Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

I threw a large chunk of snow which struck upon a rock by him. He fell off the rock in scrambling over the snow. But he clung to the cony and dragged it out of reach beneath a boulder.

No fur or blood was found on Rocky’s rock nor on any of the rocks surrounding his den. Possibly the cony carried by the weasel was another cony. Just what may have become of Rocky I cannot be sure. Possibly he was crushed by the settling of the rock walls of his house; a fox, eagle, or weasel may have seized him. But at any rate, I never saw him again that I know of, and that autumn no busy little haymaker appeared in the meadow among the boulders.

The weasel is the most persistent and effective enemy of the cony. Evidently he is dreaded by them. Bears, lions, coyotes, foxes, and eagles occasionally catch a cony; but the weasel often does. The weasel is agile, powerful, slender bodied, and can follow a cony into the smaller hiding places of the den and capture him. During winter he is the snow-white ermine, and in white easily slips up over the snow unseen. He can outrun, outdodge a cony, and then, too, he is a trained killer. From the weasel there is no escape for the cony.

During winter rambles in cony highlands I occasionally discovered a stack of hay on the surface. Most stacks are moved into the dens before winter is on.

When a stack is left outside it commonly means that either the stack is exceptionally well sheltered from wind and snow, and in easy and safe reach of the cony, or else the little owner has lost his life—an avalanche or other calamity forced him to leave the locality.

One sunny morning I set off early on snowshoes to climb high and to search for the scattered cony haystacks among the rocks on the side of Long’s Peak. A haystack sheltered against a cliff was found at timberline. By it was the fresh track of a bighorn ram. He had eaten a few bites of the hay. No other part of the stack had been touched. Around were no cony tracks in the snow. The stack had the appearance of being incomplete. Had a lynx or other prowler captured the haymaker in the unsheltered hayfield? Evidently the owner or builder had not been about for weeks. A slowly forming icicle almost filled the unused entrance to the cony den.

Against the bottom of one large slide of rock was a grassy meadow of a few acres which during summer was covered with a luxuriant growth of grass and wild flowers. Three big stacks of hay stood at the bottom of this slide in a stockade of big rock chunks. The hay was completely sheltered from the wind; from the rich near-by hayfield the stack had been built large. Close to the stacks three holes descended into cony dens.

Had these three near neighbour conies worked together in cutting, carrying, and piling these three stacks? They were separated by only a few inches and had been cut from one near-by square rod of meadow. But it is likely that each cony worked independently.

Far up the mountainside I found and saw an account of a cony adventure written in the snow. In crossing a barren snow-covered slide I came upon cony tracks coming down. I back-tracked to see where they came from.

A quarter of a mile back and to one side a snowslide mingled with gigantic rock fragments had swept down and demolished a part of a moraine and ruined a cony home. This must have been a week or more before. The snow along the edge of the disturbed area was tracked and re-tracked—a confusion of cony footprints.