THE COMMON WOODCHUCK, OR AMERICAN MARMOT ([SEE PAGES 533-534])
Its track shows this animal’s kinship with the squirrels. The small series, to the left, show the ordinary ambling pace. When speeding, it sets its feet much like the little, or eastern, chipmunk ([see page 580]).
Little spotted skunks include several species and geographic races. All are limited to North America and are rather irregularly distributed from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific and from Virginia, Minnesota, Wyoming, and southern British Columbia southward to the Gulf coast, to the end of Lower California, and through Mexico and Central America to Costa Rica. They inhabit a variety of climatic conditions, from the rocky ledges high up on the slopes of the western mountains to the hot desert plains of the Southwest, and to partly forested regions in both temperate and tropical lands. In different parts of the United States they have several other names, including “civet,” “civet cat,” and “hydrophobia skunk.”
The spotted skunks make their homes in whatever shelter is most convenient, whether it be clefts in rocky ledges, slide rock, hollows in logs or stumps, holes dug by themselves in banks or under the shelter of cactuses or other thorny vegetation, the deserted holes of burrowing owls in Florida, or the old dens of various kinds of mammals elsewhere. Thickets, open woods, ocean beaches, and the vicinity of deserted or even occupied buildings on ranches are equally welcome haunts. On the plains of Arizona they have been known to live inside the mummified carcass of a cow, the sun-dried hide of which made an impregnable cover. They have a single litter of from two to six young each year.
Their diet is fully as varied as that of others of the weasel kind, but is made up mainly of insects and other forms injurious to agriculture, including grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and larvæ of many kinds. They feed also on flesh whenever possible and prey on wood rats, mice of many kinds, small ground squirrels, small birds and their eggs, young chickens, lizards, salamanders, and crawfish. This carnivorous diet is further varied with mushrooms, peanuts, persimmons, cactus fruit, and other small fruits. Sometimes the animals locate about occupied habitations in primitive communities, where they give good service by killing the house rats, mice, and cockroaches on the premises. On one occasion a spotted skunk was detected cunningly removing the downy chicks from under a brooding hen without disturbing her.
In comparison with the other skunks these little animals are extremely agile. They are strictly nocturnal and when pursued at night by dogs will climb to safety in a tree like a squirrel. When caught in a trap they struggle and fight far more vigorously than their big relatives. They usually carry the tail in a somewhat elevated position, but when danger threatens hold it upright like a warning signal. If the enemy fails to take heed they shoot two little spraylike jets of liquid bearing the usual offensive skunk odor, and the victim retires without honor.
In writing of these skunks about the Valley of Mexico, in 1628, Dr. Hernandez tells us that “the powerful arm which they use when in peril is the insupportable gas they throw out behind which condenses the surrounding atmosphere so that, as one grave missionary says, it appears as though one could feel it.”
That the little spotted skunk is subject to rabies and has communicated it to many men in the West is unquestionable. It usually bites men who are sleeping on the ground in its haunts, as they commonly do on the western stock ranges.
I have personally known of several instances in northern Arizona of men being bitten by them. The head, face, and hands, being uncovered, are the points attacked. One man in the mountains south of Winslow, Arizona, was bitten on the top of his head in April, 1910, but paid no attention to the slight wound until two months later when he began to have spasms. He then hurried to town and died in great agony the next day. The year following a man in the same district was bitten in the face, and seizing the animal threw it from him in such a manner that it fell on his brother and bit him before he awakened. Both men were given the Pasteur treatment and had no further trouble.