Down the burrow she went first, but it was too late; her babies were dead. She buried them where they lay and hastened from that evil spot.
Water was her first need, next food, and then at evening she made for an old den she had used the fall before.
And little Harry, meanwhile, where was he? That sunny afternoon in June he had wanderedaway from the house, and losing sight of the familiar building behind the long fringe of trees by the river, he had lost his bearings. Then came the thunder shower which made him seek for shelter. There was nothing about him but level prairie, and the only shelter he could find was a Badger hole, none too wide even for his small form. Into this he had backed and stayed with some comfort during the thunderstorm, which continued till night. Then in the evening the child heard a sniffing sound, and a great, gray animal loomed up against the sky, sniffed at the tracks and at the open door of the den. Next it put its head in, and Harry saw by the black marks on its face that it was a Badger. He had seen one just three days before. A neighbour had brought it to his father's house to skin it. There it stood sniffing, and Harry, gazing with less fear than most children, noticed that the visitor had five claws on one foot and four on the other, with recent wounds, proof of some sad experience in a trap. Doubtless this was the Badger's den, for she—it proved a mother—came in, but Harry had no mind to surrender. The Badger snarled and came on, and Harry shrieked, "Get out!" and struck with his tiny fists, and then, to use his own words, "I scratched the Badger's face and she scratchedmine." Surely this Badger was in a generous mood, for she did him no serious harm, and though the rightful owner of the den, she went away and doubtless slept elsewhere.
Night came down. Harry was very thirsty. Close by the door was a pool of rainwater. He crawled out, slaked his thirst, and backed into the warm den as far as he could. Then remembering his prayers, he begged God to "send mamma," and cried himself to sleep. During the night he was awakened by the Badger coming again, but it went away when the child scolded it. Next morning Harry went to the pool again and drank. Now he was so hungry; a few old rose hips hung on the bushes near the den. He gathered and ate these, but was even hungrier. Then he saw something moving out on the plain. It might be the Badger, so he backed into the den, but he watched the moving thing. It was a horseman galloping. As it came near, Harry saw that it was Grogan, the neighbour for whom he had such a dislike, so he got down out of sight. Twice that morning men came riding by, but having once yielded to his shy impulse, he hid again each time. The Badger came back at noon. In her mouth she held the body of a Prairie Chicken, pretty well plucked and partly devoured. She came intothe den sniffing as before. Harry shouted, "Get out! Go away." The Badger dropped the meat and raised her head. Harry reached and grasped the food and devoured it with the appetite of one starving. There must have been another doorway, for later the Badger was behind the child in the den, and still later when he had fallen asleep she came and slept beside him. He awoke to find the warm furry body filling the space between him and the wall, and knew now why it was he had slept so comfortably.
That evening the Badger brought the egg of a Prairie Chicken and set it down unbroken before the child. He devoured it eagerly, and again drank from the drying mud puddle to quench his thirst. During the night it rained again, and he would have been cold, but the Badger came and cuddled around him. Once or twice it licked his face. The child could not know, but the parents discovered later that this was a mother Badger which had lost her brood and her heart was yearning for something to love.
Now there were two habits that grew on the boy. One was to shun the men that daily passed by in their search, the other was to look to the Badger for food and protection, and live the Badger's life. She brought him food often not at allto his taste—dead Mice or Ground-squirrels—but several times she brought in the comb of a bee's nest or eggs of game birds, and once a piece of bread almost certainly dropped on the trail from some traveller's lunch bag. His chief trouble was water. The prairie pool was down to mere ooze and with this he moistened his lips and tongue. Possibly the mother Badger wondered why he did not accept her motherly offerings. But rain came often enough to keep him from serious suffering.
Their daily life was together now, and with the imitative power strong in all children and dominant in him, he copied the Badger's growls, snarls, and purrs. Sometimes they played tag on the prairie, but both were ready to rush below at the slightest sign of a stranger.
Two weeks went by. Galloping men no longer passed each day. Harry and the Badger had fitted their lives into each other's, and strange as it may seem, the memory of his home was already blurred and weakened in the boy. Once or twice during the second week men had passed near by, but the habit of eluding them was now in full possession of him.
One morning he wandered a little farther in search of water and was alarmed by a horsemanappearing. He made for home on all fours—he ran much on all fours now—and backed into the den. In the prairie grass he was concealed, but the den was on a bare mound, and the horseman caught a glimpse of a whitish thing disappearing down the hole. Badgers were familiar to him, but the peculiar yellow of this and the absence of black marks gave it a strange appearance. He rode up quietly within twenty yards and waited.
After a few minutes the gray-yellow ball slowly reappeared and resolved itself into the head of a tow-topped child. The young man leaped to the ground and rushed forward, but the child retreated far back into the den, beyond reach of the man, and refused to come out. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that this was the missing Harry Service. "Harry! Harry! don't you know me? I'm your Cousin Jack," the young man said in soothing, coaxing tones. "Harry, won't you come out and let me take you back to mamma? Come Harry! Look! here are some cookies!" but all in vain. The child hissed and snarled at him like a wild thing, and retreated as far as he could till checked by a turn in the burrow.
Now Jack got out his knife and began to dig until the burrow was large enough for him to crawl in a little way. At once he succeeded ingetting hold of the little one's arm and drew him out struggling and crying. But now there rushed also from the hole a Badger, snarling and angry; it charged at the man, uttering its fighting snort. He fought it off with his whip, then swung to the saddle with his precious burden and rode away as for his very life, while the Badger pursued for a time, but it was easily left behind, and its snorts were lost and forgotten.
The father was coming in from another direction as he saw this strange sight: a horse galloping madly over the prairie, on its back a young man shouting loudly, and in his arms a small dirty child, alternately snarling at his captor, trying to scratch his face, or struggling to be free.
The father was used to changing intensity of feeling at these times, but he turned pale and held his breath till the words reached him: "I have got him, thank God! He's all right," and he rushed forward shouting, "My boy! my boy!"
But he got a rude rebuff. The child glared like a hunted cat, hissed at him, and menaced with hands held claw fashion. Fear and hate were all he seemed to express. The door of the house wasflung open and the distracted mother, now suddenly overjoyed, rushed to join the group. "My darling! my darling!" she sobbed, but little Harry was not as when he left them. He hung back, he hid his face in the coat of his captor, he scratched and snarled like a beast, he displayed his claws and threatened fight, till strong arms gathered him up and placed him on his mother's knees in the old, familiar room with the pictures, and the clock ticking as of old, and the smell of frying bacon, his sister's voice, and his father's form, and, above all, his mother's arms about him, her magic touch on his brow, and her voice, "My darling! my darling! Oh! Harry, don't you know your mother? My boy! my boy!" And the struggling little wild thing in her arms grew quiet, his animal anger died away, his raucous hissing gave place to a short panting, and that to a low sobbing that ended in a flood of tears and a passionate "Mamma, mamma, mamma!" as the veil of a different life was rolled away, and he clung to his mother's bosom.
But even as she cooed to him, and stroked his brow and won him back again, there was a strange sound, a snarling hiss at the open door. All turned to see a great Badger standing there with its front feet on the threshold. Father and cousinexclaimed, "Look at that Badger!" and reached for the ready gun, but the boy screamed again. He wriggled from his mother's arms and rushing to the door, cried, "My Badgie! my Badgie!" He flung his arms about the savage thing's neck, and it answered with a low purring sound as it licked its lost companion's face. The men were for killing the Badger, but it was the mother's keener insight that saved it, as one might save a noble dog that had rescued a child from the water.
It was some days before the child would let the father come near. "I hate that man; he passed me every day and would not look at me," was the only explanation. Doubtless the first part was true, for the Badger den was but two miles from the house and the father rode past many times in his radiating search, but the tow-topped head had escaped his eye.
It was long and only by slow degrees that the mother got the story that is written here, and parts of it were far from clear. It might all have been dismissed as a dream or a delirium but for the fact that the boy had been absent two weeks; he was well and strong now, excepting that his lips were blackened and cracked with the muddy water, the Badger had followed him home, and was now his constant friend.
It was strange to see how the child oscillated between the two lives, sometimes talking to his people exactly as he used to talk, and sometimes running on all fours, growling, hissing, and tussling with the Badger. Many a game of "King of the Castle" they had together on the low pile of sand left after the digging of a new well. Each would climb to the top and defy the other to pull him down, till a hold was secured and they rolled together to the level, clutching and tugging, Harry giggling, the Badger uttering a peculiar high-pitched sound that might have been called snarling had it not been an expression of good nature. Surely it was a Badger laugh. There was little that Harry could ask without receiving, in those days, but his mother was shocked when he persisted that the Badger must sleep in his bed; yet she so arranged it. The mother would go in the late hours and look on them with a little pang of jealousy as she saw her baby curled up, sleeping soundly with that strange beast.
It was Harry's turn to feed his friend now, and side by side they sat to eat. The Badger had become an established member of the family. But after a month had gone by an incident took place that I would gladly leave untold.
Grogan, the unpleasant neighbour, who had first frightened Harry into the den, came riding up to the Service homestead. Harry was in the house for the moment. The Badger was on the sand pile. Instantly on catching sight of it, Grogan unslung his gun and exclaimed, "A Badger!" To him a Badger was merely something to be killed. "Bang!" and the kindly animal rolled over, stung and bleeding, but recovered and dragged herself toward the house. "Bang!" and the murderer fired again, just as the inmates rushed to the door—too late. Harry ran toward the Badger shouting, "Badgie! my Badgie!" He flung his baby arms around the bleeding neck. It fawned on him feebly, purring a low, hissing purr, then mixing the purrs with moans, grew silent, and slowly sank down, and died in his arms. "My Badgie! my Badgie!" the boy wailed, and all the ferocity of his animal nature was directed against Grogan.
"You better get out of this before I kill you!" thundered the father, and the hulking halfbreed sullenly mounted his horse and rode away.
A great part of his life had been cut away and it seemed as though a deathblow had been dealt the boy. The shock was more than he could stand. He moaned and wept all day, he screamed himselfinto convulsions, he was worn out at sundown and slept little that night. Next morning he was in a raging fever and ever he called for "My Badgie!" He seemed at death's door the next day, but a week later he began to mend and in three weeks was strong as ever and childishly gay, with occasional spells of sad remembering that gradually ceased.
He grew up to early manhood in a land of hunters, but he took no pleasure in the killing that was such sport to his neighbour's sons, and to his dying day he could not look on the skin of a Badger without feelings of love, tenderness, and regret.
This is the story of the Badger as it was told me, and those who wish to inquire further can do so at Winnipeg, if they seek out Archbishop Matheson, Dr. R. M. Simpson, or Mrs. George A. Frazer of Kildonan. These witnesses may differ as to the details, but all have assured me that in its main outlines this tale is true, and I gladly tell it, for I want you to realize the kindly disposition that is in that sturdy, harmless, noble wild animal that sits on the low prairie mounds, for then I know that you will join with me in loving him, and in seeking to save his race from extermination.
You remember that Hiawatha christened the Squirrel "Adjidaumo"—"Tail-in-air" and this Tail-in-air was chattering overhead as I sat, some twenty-five years ago, on the shore of the Lake of the Woods with an Ojibwa Indian, checking up the animals' names in the native tongue. Of course the Red-squirrel was early in our notice.
"Ad-je-daw-mo" I called it, but the Indian corrected me; "Ah-chit-aw-mo" he made it; and when I translated it "Tail-in-air" he said gravely, "No, it means head downward." Then noting my surprise, he added, with characteristic courtesy, "Yes, yes, you are right; if his head is down, his tail must be up." Thoreau talks of the Red-squirrel flicking his tail like a whip-lash, and the word "Squirrel," from the Latin "Sciurus" and Greek "Skia-oura" means "shady tail." Thus all of its names seemto note the wonderful banner that serves the animal in turn as sun-shade, signal-flag, coverlet, and parachute.
A wonderfully extensive kingdom has fallen to Adjidaumo of the shady tail; all of Canada and most of the Rockies are his. He is at home wherever there are pine forests and a cool climate; and he covers so many ranges of diverse conditions that, responding to the new environments in lesser matters of makeup, we have a score of different Squirrel races from this parent stock. In size, in tail, in kind or depth of coat they differ to the expert eye, but so far as I can see they are exactly alike in all their ways, their calls and their dispositions.
The Pine Squirrel is the form found in the Rockies about the Yellowstone Park. It is a little darker in colour than the Red-squirrel of the East, but I find no other difference. It has the same aggressive, scolding propensities, the same love of the pinyons and their product, the same friends and the same foes, with one possible partial exception in the list of habits, and that is in its method of storing up mushrooms.
The pinyons, or nuts of the pinyon pine, are perhaps the most delicious nuts in all the lap ofbountiful dame Nature, from fir belt in the north to equatorial heat and on to far Fuego. All wild creatures revel in the pinyons. To the Squirrels they are more than the staff of life; they are meat and potatoes, bread and honey, pork and beans, bread and cake, sugar and chocolate, the sum of comfort, and the promise of continuing joy. But the pinyon does not bear every year; there are off years, as with other trees, and the Squirrels might be in a bad way if they had no other supply of food to lay up for the winter.
XXV. Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter use Sketched from life in the Selkirk Mountains, by E. T. SetonXXV.Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter useSketched from life in the Selkirk Mountains, by E. T. Seton
XXVI. Chink stalking the Picket-pin Photo by E. T. SetonXXVI.Chink stalking the Picket-pinPhoto by E. T. Seton
A season I spent in the Southern Rockies was an off year for pinyons, and when September came I was shown what the Squirrels do in such an emergency. All through autumn the slopes of the hills were dotted with the umbrellas of countless toadstools or mushrooms, representing many fat and wholesome species. It is well known that while a few of them are poisonous, a great many are good food. Scientists can find out which is which only by slow experiment. "Eat them; if you live they are good, if you die they are poisonous" has been suggested as a certain method. The Squirrels must have worked this out long ago, for they surely know the good ones; and all through late summer they are at work gathering them for winter use in place of the pine-nuts.
Now if the provident Squirrel stored these up as he does the pinyons, in holes or underground, they would surely go to mush in a short time and be lost. He makes no such mistake. He stores them in the forked branches of trees, where they dry out and remain good until needed; and wisely puts them high enough up to be out of reach of the Deer and low enough to avoid being dislodged by the wind.
As you ramble through the Squirrel-frequented woods, you will often come across a log or stump which is littered over with the scales fresh cut from a pine cone; sometimes there is a pile of a bushel or more by the place; you have stumbled on a Squirrel's workshop. Here is where he does his husking, and the "clear corn" produced is stored away in some underground granary till It is needed.
The Pine Squirrel loves to nest in a hollow tree, but also builds an outside nest which at a distance looks like a mass of rubbish. This, on investigation, turns out to be a convenient warm chamber some six inches wide and two or three high. It is covered with a waterproof roof of bark thatch, and entered by a door artfully concealed with layers and fringes of bark that hide it alike from blood-thirsty foes and piercing winter blasts.
The Red-squirrel is safe and happy only when in the tall trees, but his kinsmen have sought out any and every different environment. One enormous group of his great grandfather's second cousins have abandoned tree life altogether. They have settled down like the Dakota farmers, to be happy on the prairie, where, never having need to get over anything higher than their own front doorstep, they have lost the last vestige of power to climb. These are the Ground-squirrels, that in a variety of forms are a pest in gardens and on farms in most of the country west of the Mississippi.
Standing between these and the true Squirrels are the elegant Chipmunks, the prettiest and most popular of all the family. They frequent the borderland between woods and prairie; they climb, if anything is to be gained by it, but they know, like the Ground-squirrels, that Mother Earth is a safer retreat in time of danger than the tallest tree that ever grew.
Conspicuous in its teeming numbers in the Yellowstone Park is the Picket-Pin Ground-squirrel. On every level, dry prairie along the great river I found it in swarms.
It looks much like a common Squirrel, but its coat has become more mud-coloured, and its tail is reduced by long ages of neglect to a mere vestige of the ancestral banner. It has developed great powers of burrowing, but it never climbs anything higher than the little mound that it makes about the door of its home.
The Picket-pin is an interesting and picturesque creature in some ways, but it has one habit that I cannot quite condone. In this land of sun and bright blue air, this world of outdoor charm, it comes forth tardily in late spring, as late sometimes as the first of May, and promptly retires in mid-August, when blazing summer is on the face of the earth, and the land is a land of plenty. Down it goes after three and one half short months, to sleep for eight and a half long ones; and since during these three and a half months it is above ground only in broad daylight, this means that for only two months of the year it is active, and the other ten, four fifths of its life, it passes in a deathlike sleep.
Of course, the Picket-pin might reply that it has probably as many hours of active life as any of its kind, only it breaks them up into sections, with long blanks of rest between. Whether this defense is a good one or not, we have no facts at present to determine.
It has a fashion of sitting up straight on the doorway mound when it wishes to take an observation, and the more it is alarmed by the approach of an enemy the straighter it sits up, pressing its paws tight to its ribs, so that at a short distance it looks like a picket-pin of wood; hence the name.
Oftentimes some tenderfoot going in the evening to stake out his horse and making toward the selected patch of grassy prairie, exclaims, "Good Luck! here's a picket-pin already driven in." But on leading up his horse within ten or twelve feet of the pin, it gives a little "chirr" and dives down out of sight. Then the said tenderfoot realizes why the creature got the name.
The summer of 1897 I spent in the Park about Yancey's and there had daily chances of seeing the Picket-pin and learning its ways, for the species was there in thousands on the little prairie about my cabin. I think I am safe in saying that there were ten families to the acre of land on all the level prairie in this valley.
As already noted in the Coyote chapter, we had in camp that summer the little dog called Chink. He was just old enough to think himself a remarkable dog with a future before him. There washardly anything that Chink would not attempt, except perhaps keeping still. He was always trying to do some absurd and impossible thing, or, if he did attempt the possible, he usually spoiled his best efforts by his way of going about it. He once spent a whole morning trying to run up a tall, straight, pine tree in whose branches was a snickering Pine Squirrel.
The darling ambition of his life for some weeks was to catch one of the Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that swarmed on the prairie about the camp.
Chink had determined to catch one of these Ground-squirrels the very first day he came into the valley. Of course, he went about it in his own original way, doing everything wrong end first, as usual. This, his master said, was due to a streak of Irish in his makeup. So Chink would begin a most elaborate stalk a quarter of a mile from the Ground-squirrel. After crawling on his breast from tussock to tussock for a hundred yards or so, the nervous strain would become too great, and Chink, getting too much excited to crawl, would rise on his feet and walk straight toward the Squirrel, which would now be sitting up by its hole, fully alive to the situation.
After a minute or two of this very open approach, Chink's excitement would overpower all caution.He would begin running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into Chink's eager, open mouth.
Day after day this went on with level sameness, and still Chink did not give up, although I feel sure he had bushels of sand thrown in his mouth that summer by the impudent Picket-pins.
Perseverance, he seemed to believe, must surely win in the end, as indeed it did. For, one day, he made an unusually elaborate stalk after an unusually fine big Picket-pin, carried out all his absurd tactics, finishing with the grand, boisterous charge, and actually caught his victim; but this time it happened to be awoodenpicket-pin. Any one who doubts that a dog knows when he has made a fool of himself should have seen Chink that day as he sheepishly sneaked out of sight behind the tent.
Every one recognizes as a Chipmunk the lively little creature that, with striped coat and with tail aloft, dashes across all the roads and chirrups onall the log piles that line the roads throughout the timbered portions of the Park. I am sure I have often seen a thousand of them in a mile of road between the Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Geyser Basin. The traveller who makes the entire round of the Park may see a hundred thousand if he keeps his eyes open. While every one knows them at once for Chipmunks, it takes a second and more careful glance to show they are of three totally distinct kinds.
First, largest, and least common, is the Big Striped Ground-squirrel, the Golden Ground-squirrel or Say's Ground-squirrel, called scientificallyCitellus lateralis cinerascens. This, in spite of its livery, is not a Chipmunk at all but a Ground-squirrel that is trying hard to be a Chipmunk. And it makes a good showing so far as manners, coat and stripes are concerned, but the incontrovertible evidence of its inner life, as indicated by skull and makeup, tells us plainly that it is merely a Ground-squirrel, a first cousin to the ignoble Picket-pin.
I found it especially common in the higher parts of the Park. It is really a mountain species, at home chiefly among the rocks, yet is very readyto take up its abode under buildings. At the Lake Hotel I saw a number of them that lived around the back door, and were almost tamed through the long protection there given them. Like most of these small rodents, they are supposed to be grain-eaters but they really are omnivorous, and quite ready to eat flesh and eggs, as well as seeds and fruit. Warren in his "Mammals of Colorado," tells of having seen one of these Ground-squirrels kill some young Bluebirds; and adds another instance of flesh-eating observed in the Yellowstone Park, where he and two friends, riding along one of the roads, saw a Say Ground-squirrel demurely squatting on a log, holding in its arms a tiny young Meadow Mouse, from which it picked the flesh as one might pick corn from a cob. Meadow Mice are generally considered a nuisance, and the one devoured probably was of a cantankerous disposition; but just the same it gives one an unpleasant sensation to think of this elegant little creature, in appearance, innocence personified, wearing all the insignia of a grain-eater, yet ruthlessly indulging in such a bloody and cannibal feast.
The early naturalists who first made the acquaintance of the Eastern Ground-squirrel namedit Tamias or "The Steward." Later the Northern Chipmunk was discovered and it was found to be more of a Chipmunk than its Eastern cousin. The new one had all the specialties of the old kind, but in a higher degree. So they named this oneEutamias, which means "good" or "extra good" Chipmunk. And extra good this exquisite little creature surely is in all that goes to make a charming, graceful, birdy, pert and vivacious four-foot. In everything but colours it is Eutamias or Tamias of a more intensified type. Its tail is long in proportion and carried differently, being commonly held straight up, so that the general impression one gets is of a huge tail with a tiny striped animal attached to its lower end.
Its excessive numbers along the roads in the Park are due to two things: First, the food, for oats are continually spilled from the freighting wagons. Second, the protection of piles of pine trees cut and cast aside in clearing the roadway.
There is one habit of the Eastern Chipmunk that I have not noted in the mountain species, and that is the habit of song. In the early spring and late autumn when the days are bright and invigorating, the Eastern Chipmunk will mount some log, stump or other perch and express his exuberant joy in a song which is a rapid repetitionof a bird-like note suggested by "Chuck," "Chuck," or "Chock," "Chock." This is kept up two or three minutes without interruption, and is one of those delightful woodland songs whose charm comes rather from association than from its inherent music.
If our Western Chipmunk is as far ahead in matters musical as he is in form and other habits, I shall expect him to render no less than the song of a nightingale when he gives himself up to express his wild exuberance in a chant.
I shall never forget the days I spent with a naturalist friend in an old mill building in western Manitoba. It was in a pine woods which was peopled with these little Chipmunks. They had hailed the mill and its wood piles, and especially the stables, with their squandered oats, as the very gifts of a beneficient Providence for their use and benefit. They had concentrated on the mill; they were there in hundreds, almost thousands, and whenever one looked across the yard in sunny hours one could see a dozen or more together.
The old mill was infested with them as an old brewery with rats. But in many respects besides beauty they were an improvement on rats: they did not smell, they were not vicious, and they did not move by night.
During the daytime they were everywhere and into everything. Our slender stock of provisions was badly reduced when, by mischance, the tin box was left open a few hours, but we loved to see so much beautiful life about and so forgave them. One of our regular pleasures was to sit back after a meal and watch these pert-eyed, four-legged birds scramble onto the table, eat the scraps and lick all the plates and platters clean.
Like all the Chipmunks and Ground-squirrels, this animal has well-developed cheek-pouches which it uses for carrying home seeds and roots which serve for food in the winter. Or perhaps we should say in the early spring, for the Chipmunk, like the Ground-squirrel, goes into the ground for a long repose as soon as winter comes down hard and white.
Yet it does not go so early or stay so late as its big cousin. October still sees it active, even running about in the snow. As late as October 31st at Breckenridge, Col., I saw one sitting up on a log and eating some grass or seeds during a driving snowstorm. High up in the Shoshonees, after winter had settled down, on October 8, 1898, I saw one of these bright creatures bounding through the snow. On a stone he paused to watch me and I made a hasty sketch of his attitude.
Then, again, it is out in the spring, early in April, so that it is above ground for at least seven months of the year. Its nest is in a chamber at the end of a long tunnel that it digs under ground, usually among roots that make hard digging for the creatures that would rout them out. Very little is known as yet, however, about the growth or development of the young, so here is an opportunity for the young naturalist who would contribute something to our knowledge of this interesting creature.
Closely akin to this one and commonly mistaken for its young, is the Least Chipmunk (Eutamias minimus), which is widely diffused in the great dry central region of the Continent. Although so generally found and so visible when found, its history is practically unknown. It probably lives much like its relatives, raising a brood of four to six young in a warm chamber far underground, and brings them up to eat all manner of seeds, grains, fruits, herbs, berries, insects, birds, eggs, and even mice, just as do most of its kinsmen, but no one has proved any of these things. Any exact observations you may make are sure to be acceptable contributions to science.
XXVII. The Snowshoe Hare is a cross between a Rabbit and a Snowdrift Captives; photo by E. T. SetonXXVII.The Snowshoe Hare is a cross between a Rabbit and a SnowdriftCaptives; photo by E. T. Seton
XXVIII. The Cottontail freezing Photos after sunset, by E. T. SetonXXVIII.The Cottontail freezingPhotos after sunset, by E. T. Seton
If the Wolf may be justly proud of his jaws and the Antelope of his legs, I am sure that the Rabbit should very properly glory in his matchless fecundity. To perfect this power he has consecrated all the splendid energies of his vigorous frame, and he has magnified his specialty into a success that is worth more to his race than could be any other single gift.
Rabbits are without weapons of defense, and are simple-minded to the last degree. Most are incapable of long-distance speed, but all have an exuberance of multiplication that fills their ranks as fast as foe can thin the line. If, indeed, they did not have several families, several times a year, they would have died out several epochs back.
There are three marked types of Rabbits in the Rockies—the Cottontail, the Snowshoe, and the Jackrabbit. All of them are represented on theYellowstone, besides the little Coney of the rocks which is a remote second cousin of the family.
Molly FreezingMolly Freezing
I have often had occasion to comment on the "freezing" of animals. When they are suddenly aware of a near enemy or confronted by unexpected situations, their habit is tofreeze—that is, become perfectly rigid, and remain so until the danger is past or at least comprehended.
Molly Cottontail is one of the best "freezers." Whenever she does not know what to do, she does nothing, obeying the old Western rule, "Never rush when you are rattled." Now Molly is a very nervous creature. Any loud, sharp noise is liable to upset her, and feeling herself unnerved she is very apt to stop and simply "freeze." Keep this in mind when next you meet a Cottontail, and get a photograph.
In July, 1902, I tried it myself. I was camped with a lot of Sioux Indians on the banks of the Cheyenne River in Dakota. They had their families with them, and about sundown one of the boys ran into the tepee for a gun, and then fired into the grass. His little brother gave a war-whoop that their "pa" might well have been proud of, then rushed forward and held up a fatCottontail, kicking her last kick. Another, a smaller Cottontail, was found not far away, and half a dozen young redskins armed with sticks crawled up, then suddenly let them fly. Bunny was hit, knocked over, and before he could recover, a dog had him.
I had been some distance away. On hearing the uproar I came back toward my own campfire, and as I did so, my Indian guide pointed to a Cottontail twenty feet away gazing toward the boys. The guide picked up a stick of firewood.
The boys saw him, and knowing that another Rabbit was there they came running. Now I thought they had enough game for supper and did not wish them to kill poor Molly. But I knew I could not stop them by saying that, so I said: "Hold on till I make a photo." Some of them understood; at any rate, my guide did, and all held back as I crawled toward the Rabbit. She took alarm and was bounding away when I gave a shrill whistle which turned her into a "frozen" statue. Then I came near and snapped the camera. The Indian boys now closed in and were going to throw, but I cried out: "Hold on! not yet; I want another." So I chased Bunny twenty or thirty yards, then gave another shrill whistle, and got a fourth snap. Again I had tohold the boys back by "wanting another picture." Five times I did this, taking five pictures, and all the while steering Molly toward a great pile of drift logs by the river. I had now used up all my films.
The boys were getting impatient. So I addressed the Cottontail solemnly and gently: "Bunny, I have done my best for you. I cannot hold these little savages any longer. You see that pile of logs over there? Well, Bunny, you have just five seconds to get into that wood-pile. Now git!" and I shooed and clapped my hands, and all the young Indians yelled and hurled their clubs, the dogs came bounding and Molly fairly dusted the earth.
"Go it, Molly!"
"Go it, dogs!"
"Ki-yi, Injuns!"
The clubs flew and rattled around her, but Molly put in ten feet to the hop and ten hops to the second (almost), and before the chase was well begun it was over; her cotton tuft disappeared under a log; she was safe in the pile of wood, where so far as I know she lived happy ever after.
The Snowshoe Rabbit is found in all parts of the Park, though not in very great numbers. It iscalled "Snowshoe" on account of the size of its feet, which, already large, are in snow time made larger by fringes of stiff bristles that give the creature such a broad area of support that it can skip on the surface of soft snow while all its kinsmen sink in helplessness.