Fig. 21.—Turtle-Trap.—This is simply a box with a door, like Fig. 10. The trap is set in shallow water, and baited with meat. It is very effective.
While I was sketching on the coast of Maine I spent a whole day at my easel, between two great rocks. I soon discovered that I was watched by some creatures, and it was not long before my neighbors made up their minds that the two-legged thing was a harmless sort of animal, and, before I finished my sketch, they amused themselves by jumping back and forth over my feet. At first I was more afraid of them than they were of me, but soon discovered that they meant no harm: so I painted away, with a pair of wild mink playing about my feet like tame kittens.
CHAPTER III.
THE BACK-YARD ZOO.
The king of beasts and the royal Bengal tiger are neither of them able to inspire such universal terror among the wild creatures of the forest as does man.
Bitter experience and terrible examples of man’s ferocious cruelty to all wild animals have taught even the most humble and inoffensive of them to dread the approach of the bloodthirsty two-legged destroyer.
It is high time that we redeem
Our Reputation among the Brutes.
It is time we ceased our wasteful, senseless slaughter of every wild thing to be met with in field and forest. It is time we began to study live animals, in place of uncanny dried skins and badly upholstered “specimens,” so-called.