On the hillside back of our camp, on occasions, a marten might be seen chasing a red squirrel over the ground, up a tree trunk, through the branches, jumping from one tree to another, and generally catching and eating the squirrel. We don't care if he does. The red squirrel eats the eggs of the partridge and our sympathies are with the partridge.
The marten is one of the most graceful and beautiful animals in our forests. It has a rich brown coat and lives in remote, inaccessible parts of the wilderness. It is more shy of the human animal than is the mink. It is also about three or four times the size of mink and will sometimes attack and kill a mink or a rabbit. The marten will, when possible, vary his diet by eating nuts and small fruit.
The marten makes a nest of moss, grass and leaves, in a hollow tree or log or among rocks. They have also been found living in a squirrel's nest, doubtless after killing the squirrels. Bait your trap for a marten with a chipmunk, a wood-rat or a piece of meat.
A Marten
A woodchuck sometimes ambled through one of the paths in the grass of the meadow. A farmer would strenuously object to the presence of a woodchuck in his meadow, where this animal would destroy a surprising quantity of clover. In this forest meadow no one objected, and since the woodchuck does not eat fish or flesh he was never molested. His wife, however, must guard her young, as there are several unscrupulous residents of this forest who would eat them without the slightest compunction.
Another fellow prowled about our valley, though he lived on the ridges. He is larger than a marten and is also a handsome animal, but of a somewhat different type. He sometimes attains an extreme length of three and one-half feet and weighs eighteen or twenty pounds. He is known as a "fisher." Sometimes, also, called "black-cat" or "black-fox." The fisher is very ferocious and is feared by all animals not larger than himself. He is powerful and agile; the swiftest and most deadly of all the smaller forest carnivores. He will kill marten, mink, raccoon, muskrat, rabbit, and sometimes a fox. A fisher will attack a porcupine, tipping him over and biting into his stomach and the underpart of the body, where there are no quills. Nevertheless, fisher, when trapped, are often found with porcupine quills in the skin and in various parts of the body.
The fisher catches trout, and gets larger ones than would satisfy the mink, so he is no friend of ours. The fisher also is charged with the crime of following the trail of the trapper through the woods, robbing his traps and eating the animals caught in them. Bige vowed that he "would get that fellow next winter," and he "would get thirty-five dollars for his hide." (Now it would bring a much larger sum.) The proper procedure would be to set a second and larger steel trap, carefully covered and chained to a tree, but without bait, in such a position that when the fisher undertakes his high-handed game of robbery he will walk on and be himself caught in the second trap.
There was, of course, our old friend, the raccoon. He will find a camp anywhere, and if one is not careful he will find the camp larder and get away with the food. The coon has hands (fore feet) like a monkey, and he can use them as skillfully. The coon will eat anything a human will eat, and some other things. He takes his toll of frogs and trout, and he does not scorn the trimmings of trout we dress for our own table. Almost any kind of bait will do for the coon trap, and a coon-skin automobile coat will do for either man or woman having the price.