The brushy and forested areas of America from southern Texas and Sonora to Paraguay are inhabited by spotted cats of different species, varying from the size of a large house cat to that of a Canada lynx. Only one of these occurs in the United States. All are characterized by long tails and a yellowish ground color, conspicuously marked by black spots, and on neck and back by short, longitudinal stripes—a color pattern that strongly suggests the leopard.
In the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas the tiger-cat is rather common, with the eyra-cat, in areas densely overgrown with thorny chaparral. Like most of the cat tribe, it is strictly nocturnal and by day lies well hidden in its brushy shelter. By night it wanders along trails over a considerable territory, seeking its prey. Birds of all kinds, including domestic poultry, are captured on their roosts, and rabbits, wood rats, and mice of many kinds, as well as snakes and other reptiles, are on its list of game.
Its reptile-eating habit was revealed to me unexpectedly one day in the dense tropical forest of Chiapas. I was riding along a steep trail beside a shallow brush-grown ravine when a tiger-cat suddenly rushed up the trunk of a tree close by. A lucky shot from my revolver brought it to the ground, and I found it lying in the ravine by the body of a recently killed boa about 6 or 7 feet long. It had eaten the boa’s head and neck when my approach interrupted the feast.
The first of these cats I trapped in Mexico was captured the night after my arrival, in a trail bordering the port of Manzanillo, on the Pacific coast. The rejoicing of the natives living close by evidenced the toll this marauder had been taking from their chickens.
The tiger-cat is much more quiet and less fierce in disposition than most felines. It excited my surprise and interest whenever I trapped one to note how nonchalantly it took the situation. The captive never dashed wildly about to escape, but when I drew near sat and looked quietly at me without the slightest sign of alarm and with little apparent interest. A small trap-hold, even on the end of a single toe, was enough to retain the victim. On one occasion, while a cat thus held sat looking at me, it quietly reached to one side and sank its teeth into the bark of a small tree to which the trap was attached, and then resumed its air of unconcern.
The tiger-cat brings within our fauna an interesting touch of the tropics and its exuberance of animal life. It is found in so small a corner of our territory, however, that, despite its mainly inoffensive habits, it is certain to be crowded out in the near future by the increased occupation of its haunts.
RED FOX (Vulpes fulva and its relatives)
Red foxes are characterized by their rusty red fur, black-fronted fore legs, and white-tipped tail. They inhabit the forested regions in the temperate and subarctic parts of both Old and New Worlds, and, like other types of animal life having a wide range, they break up into numerous distinct species and geographic races.
In America they originally ranged over nearly all the forested region from the northern limit of trees in Alaska and Canada south, east of the Great Plains, to Texas; also down the Rocky Mountains to middle New Mexico, and down the Sierra Nevada to the Mount Whitney region of California. They are unknown on the treeless plains of the West, including the Great Basin. Originally they were apparently absent from the Atlantic and Gulf States from Maryland to Louisiana, but have since been introduced and become common south to middle Georgia and Alabama.
Wherever red foxes occur they show great mental alertness and capacity to meet the requirements of their surroundings. In New England they steadily persist, though their raids on poultry yards have for centuries set the hand of mankind against them. For a time conditions favored them in parts of the Middle Atlantic States, for the sport of hunting to hounds was imported from England, and the foxes had partial protection. This exotic amusement has now passed and the fox must everywhere depend on his nimble wits for safety.