are closed up by close fringes of stiff hair
which grow on the sides of each toe and spread
out with the back stroke so as to form a most

serviceable paddle. The forefeet are small and
| totally devoid of any swimming apparatus, and I
think are usually held tucked up under the throat
while swimming. I am not certain just how far
the tail is made to serve as propeller, its true
office evidently being that of rudder; but it may

183 |

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

often be seen wriggling vigorously from side to
side, like that of a tadpole, as the animal swims _
past, and undoubtedly serves to increase the |
speed.

In swimming on the surface, muskrats often
hold the head and shoulders well out of water,
and the rest of the body deeply submerged,
except for the last half of the tail, which is held
up behind several inches out of water and curved
over in the form of a hook; in turning, it is
brought around strongly to one side like a
rudder. ‘They are perfectly capable of entering
the water silently and quickly at the same time, _
and frequently do, though quite as often they go
in with a sudden plunge and needless amount of
noise which I am inclined to think 1s intended
to warn the others. |

Although they are unquestionably fond of
meat, [ cannot recall having seen one attempt
to catch any living animal larger than a clam,
except on one occasion, and that attempt proved

184

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

unsuccessful. It was on a summer afternoon after
a shower. I was standing on the bank of a stream
when a water-rail flew up from the reeds on the
opposite bank, as if frightened suddenly, and fly-
ing with trailing legs across the water, dropped
into the grass on my side of the stream. Before
it was fairly alighted, a muskrat plunged into the
water near the place the rail had started from,
and swimming across, pushed in among the grass
where it had taken refuge, driving it again from
its retreat; whereupon it flew back to its original
position. But the muskrat still followed, and
drove it back and forth several times before giv-
ing up the pursuit and swimming off up-stream.

~ On the other hand, I have seen muskrats let
slip several opportunities for capturing birds of
one kind or another. One frosty morning in
April I was walking along the bank of Old River,
—a quiet, sedgy stream, half swamp and half
mill-pond, winding about and doubling back upon
itself in the shadow of the evergreens, with sev-

185

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

eral smaller and equally crooked swampy brooks
joining it here and there, each with its own par-
ticular fog-bank at sunrise, — when through an
opening in the pines [ caught sight of a black
duck, motionless on the water, staring, with out-
stretched neck, at a large muskrat swimming past
within a yard of him. The ripple caused by the
muskrat surrounded the duck and spread beyond
him; but the bird’s eyes were fixed on the little —
furry head as it glided along; and when at last
the muskrat touched the bottom and waded
ashore to crouch on the wet bank and nibble at
something it held between its paws, the duck, ap-
parently convinced for the first time that it was
only a musquash and nota mink at all, evinced
considerable relief and straightway fell to feeding.
At the next bend a muskrat was busily
occupied with his breakfast. He first came
ashore, towing a sweet flag which he had cut off
close to the root. It was very amusing to see
him eat it; he began at the bottom, and, sitting
186

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

up and gripping it firmly with his fore-paws,
crowded it into his mouth and swallowed it faster
than would seem possible for an animal of his
SIZe.

A song sparrow came hopping along the bank
towards him, and I wondered if it would try to
catch it; but the sparrow evidently did not re-
gard him as a dangerous enemy, for it hopped
fearlessly to within a foot of him, whereupon
the musquash, having finished the tenderest
portion of his flag, entered the water and paddled
over to an old stump that stood a few yards
from the bank, where he began nibbling at the
willow shoots and young hardhack that grew
there, but not finding it quite to his taste, came:
back and, climbing up the steep bank to the foot
of a cluster of young pines, fell to browsing on
the leaves of wild rose-bushes and sweet-briers.
He stood upon his hind-feet, bracing himself with
his tail, and with his hand-like fore-paws passed
the branch rapidly before his mouth, biting off

187

‘LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND eoeus

the clusters of leafy buds as they came along.
The birds were now giving warning upon all
sides of a hawk in sight, and a large one at that;
but the muskrat, although now at a consider-
able distance from the water, took no notice of
the general outcry, and even when a crow sailed
over with high-pitched, angry cawing, refused to
look up from his meal, until at last, having ap-
parently satisfied himself, he climbed down to
the water and sculled away until hidden by a
bend of the river.

Further down, where the stream becomes
narrow and deep, and the banks rise abruptly
from the water without any fringe of rushes and |
-sedge, | saw another swimming along near the
opposite bank. On coming to a tussock, he
clambered to the top of it, and after snuffing
about for a few seconds, carefully lowered him-
self into the water again without a splash, to
repeat the performance at the next tussock he

reached ; then, cutting a half-circle out into mid-
188

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

stream, he commenced diving in deep water,
remaining several minutes beneath the surface
each time, and usually coming up about a rod
from where he went down. He dived with a
peculiarly easy rolling motion, and his fur, which
was in splendid condition, looked dry and glossy
in the sunlight whenever it was out of water for
an instant. He looked at me deliberately sev-
eral times, but, in spite of the fact that I was
_ walking about openly within fifteen yards of him,
_ showed no alarm at my presence. Whatever he
was diving for, he evidently was not very suc-
cessful, and leaving him still at it I strolled on
between the trunks of the pines.

There is a bridge of rough stones across the
mouth of Great Swamp Run, but the opening
has become partly filled by falling stones and
earth, and more water flows over it than beneath
it. As I was crossing, |] saw a muskrat crouch-
ing in the grass on the shore of a little island

eight or ten rods away. Presently he stretched
189

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

himself and, sliding into the water, came swim-
ming in my direction, evidently with the inten-
tion of crossing over to the further bank of Old
River. . Nearer fad nearer he came until within
ten yards, when he turned about and started off,
looking over his shoulder at me as he went;
but as I remained perfectly motionless he turned
again and came swimming back and forth before
me, sometimes hardly a dozen feet away. His
fur was in poor condition; there was a spot in
the middle of his back where it was almost worn
off, and here was a miniature pool of water, a
tablespoonful perhaps, held in place by the longer
fur and loose skin of .his sides, rolling about like
quicksilver with his every movement, but never
spilling and always full whenever he came up
froma dive. He soon began swimming in much
smaller circles, as if trying to locate some particu-
lar spot, and at last stopped and dived, perhaps
hoping to pass beneath the bridge and so out into

the river; but presently he came up again on the

190

SWIMMERS CONCLUDED

same side as before. He did this several times,
but without success, though one would hardly sup-
pose that he would have much difficulty in finding
the opening if there really was any. Before diving
he always stopped short and floated for an in-
stant, perhaps to get his lungs well filled with
air, and then doubling his head beneath him
- went down witha plunge. After the third dive
he swam almost to my feet and, after looking at
me steadily for a few seconds, turned abruptly
and swam back to his island, first to a muskrat
house that stood there partly hidden in a clump
of alders, and then back to the spot where I first
saw him. Here he landed and, facing about,
stood looking in my direction as if waiting for my
departure: so I took the hint and crossed over.
When their homes are flooded by heavy rains,
the muskrats may sometimes be seen abroad in
great numbers, and at such times they show con-
siderable cleverness in concealing themselves even
in the most unpromising situations.” One of their
191

LITTLE: BEASTS: OF _ Fie LD ae WOOD

favourite tricks on scenting danger is to sink into
the water and come up beneath a drifting mass
of rubbish, sometimes the merest handful being
made to serve. I am convinced that sometimes,
when no other concealment offers, one will take
a wisp of long grass in its teeth and, stemming
the current with a fish-like movement of its tail,
allow the loose ends of the grass to drag back
over it for protection. They usually do this
sort of thing close to the bank where the current |
is slowest; on being disturbed they dive with a
slight splash and reappear a few feet away in the
same position, with only the slightest ripple to
betray them. At other times, when the wind is
blowing, you may see one floating on his stomach
with his tail held stifly up, perhaps an inch above
the surface of the water, evidently to serve the
purpose of a sail; they manage somehow to hold >
themselves at right angles to the direction of the
wind, and make considerable headway without
any visible exertion.

192

S
liv

=.
WS LK

STARTLED

Chapter VI
Squirrels

Red Sguirrel

HE red squirrel is eminently practical, for
all his crazy antics and nonsense, which
to the casual observer might appear to constitute
his eritire character. A more careful study of
his ways will, | believe, convince any one that,
unlike the majority of wild creatures, he leaves ©
nothing to chance, though quick to seize on any
opportunity that offers to better his condition.
The conspicuous white circles about his eyes
always give him a rather anxious, startled ex-
pression, and when suddenly alarmed he has the
most affected way of sitting bolt upright and
clutching tragically at his breast with one bony
little hand, for all the world like some tragedy
queen on the stage. I think he almost invariably
_ presses his left hand to his left side, with claws
195.

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

spread well apart and the white fur puffing out
between them. This movement is so habitual
with the red squirrel that any one who cares to
may see the performance by observing those he
may happen to see in the woods or by the road-
side. If they would only occasionally clap both
hands to their breasts, it would make a much
more attractive picture; but this | have never
seen them do.

Like the blue jay, the red squirrel is always
eager for excitement of any sort, but he has the
advantage of not being compelled to wait for
circumstances to furnish him with an excuse for
getting up a racket. As a general thing, when
the blue jays begin shrieking and scolding there
is pretty sure to be something at the bottom of
it, though it may not be of any great importance ;
and for that matter I have no positive evidence
that the red squirrel ever creates a disturbance
without having some object or other to shower his

anger upon. But he has a way of choosing such
196

SOUIRRELS

utterly harmless and inoffensive victims, and of
keeping so safely out of sight without so much as
a chirrup to betray him when any actual danger
threatens, that it is hard to believe that he is ever
more than half in earnest. I have never known
him to take part in the general outcry against a
hawk or owl, although he must encounter the
latter frequently as he rambles about among the
evergreens, their favourite roosting-places, and
would certainly have every excuse for resentment
against them; but in such cases he probably con- ©
siders his own safety as of the first importance,
and makes a point of retiring as expeditiously as
possible. But let him catch a glimpse of an un-
offending partridge quietly gathering berries or
scratching among the pine-needles, and he im-
mediately pretends to fall into an utterly uncon-
trollable rage. He slowly approaches the bird
with short, scratchy starts, down the tree-trunk,
keeping on the opposite side as much as possible,
and peering out from behind the rough bark and
197

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND 3aee

protecting branches, as if fully aware of his
danger and determined on not exposing himself
more than necessary, and ever and anon retreating,
panic-stricken, back into the shadow, to renew
the attack from an opposite: direction, barking
huskily. Should you approach and flush the
bird in his direction, he appears to be thrown
into a perfect paroxysm of terror by the whir
and rattle of its wings, and vanishes with hysteri-
cal chatterings, followed by low murmuring prowas
from his hiding-place.

Itis wholly out of the question to suppose for
a moment that he can have any cause for resent-
ment against the grouse family ; and yet, so unt-
versal is this habit of scolding and threatening
them on every occasion that I find I have gradu-
ally fallen into the way, when shooting grouse,
of allowing the squirrels to point out my game
for me to a certain extent, after the manner of
trained pointers, finding that three times out of

four I can tell from the way they chatter whether
198

SQUIRRELS

or not it is a grouse that excites them at the
time. On one occasion, one of them even helped
me to secure a wounded bird as cleverly as a
retriever could have done, although probably
from a different motive. I had madeasnap shot
through the hemlocks, and heard the grouse
come to the ground fluttering, but on reaching
the spot I found only a few scattered feathers and
just the faintest possible track on the dry pine-
needles, which I lost completely after following
fora few rods. As I stood there looking for
some clue to guide me, a red squirrel began chat-
tering excitedly a few rods away, hurrying along
from tree to tree, and finally coming to a halt, still
scolding. Thinking it just possible that he had
his eye on my game, I approached, and found
him waltzing madly about among the lower
branches of a pine and glaring fiercely down
into the shadows of a tangled mass of fallen
tree-trunks and branches. I moved cautiously
along beside the windfall, and presently noticed
199

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

a place where the spider’s web had been parted
beside the prostrate bole of a large maple, and
reaching in beneath it, drew forth the unfortu--
nate partridge, merely wing tipped, but com-
pletely disabled for flying. |

The red squirrel has been generally accused of
being an inveterate robber of birds’ nests, and
I am afraid there 1s a good deal of ground for
the accusation; still, I have never observed him
in the act of plundering a nest, nor do the small
birds generally exhibit any great amount of alarm
or anxiety at his presence in the proximity of
their homes. In the spring, however, I have
seen one persistently chasing pine finches and
red polls about the top of a gray birch and put-
ting all his agility into play in his endeavours to
catch them, creeping towards them cautiously
and cat-like and springing out suddenly when he
fancied himself near enough; but the birds always
slipped away just in time to save themselves, and
although the squirrel persisted in his attempts as

200

SQUIRRELS

long as there were any birds in the tree, I could
not help feeling all the time that he really had no
idea of succeeding and kept it up only for the
fun of the thing, as a kitten hunts dead leaves in
the wind. But there is no doubt that these
squirrels are extremely fond of raw meat of any
kind, with a decided preference for the flesh of
birds ; and to an animal possessing such tastes, no
more tempting repast could be imagined than a
nest full of tender fledgelings. Every nest in
the woods, high or low, is easily within his reach, .
and, this being the case, the wonder is that there
are enough birds to go round each season. For
in the evergreen woods at least there seem to be
almost as many squirrels as birds’ nests, and
every orchard and hard-wood grove is inhabited
by them to a certain extent. I once noticed one
fast asleep curled up comfortably in a robin’s
nest, which appeared to fit him as exactly as if
made to order and furnished the nicest kind of a

cradle. At first I supposed that he must have

201

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

robbed the nest of its contents and was sleeping
off the effects of overeating, but on routing him
out and examining the nest I found it to be
an abandoned one of the preceding year, and the
squirrel innocent, at least of that particular crime.

Occasionally you will see one clinging to the
bark of some dead pine or hemlock, and listening,
woodpecker-like, to the sounds made by the
insects at work beneath the surface... When he
has succeeded in locating his prey, he tears off
the loose bark with his teeth in great ragged
pieces, and presently pounces upon and drags
forth a flattened white grub an inch or more in
length, which he devours with great apparent
relish. He appears to subsist, however, mainly
on a vegetable diet, not only fruit, nuts, and
berries, but seeds of maples and other trees; and
he probably knows of other seeds growing about
the woods and swamps, and their various times
of ripening. He 1s a veritable epicure as regards

mushrooms, and appears to have some infallible

202

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AURA

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GATHERING MAPLE SEEDS

SQUIRRELS

rule for distinguishing the edible from the poison-
ous varieties; for he recklessly lunches on those
doubtful kinds usually avoided by the amateur,
the white amanita and some of the pink and
scarlet russulas, for example; and I have never
known him to suffer from such indulgence. But
the principal harvest consists of the seeds of the
different evergreens; and .although these vary
greatly in abundance from year to year, there is
generally a sufficient supply of one kind or
another. ‘The white pine is usually rather spar-
ing in its yield; but once in every ten or fifteen
years, perhaps oftener, nearly every tree in the
forest bears enormously, even the younger ones
showing scattered clusters here and there, while
those that have stood for generations present a
roughened, shaggy aspect from the thickly
crowded cones at their summits. At such times
the red squirrels seem determined to gather every
cone before it opens and scatters its seeds to the

winds.

- 205

LITTLE BEASTS .OF FIELD AND WOO@nrp

They begin work late in July, while the cones
are still green and solid with the milky seeds
embedded near the centre and hard to distin-
guish when the cone is cut open. In the hot
July sunshine they hurry about their work, cut-
ting off the cones and tossing them over their
shoulders well out beyond the surrounding
branches to the ground. Whenever the cone or
the twig that supports it 1s cut or scarred, a drop ©
of glistening, transparent sap oozes forth, turning
on exposure to the air to the most tenacious kind
of pitch; and it is truly wonderful that the
squirrels can manage to keep themselves so clean
while engaged in their harvesting. But the
majority of them show hardly a trace of pitch any-
where about their persons, though now and then
you will run across one with little wisps of fur
stuck together, especially about his face and neck
and in the longer hairs of his tail, evidently having
been particularly unfortunate or careless in his
work. Every little while they descend to the

206

SOUIRRELS

ground to bury the cones they have cut off, two
or three in a place, covered with pine-needles to
the depth of several inches. Probably they have
learned by experience just how early it is safe to
commence gathering them in order that the seeds
may ripen properly; but it is hard to imagine
how those that are buried early can possibly
escape moulding, especially if it should chance
to be a wet season. Perhaps, as in the case of
cheese, the flavour 1s really improved by moulding.
At all events, it would seem that the squirrels
consider a certain amount of moisture necessary
to make the seed palatable, for they never appear
to store them in hollow trees as they do nuts and
apples, though one would suppose they might
save themselves a great deal of extra labour by
packing them away on end in some such dry and
well ventilated cavity, where the cones would
open of their own accord without putting the
squirrels to the necessity of gnawing off each

scale separately. All through the late summer

207

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Woop
and fall they keep steadily at work, as long
as there are cones to be had by climbing, even
after a majority of them have parted with their
seeds.

In the winter, even when the snow is several
feet deep, the squirrels never appear to have any
difficulty about locating their stores, sinking per-
pendicular shafts down through the drifts in
order toreachthem. Often, instead of burrowing
down repeatedly to each little pile of cones, they
dig radiating tunnels along the surface of the
ground, from the first one opened to the others
near it, dragging the cones laboriously along their
winding galleries to the surface and away over
the snow to some favourite stump before attempt-
ing to open them. To get at the seeds they
hold the cone upright in their paws and, begin-
ning at the stem end, bite off the scales at the
junction with the core, laying bare two seeds for
each scale removed. Long practice has made

them experts in the art, and it 1s surprising to

~

208

LUNCHEON

SQUIRRELS

see how rapidly they manage it. The fragments
of cones cast aside collect about the stump until
it is fairly covered up and buried from sight; and
these mounds of little reddish brown chips are to
be seen scattered about the woods at frequent
intervals, indicating by their presence the com-
parative abundance of squirrels.

They eat also the seeds of the pitch pine and
spruce; but I am inclined to think that they pre-
fer those of the white pine when these are to be
obtained. The little cones of the hemlock retain
their seeds all winter; so, after the harvesting of
the pine cones is over for the season, the squirrels
turn their attention to these. On still winter days
you may see them springing about among the
elastic branches, clinging to the very tips of the
finely divided sprays at a perilous height in their
endeavours to reach the cones that are hung on
such exasperatingly slender twigs, hardly large
enough even for a squirrel’s foot to grasp; and

not infrequently a misstep will send one of them

211

LITTLE BEASTS ‘GE EIFED Ane WOOD

headlong down towards the earth, usually to save
himself by catching hold of one branch or another
on the way down. If there should chance to be
no branches beneath him, he spreads himself out,
like a flying squirrel, as he falls, to a remarkable
degree of flatness and strikes so lightly as to
escape all injury, even on hard snow crust or ice,
and scampers away up the tree again without
losing so much as a moment of the time he evi- :
dently considers so precious. They usually open
the hemlock cones as fast as they gather them,
eating the diminutive seeds, hardly larger than a
pin’s head, at once allowing the scales to fall as
they will: and as you stand beneath looking up,
these come floating and twinkling down between
the branches like snowflakes on a clear day.

The red squirrel’s winter home varies accord-
ing to circumstances. Sometimes it 1s a compli-
cated burrow beneath a stump, with several apart-
ments and winding galleries; sometimes a hollow
branch or woodpecker’s hole; while in the ever-

212

SQUIRRELS

green woods he constructs a nest nearly as in-
genious as the more celebrated one of the beaver.
When convenient, he chooses the nest of some
large bird for a foundation, and in this builds a
structure of moss, bark, pine-needles, and dead
leaves, with walls several inches in thickness, and
a soft nest of dry grass and feathers inside. The
bark used is of two sorts, the rough outer bark
of different trees, broken into small pieces, and
what appears to be the inner bark of the red
cedar, torn into narrow strips or ribbons to bind
the whole together. It is put together with
remarkable solidity, and usually freezes hard
early in the winter, furnishing a thorough defence
against the cold or any other enemy from with-
out. ‘he narrow opening at one side is provided
with a hanging curtain of moss or some similar
substance, easily pushed aside by the inmates,
but immediately falling back into place and
effectually concealing the entrance. |
If unable to find a bird’s nest situated to their
ats

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND ween

taste, the squirrels arrange a loose platform or
framework of twigs in a convenient crotch, and
build their nest on that. There is also a con-
siderable range in the quality of workmanship dis-
played, in some instances the material being
apparently thrown together in the most hap-haz-
ard manner imaginable and even when newly built
with an effect of general dilapidation, the work |

perhaps of young and inexperienced builders.
The young squirrels are occasionally born and
reared in these nests, although a hollow tree 1s
usually chosen for a nursery, often merely a low
stump, two or three feet high, with the hollow
open at the top to all the rains of the season. The
interior is filled with a lot of fine dead grass and
soft lichens for a bed, which at first thought
might be expected to become completely satu-
rated in every shower or rainstorm. Butas I now
recall the different nests that I have found so sit-
uated, I have a strong impression that all of them
were sheltered by the overhanging branches of -
214

SQUIRRELS

dense hemlock or spruce trees, capable of turning
aside the water as effectually as a thatched roof.
The young squirrels are most absurd looking
little beasts at first, like miniature pug dogs, blind
and naked, and with enormous heads. Ina few
days their fur begins to show like the down on a
peach, and as a fringe of short hair along each side
of the tail, which at length assumes something of
the flattened aspect of that worn by their elders,
but without displaying much of the fluffy,
shadowy quality of the ideal squirrel tail until
late in the following autumn. The fur, from the
very first, is so close and dense as to give them the
typical red colour of their species, although still so
short as to be barely perceptible to the touch, giv-
ing them a brilliant, newly painted appearance, like
‘toy squirrels covered with some bright coloured
satiny cloth to catch the eyes of children. Al-
though they do not remain long in the nest, they
are seldom seen abroad until fully grown, or very
nearly so, at least, which is rather remarkable when
215

LITTLE BEASTS: OF FIELD AND WOOD

you come to consider the number that are brought
up each summer in every pine grove or thicket
where these squirrels are abundant. Occasionally
you may see a family of them playing timidly
about among the branches, but without display-
ing any of the self-confident recklessness of their
elders, quick to take alarm at the slightest hint of
danger and skurry back into concealment, appar-
ently possessing less courage than either the |
chipmunks or gray squirrels of a similar age.

In March the red squirrels tap the maple-trees
for their sap, by gnawing through the bark on
the upper sides of horizontal branches. The
little cavities so made quickly fill to overflowing,
and, stretched at ease, the squirrels regale them-
selves to their satisfaction. They also drink the
sap that flows from such branches as have been
broken or cracked by ice or snow during the pre-
ceding winter. But their lives are far too busy
to allow them to spend their entire time in this

manner, and during their absence the sap 1s apt

216

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to form into icicles, which, when the temperature
of the wind and other conditions are favourable,
may be constantly evaporating and gathering new
material at the same time, so that the sugar con-
tained in the sap finally collects in rich, honey-
coloured drops of syrup at the extremity of the
icicle, possessing an even more refined and deli-
cious flavour than that obtained by the more
violent process of boiling. The squirrels appear
perfectly capable of appreciating this fact, and are
pretty certain to be on hand to gather it before it
drops, although often obliged to exert themselves
to their utmost in order to reach it. They have
also learned to take advantage of the downward
flow of sap in the autumn; but at that season most
of them are so busy with their harvesting that they
can hardly spare much time to it; at all events,
they do not collect it then as in the spring.

In April they turn their attention to the open-
ing blossoms of the elms, and you may see them
hanging to the extremity of the slender twigs,

219

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD
nibbling ‘away eagerly at what must prove at best
very unsubstantial food. Their position among
the slender and still leafless branches is one that
renders them conspicuous for a considerable dis-
tance; yet few persons seeing them so occupied
would recognise them for what they really are,
for from that commanding outlook they are
quickly aware of the approach of any one, and,
instead of attempting to retreat to the larger
branches of the tree for safety, remain motionless
wherever they may happen to be. I have fre-
quently seen several of them scattered about in
the same tree top, without mistrusting at first that
these inanimate looking objects were really alive;
for they have a way of assuming such unnatural and
grotesque positions at these times that I really
believe they intentionally pose as old birds’ nests or
the remnant of some last season’s caterpillar tent.
After a little while, if they fancy they are not
especially observed, they will usually return to

their repast, swinging themselves from place to

220

SQUIRRELS

place, at first in a cautious, stealthy manner, with
an eye for possible danger.

The red squirrel’s diet seems to include pretty
nearly everything that is ever eaten by any of
our native animals. J have known them to find
their way into the pantry of a farmhouse, and
sample everything available, appearing to be par-
ticularly well pleased with the custards. In the
winter, they are sure to be among the first arrivals
when the fox or goshawk makes a successful
hunt, ready to dispute with the crow and the
blue jay for whatever is left after the feast; and
in summer they often add grasshoppers and other
insects to their menu. But in spite of it all, and
the fact that they never appear to exhaust the
stores of provisions they lay up in the fall, they
are invariably lean, without so much as the
slightest particle of real fat to be found in any
part of their anatomy.

From my own observations I am inclined to

give them credit for being far superior to the gray

221

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND Woes

squirrel in intelligence, in spite of their crazy
manner and lack of self-control. Commonly the
tamest and most familiar animal in the woods, if
much hunted they acquire in a very short time a
cautiousness only excelled by most creatures after
years of constant-persecution. Thus their general
abundance 1s hardly to be wondered at, especially
when one considers that they are probably about
the healthiest creatures in existence. I have
never known an instance of their having been
afflicted by any of the diseases common among
other rodents.

That the red squirrel is an excellent swimmer
is beyond dispute, but for my own part I cannot
recall ever having seen him enter the water vol-
untarily. One autumn afternoon, however, I
was sitting high up on the wooded bank of a
little stream when one came racing along the
opposite shore, close down to the edge of the
water, making the dry leaves rustle with a loud-

ness out of all proportion to his size. The dead

222

SQUIRRELS

leaves extended without a break half-way across
the stream, and in another instant the squirrel was
fairly afloat among them. Without showing
much alarm at his predicament, however, he
turned, and swimming in a half circle, as easily
as a mink, with just the top of his head and
a narrow strip along his back and tail in sight,
landed a few yards further down, when for the
first time his unfitness for that sort of thing be-
came apparent. A mink or muskrat on emerg-
ing from the water gives himself a shake and in
avery few minutes is as dry and furry as ever.
But this particular squirrel was literally wet to
the skin, and the more he shook himself the
worse he looked, for while here and there a tuft
of fur attempted to resume its former position,
by far the larger part of it remained flattened close
to his hide, the effect of which his pitiful little
shred of a tail only heightened as he scrambled
over the water-soaked roots and up the trunk of

an ash-tree, where, seated on a projecting knot,

223

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

he endeavoured to put himself into better
shape.

Occasionally, in the late fall or early winter,
there are days when the red squirrels are to be
seen everywhere running about over the ground 1n-
stead of among the branches, both in the woods and
inthe open. Iam inclined to think that such days
are usually followed by rain, though whether or not
the movement has anything to do with the desire
for migration which from time to time seizes upon
most of our wild animals, is hard to determine.

Like most northern animals, the red squirrel
is rather lighter coloured in winter than in sum-
mer, though hardly enough to render him less
conspicuous on the snow. As cold weather
comes on he changes from a strong reddish brown
slightly grizzled with black to a soft grayish fawn
colour possessing a most decided shade of green:
on the sides and flanks, and with a broad stripe
of intensely fine light red down the back. The
black stripe dividing the dark fur above from the

224

SQUIRRELS

white below, which is often so conspicuous in
summer, is usually entirely absent in the winter,
when, perhaps owing to the greater length of the
fur, the line of demarcation is much less distinct
and regular. The colour of the tail is practically
the same at all seasons. I have often wondered
what use the long hairs springing from the wrists
of these squirrels could possibly be to their
owners. These slender, whisker-like hairs, often
an inch and a half or more in Jength, surround
the wrist in a kind of whorl, and may, perhaps,
give the squirrel timely notice when his foot
comes within grasping distance of an object, as he
leaps madly about among the branches with his
eyes on other things.

The red squirrel is apparently affected less by
changes of temperature than the other members
of his tribe, for he may often be seen hard at
work in the hottest weather, and again out on the
snow crust at sunrise in the extreme depth of a
cold wave. And when, as so often happens, the

15 225

LITTLE BEASTS OF >FIE LD: Aue WOOD

_ latter 1s followed by a sudden thaw, with thick
white fog-banks lurking under the evergreens,
while the snow sinks beneath the slopping rain
and everything is nasty and uncomfortable, the
indomitable red squirrels are pretty certain to be
out everywhere, not only in the woods but along
every roadside fence and stone wall, especially
where certain neglected apple trees still hold out
an inducement in the shape of frozen apples
softened again for the first time in months.

The red squirrel is decidedly a _ northern
species, hardly to be considered native south of
the latitude of New York, but ranging towards |
the pole as far as the woods extend. Unlike the
European squirrel, however, which it so closely
resembles 1n many ways, its fur, even in the most
northern latitudes, though thick, soft, and of
very presentable length, never appears to attain
that peculiar and indescribable quality demanded
by furriers, a circumstance for which the red
squirrel should be duly thankful.

226

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GRAY SQUIRRELS

Cangetee

Chapter VIL
More Squirrels
Gray Squirrel — Flying Squirrel

HE gray squirrel is apparently much more
sensitive to weather conditions than his red
cousin, and regulates his movements more in
accordance with the season, coming out 1n sum-
mer early in the morning and spending the
greater part of the dav in concealment, to
appear again for a few hours late in the
afternoon. As the weather grows cooler in
the autumn, he rises later in the morning and
curtails his midday nap, so that after the first
of November, or thereabouts, the best time
to find him abroad is between ten o'clock and
noon.
Of course this applies only in a general way.
Wild animals are not to be bound down to fixed
rules, but come and go pretty much as they

229

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

please ; and individual tastes differ among them
as among men.

In my immediate vicinity the hard woods are
restricted to certain comparatively limited groves
and thickets, and the gray squirrels are of course
naturally confined to these, although here and
there is a family reared in the evergreen woods,
subsisting probably on berries and mushrooms
and seeds of one kind and another. But in the
autumn they move to the hard woods, to the
hickories by preference, and when these fail to
yield a crop, to the white oaks or chestnuts or
beeches, according to the year; for none of these
trees can be depended upon to bear each season,
and the gray squirrel population drifts about
from one locality to another, assembling in con-
siderable numbers wherever food is most abun-
dant, collecting all the nuts that are to be had
and storing them beneath stumps and in hollow
trees by the bushel. These stores they live upon
until they are finally exhausted, when they move

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MORE SQUIRRELS

on again; unless the same trees should continue
bearing for successive years, in which case the
squirrels are likely to settle down indefinitely or
until a short crop starts them off again. As a
wet summer is thought to blight the blossoms of
the hickory, but to have an opposite effect on
the chestnut and, I think, the acorn crop, one
may to a certain extent judge from the character
of the summer where to look for gray squirrels
in the following autumn. Where the various
kinds of nut-bearing trees are associated about
equally in the same forest, I am inclined to think
that certain families of squirrels establish them-
selves and occupy the same hollow trees for
generations, the only movement being the occa-
sional influx from less favourable districts, and the
departure of the younger ones when the colony
is threatened with overcrowding.

The vast migrations which formerly gave this
species the name of migratory squirrel, seem
now to be restricted to the unimportant wander-

231

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

ings above referred to, but when the country was
newly settled they were of not infrequent occur-
rence, and compared favourably in magnitude with
the well-known swarming of lemmings across
northern Europe.

The red squirrel 1s popularly supposed to
drive away the gray variety, and probably does
to a certain extent, for he is pretty sure to attack
the other on sight and generally comes out ahead,
although an actual hand-to-hand tussle is of rare
occurrence, the encounter generally consisting of
ill-natured bickerings at a distance of ten inches
or more, terminating in the retreat of the larger
of the two combatants. I have been told, how-
ever, that when the gray squirrel is fairly cor-
nered, he usually succeeds in putting the other to
flight, and at all events I have never known the
red squirrels to succeed in actually clearing any
grove, no matter how small, of the enemy, al-
though often outnumbering them three to one.

The gray squirrel’s home, as already mentioned,

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is commonly a hollow tree or branch, some partic-
ularly capacious interiors harbouring a dozen or
more individuals at certain seasons, and, strangely
enough, without any very noticeable quarrels, al-
though the old males are apt to be unpleasantly
ugly and tyrannical. ‘They also construct arbo-
real nests like those of the red squirrel, only
smaller as compared with the size of the builder,
composed of broad leaves cut off while still green
in the late summer, half a dozen in a-~ bunch
adhering to the twig they grew upon. ‘These
are placed in successive layers on a slight plat-
form of twigs in such a manner as to shed water
satisfactorily enough, but without leaving much
space inside, even for a single inmate.

I watched the construction of one of these
nests for nearly the whole of a hot afternoon.
The squirrel, a big dark-coloured fellow with
a splendid brush, kept hurrying out to the ends
of the branches to clip off twigs, a quarter of an
inch in diameter, apparently with a single stroke

233

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

_ of his incisors, and then back to his nest with the
fan-like cluster of leaves waving above his head.
In spite of the squirrel’s general distaste for hot
weather, this one worked uninterruptedly for
hours in a temperature of something like eighty
or eighty-five degrees in the shade, with not
another of his kind to be seen or heard in the
vicinity. Judging from what I saw at the time, I
concluded that the leaves were merely arranged
in a solid mass, and that the chamber was formed
afterwards by the squirrel forcing his way into
the centre from one side, and without any
attempt at a lining whatever. In this vicinity
they are usually placed in beeches and made of
leaves from the same tree, whether the beech-
trees happen to be bearing that year or not.
Although of such frequent occurrence, I cannot
learn that they are used with any degree of regu-
larity. I remember that when gunning with other
boys it was the custom, when nothing better
offered, to fire at these nests whenever they
234

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MORE SQUIRRELS

looked promising, but they invariably proved to
be uninhabited at the time, although we tried it
at all seasons and at all hours of the day. On
one occasion, however, I found a nest that con-
tained inmates. It was a little before noon, of a
cold brilliant windy day about the first of Janu-
ary. I had jammed a shell of number four shot
in my gun and was unable to extract it. Wishing
to substitute a smaller size, I fired at the nearest
squirrel’s nest, and was surprised at the rumpus
that followed my shot. After a few seconds a
gray squirrel backed out of the entrance, ran
along the branch for a few yards, and dropped
dead into the snow. I climbed to the nest and
found another squirrel inside, which, I think, es-
caped uninjured. ?

The barking of the gray squirrel is a decidedly
striking sound, audible in calm weather for an
eighth of a mile or more, and usually expressive
of anger, alarm, and warning. It consists first of
a succession of flat, rasping quacks, finally drawn

235

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD
out and prolonged to a kind of whining snarl, ris-
ing at times so as to approach the screaming of a
hawk in quality. It is heard oftenest directly
after rain, when several of them may often be
heard answering each other from different parts
of the forest.

I have seen them at different seasons running
about at the edge of the salt water, at a consider-
able distance from the woods, apparently for
the sake of tasting the salt. I am convinced
that most of our wild animals have the same
habit when the salt water is accessible, for I have
seen a woodchuck leave the woods, go down to
the edge of a salt pool left by the tide, and for
several seconds lap eagerly at the whitish scum
formed by the evaporation of the water.

Gray squirrels are frequently tamed, and are said
to make most intelligent and entertaining pets,
although rather too much inclined to insist upon
having their own way about things. When not

confined ina cage their tricks are pretty certain to
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MORE SQUIRRELS

prevent the lives of their owners from becoming
flat and monotonous. One of the most amus-
ing cases that has come to my knowledge
recently, is that of a squirrel which persisted in
hiding the nuts that were given him in a little
girl’s hair, and continued bringing them and
tucking them away out of sight as long as she
would sit still for him to do so.

The gray squirrel is not much seen during the
summer months, but in August one will begin to
see the young ones, rather more than half grown,
going about in pairs, or even three and four
together, especially late in the afternoon as the
sun gets low, or when the air has been cooled by
a shower. They are seldom accompanied by
their parents, and have evidently learned to shift
for themselves, gathering whatever of fruit or
berries the forest has to offer and eating it on the
spot, without attempting to put by any surplus
for future use. But when the summer is over,
and the nuts begin to ripen, they follow the ex-

237

LITTLE. BEASTS OF FIELD - ANDI ae

ample of their elders, and after the first severe
frost of autumn they make the stiff leaves of the
nut trees fairly crash as they leap from branch to
_ branch, in the hurry of their harvesting. Down
below, the ferns droop and blacken in the open
places in the woods, the scent of frost-killed
vegetation hangs like incense on the still air, and
the bees seek out the banks of goldenrod and
asters for the last honey of the season.

Of all the inhabitants of the forest, the squirrels,
both red and gray, appear to be the least suscep-
tible to the doom of autumn, the vague, unrea-
soning sadness and sense of looking backward
which pervades everything and gives the same
meaning to the notes of migrating birds, the
cricket’s creaking, the sound of the wind in the
pines, or the surf beneath the sand-dunes. But
although to all outward appearances the fall is
the squirrel’s favourite season, it is also their time
of greatest danger, for the red-tailed and the red-

shouldered hawks are on their migrations, and the
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hours that they habitually choose to spend in
hunting correspond exactly with the squirrel’s
working hours, from seven to ten o’clock in the
morning and from three o’clock in the afternoon
until near sunset. They watch cat-like for an
opportunity to take some unhappy squirrel un-
awares, or, circling above the tree tops, their keen
eyes penetrate the foliage from constantly vary-
ing positions, searching branch and bole and the
carpet of fallen leaves beneath, till, perceiving the
flicker of a bushy tail, the long wings close, of a
sudden, fan-like, and the hunter goes down with
a rush to match his quickness against the quick-
ness of a squirrel. Or the still more treacherous
goshawk and cooper’s hawk, with their shorter
wings and slender yacht-like build, shoot along
with baffling swiftness through the undergrowth
just in order to surprise the busy harvesters at
their work.
When the nuts are all gathered or fallen, the

_— gray squirrel spends most of his time indoors,
:. i 239

LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

coming out in the warmest weather to enjoy the
sunshine and rake over the dead leaves for scat-
tered nuts and acorns, or to transfer some of his
hidden treasures to the home-tree. And in the
winter he oftens allows whole weeks to slip by
without so much as having poked his head out of
his doorway, his favourite time for taking the air
being on still sunny mornings after a snowstorm,
the least breath of wind often serving to drive
him back to his quarters again. Occasionally,
however, you will see him out defying the
cold when the north wind is fashioning snow-
drifts along the fences. But for all that he is no
true northerner, and one is hardly surprised to
learn that New Hampshire is about his northern
limit. |

These northern gray squirrels of ours, true to
the general rule, are larger and grayer than those
farther south. The brown stripe along the back, a
distinguishing feature of the typical gray squirrel,
is inconspicuous or wholly wanting. The black

240

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variety, formerly the most abundant in the West
and South and even now not uncommon in many
districts, as far as I can learn is practically un-
known in New England. I have occasionally
seen specimens that looked quite black in the
distance, but the darkest of those that I have had
the opportunity of examining close at hand
proved to be merely very dark gray above and
the colour of rusty iron beneath, with an unusual
amount of grizzly black about the tail.

The black squirrels appear to have steadily
diminished in numbers since the country was
first settled, and no wonder, for they must find
concealment difficult at all times and doubly so
in the winter,— though possibly in regions
where forest fires are of frequent occurrence the
blackened wood may serve to render them some-

what less conspicuous. But under almost any

_ circumstances, one would suppose that the gray

squirrel would have the advantage when it came

) toa question of hiding from enemies, and it is

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rather surprising that the black ones managed to
hold their own so well against the Indians and
hawks for untold generations. In the primeval
forest, however, hiding must have been a com-
paratively easy matter, and perhaps the blackness
of their fur served them in good stead in ways
we know not of. For, if we can believe the
scientists, the mere instance of a majority of.
squirrels thinking black fur more beautiful than
gray, and so being attracted by it in the mating
season, would alone be enough to offset a long
list of dangers.

I have sometimes wondered just what law of
ownership exists among squirrels regarding their
hidden stores: if they really possess any sense
of honour in the matter, or whether, as on the
whole seems more probable, each has to depend
on his skill at hiding and defending his treasures
against all comers.

And when a squirrel is killed, how long a time,
I wonder, is likely to elapse before his stores are

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discovered and appropriated by other squirrels or
by mice?

The number of the gray squirrels is reduced
each year much more rapidly than is the case with
the red ones. I doubt if more than one half of
them live to see the first snowstorm. And the
possessions which they leave, in the shape of nuts
and acorns, must help materially in furnishing the
survivors with food at just the time of the year
when it is most needed, although in all likelihood
by far the larger part of them falls into the hands
of the red squirrels, whose ranks are never notice-
ably thinned and who are wide-awake and abroad
at all times and seasons.

It might very naturally be supposed that the
habits of so curious and remarkable an animal as
the flying squirrel would have received more than
usual attention, yet, in spite of its abundance and
familiarity, there would seem to be less known
concerning its ways and manner of getting a liv-
ing than concerning those of almost any of our

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

wild animals, and for my own part I am almost
beginning to despair of ever finding out ae
more on the subject.

From what little I have seen, I should class
them as creatures of singularly erratic habits,
sometimes dwelling alone in hollow stumps close
to the ground, or else high up in some deserted
crow’s nest, and again congregating 1n communi- ~
ties of twenty or thirty in the hollow trunk of a _
decaying sapling only a few inches in diameter
and scarcely large enough to accommodate them.
Farther south we frequently hear of their taking
up their quarters in the walls of a farmhouse, after
the manner of mice, but no instance of the sort
has ever come under my immediate notice, nor
can I now recall ever having read of anything of
the kind taking place in this part of the country.
Here they appear to keep themselves to the
thickest parts of the woods, and I have found
them most abundant in places removed at least a

mile from any dwelling. My father has told me
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that thirty or forty years ago a colony of them
inhabited a hollow linden, one of a scattered
group of half a dozen trees standing in the open
pasture several hundred yards from any woods. .
The old tree is still standing, but, as far as I
know, it has not harboured a flying squirrel for at
least a dozen years.

The last opportunity I had for observing flying
squirrels occurred five or six years since. As I
was tramping through some high rocky woods, |
noticed what looked like a newly made wood-
pecker’s hole near the top of a small dead ash,
and attempted to climb toit. The tree proved
to be pretty thoroughly rotten, and swayed about
a good deal with my movements. By the time I
was half-way to the top, a little round head was
poked out of a hole above me, and soon after a
flying squirrel emerged and scrambled round to
the other side. He was followed by another, and
this one by still another, until half a dozen or
more had made their appearance and clung

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motionless about the loose bark, none of them
apparently looking at me, but straight before him .
in whatever direction he happened to be facing,
as if his thoughts were of other things. One that
was almost within reach of my hand seemed to be
quite blind, for the centre of each eye showed a
perfectly opaque white spot like the eye of a
blind horse. But he appeared as well able to
take care of himself as were any of the others, |
although if I remember rightly he refused to
leave the tree and finally crept back into the hole
from which he had emerged. The others sailed
off one by one to other trees or to the ground,
along which they ran like chipmunks.

All the flving squirrels I have ever seen under
like conditions have behaved in this manner,
apparently acting wholly upon instinct and with-
out displaying the slightest symptom of intelli-
gence; but for all that, there are no more attrac-
tive or winning creatures in the woods. - They
never exhibit any marked symptoms of fear, but

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just cuddle up ona knot or projecting piece of
bark only a few feet away, looking as if they
would like nothing better than to be taken in the
hand and petted.

I remember hearing my grandmother tell how
one winter evening she was sitting before the fire,
when my grandfather came home from the woods
and taking off his coat threw it across a chair near
the fireplace. Presently a flying squirrel crawled
out of one of the pockets, sailed across the room
to where she sat, and nestled contentedly in her
hair, which she wore in a great fluffy mass piled
high above her head. I cannot recall the sequel
of the story, which was undoubtedly interesting,
at all events to those chiefly concerned in it.
No one ever knew exactly how the squirrel came
to be in the coat, but it was supposed that a
family of them must have been disturbed by the
choppers in the wood-lot and that this one had
taken refuge in my grandfather’s pocket, probably
bereft of what little wit it ever had by the noise

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LITTLE BEASTS: OF FIELD AND yee

of chopping and the crash of falling trees, and
glad to find any retreat away from so rude a
world. Perhaps it was only half awakened from ~
its winter’s sleep, and dozed off again as soon as it
found itself finally ensconced in the depths of the
pocket, to be aroused later by the heat of the fire.
I cannot help wondering what finally became of
it, and just how much of an impression the ad-
venture made upon its sleepy little brain, or
whether it took it all asa matter of course, to be
forgotten as soon as it was fairly back in the
trees again. Perhaps I have run across some
of its descendants in the woods or caught them in
box-traps without mistrusting that their ancestor
and mine had once been on such very intimate
terms. |

I have never at any time seen a flying squirrel
abroad in the day time of its own free-will, even
in the darkest weather, and should not hesitate to
class it as wholly nocturnal in its habits, although,

when routed out in the daylight and compelled

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to fly, it seems able to distinguish pretty clearly
objects several rods away. Its eyes are unusually
large and prominent and perfectly black, and its
fur is of much the same quality as chinchilla,
and of even softer tints. The flying mem-
brane consists of a thin strip of skin stretched
between the fore and hind legs and furred above
and below. A slight cartilaginous support runs
back from the wrist, assisting to extend the mem-_
brane when the fore legs are spread apart as in
flying. The tail probably serves both as para-

chute and rudder, since it is thin and flat but of ~

such a close, silky texture as to catch the wind

like a sail.

Tam not even sure just what the track of fly-
ing squirrels looks like, though I frequently run
across a track which I suppose to belong to

them, as I know of no other animal that could

very well make it. But if it really is a flying

squirrel track, then they are in the habit of being
out on the snow in mid-winter much more fre-
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOGe

quently than is generally supposed, for I as
often find them freshly made after a long spell of
zero weather as-during.a thaw. This track may
be best described as in size and appearance in-
termediate between that of the red squirrel and
white-footed mouse, occasionally showing the
footprints spread well apart laterally, as might
be expected of a flying squirrel. The creature
that makes them, whatever it 1s, appears to
ramble about the woods and swamps pretty much
at random, climbing low bushes here and there
for seeds or frozen berries of one kind and
another, which are generally eaten as soon as they
are gathered. But 1f these really are) dyme
squirrel tracks, then in one way they indicate a
certain degree of intelligence which I had hardly
supposed them to possess, for they never lead
me directly to the home tree, usually terminating
at the foot of some tree or sapling quite devoid
of any cavity or nest.

I should imagine that from their nocturnal

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habits these squirrels would fall frequent victims
to the different kinds of owls, although I cannot
recall ever having found any evidence of this hav-
ing been the case, either about the nests or in
the stomachs of such owls as I have examined.
But in all probability they are frequently
snapped up by them, as well as by foxes, weasels,
and the like, just as they are occasionally by
domestic cats. —

Oddly enough, one rather frequent cause of
their destruction is the barbed-wire fence, the
sharp points of which catch the loose skin of —
their parachute as they sail along. In their
struggles to free themselves, the unfortunate
squirrels simply twist themselves up tighter and
tighter, and in all probability die from suffocation.
I have found four or five of these unhappy vic-
tims suspended in this way, and I have no doubt
from their positions that that they perished in
the manner described. I have also seen a fox,
a skunk, and several cats caught on wire fences

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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

in the same way. The fox was undoubtedly
caught while attempting to jump through, but
the others may possibly have been shot and
hung there by their destroyers.

The colour of the flying squirrel is a pale
blue-gray, more or less washed at the surface
with buff or fawn colour, or clouded with dusky.
From what little [ have been able to gather, I
should say that the fawn colour is most in evi-
dence in southern specimens, which also appear
to be the smallest, while the northern ones, those
taken here in New Hampshire, for example, are
larger and darker than the type, as if approach-
ing the Canadian form, which in turn approaches
more nearly to the European species; as if, as is
believed to have been the case with so many of
our wild animals, the first pioneers came across
from Asia by way of Behring Strait to spread
southward and eastward through the Canadian
woods, and southward along the mountain

regions, at last down across the United States ;
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while another branch pushed ‘westward along
the northern border of the European forests
across Siberia and northern Russia to Finland
and Poland, but apparently without penetrating
southward anywhere as they have in this country.
In Asia there are said to be a dozen or more
distinct species, but these two, the European and
American, appear to be the only ones that have
strayed beyond its borders. I have sometimes
been tempted to believe that the Canadian
variety is occasionally found much farther south
than is commonly supposed to be the case, even
to southern New Hampshire, as I have obtained
one or two specimens that corresponded very |
closely to that type both in size and colour.
Half a dozen years ago or more, moreover, a
local gunner told me‘that he had found a family
of flying-squirrels in a hollow willow-tree in this
town, and that he had been particularly struck
by their large size and dark colour and the fact
that each of them had a very noticeable broad
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LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

black band along the side. I should not have put
much credence in his tale if his description had
not applied so closely to the northern variety,
which it was hard to — that he could ever
have heard of. ,

It 1s now several years since I have seen a live
flying squirrel, though there is no reason to sup-
pose that they are any less abundant than formerly.
I have rapped on hollow trees and pried into de- |
caying logs and stumps on every occasion without
discovering the sleepy little chaps I was in search
of. But this sort of thing goes largely by chance
after all, and to-morrow I may happen on them
where I least expect it. I remember once climb-
ing to a crow’s nest ina tall pine while the old
birds wheeled and scolded overhead. When rather
more than half-way to the top, I reached the place
that I had seen from the ground, but was disap-
pointed to find only a last year’s nest heaped up
with dry leaves and pine-needles in such a way

as to show that it had already been appropriated

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by squirrels. On investigation, I found, instead
of red squirrels as | had expected, four or five
little flying squirrels about half-grown. I only
saw them for a few seconds at most, as they
scrambled away in all directions and disappeared
completely. But in those few seconds I became
aware that young flying squirrels are simply the
most delightful things in existence. And I still
look forward to the time when I shall discover
another family of them, without the slightest fear
of being disenchanted.