TRAPPING RABBITS
There are times when rabbits get too numerous, and times when they are needed to eat, and times when you want to try your hand at taming a wild one. Under these circumstances it is legitimate sport to hunt or trap them. If damage is being done to crops in the spring we shall be forced to wage war against them in self-defence during their breeding season. Otherwise no sportsman would do it. If there is so little legitimate rabbit food in winter that they are driven to destroy fruit trees to get a little bark, then the inference is that there are too many rabbits. Study the rabbit's ways of living, and learn his weak points. Find out if he has a "tendon of Achilles" or vulnerable spot. Look one over. What are his conspicuous characteristics? Is it not evident that his life is one long series of narrow escapes? He has few, if any, wits; how low his forehead. Timid eyes. But ears! Can he not hear you coming a mile off? And LEGS! Did you ever see a greater development in that direction? Yes, in a grasshopper, but nowhere else. The rabbit is a perfect mammalian grasshopper. When you stop to think of it you will see a certain pathetic side to its life.
The rabbit has its wild enemies, ever watchful, ever close on its trail. The hawk, the mink, the weasel, the fox, the lynx, and others are rabbit hunters. Besides his quick hearing, and his swiftness, Br'er Rabbit has a wonderful power of becoming invisible. His nondescript colour, combined with his ability to "freeze," serve him as well as a cloak of darkness. The cotton-tail rabbit is commonest in the Middle and Southern states, while his bigger cousin, the varying hare, overlaps the rabbit's territory in the colder parts, and takes his place in the most Northern states. The varying hare is called also the snow-shoe rabbit and the white hare, but in summer he is dull russet brown. You may have heard of the wonderful change of colour of this and other animals. Interesting stories are told of the sudden blanching of the fur, of its turning white, "in a single night," like the locks of the prisoner of Chillon. Not a word of truth in that story. Why do people, whose only fitness for telling stories lies in their having an imagination, make up such yarns about real things? They could invent an animal and then tell as many wonderful tales as they liked and nobody would be deceived. The truth about animals is wonderful enough. If writers would only take pains to find out the truth instead of repeating fancies!
Suppose the early ancestor of the white hare had a grayish-brownish coat, just the thing to protect him from his enemies in a world all full of grayish-brownish things. But one day there came a snow storm, and all the gray-brown things were covered with whiteness, except the poor hare. Suddenly he became the most noticeable object in the woods. Then all his neighbours saw him and wanted him, and mostly they got him.
It was about then that the hare began to be the "varying hare." A law of nature came to his rescue. Some hares there were which were not so dark coloured as others. They may have been longer winded and swifter footed, too, but anyhow they escaped and lived to bring families into the world. As like breeds like, these young hares took after their parents, and because they were lighter coloured in the winter they in turn escaped and carried this peculiarity into the next generation. It took endless years, and innumerable generations of hares, varying this way and that to fulfill this natural law, and fix the habit. But now that it is fixed we may well view it with wonder, and call it an example of the law of the "survival of the fittest." How is the change brought about? Just as the chickens and the birds moult, and the horse sheds, so do the rabbits. Their summer coats are thinner and brown. One by one the brown hairs fall out in the fall till finally the new coat is there, which is white. It is not like the human hair changing from brown to white. In the fall and then again in the spring there is a time when the varying hare is a variegated hare, his coat being mottled with white and brown.
Rabbits are hunted with dogs and their trails in the new snow are easily followed by the hunter alone. They are caught in traps and snares of various kinds. In one of his lessons in woodcraft, Mr. Seton describes a rabbit snare as follows: "String, a shoe-lace, a buckskin thong, or even a strip of clothing may be used as a snare. There are many ways of making a rabbit snare, but the simplest is the best. The essentials are, first, the snare—an ordinary running noose; second, a twitch-up—that is a branch bent down or a pole set in the crotch of a sapling. The snare is fast to the end of the pole, and spread open in a well worn runway. The loop is about four inches across and placed four inches from the ground. The pole twitch-up is held down by placing the cross-piece of the snare under some projecting snag. The rabbit bounding along, puts his head in the noose, the slight jerk frees the cross-piece from its holder, and in a moment the rabbit is dangling in air."
Rabbit fur is not very durable but is much used for the manufacture of less expensive fur garments. Under the name of "French seal" it finds a ready market and is really soft and pretty.