He looked through an aperture in the grass to see a creature approximately the size of a large cat, contentedly feasting on the remains of the sora. It was lustrous-black, except for a V-shaped patch of white on its head that became two white stripes which ran to the base of its tail. This silky tail was heavily furred, the feet were short and stubby. Frosty stared with vast curiosity.
Suddenly, and almost without visible motion, he flattened himself where he was and held perfectly still. A day-cruising great horned owl, which Frosty had seen at all only because he was wholly alert, floated in to seize the feeding animal. The owl winged low over the swamp with his prey.
Frosty sneezed and raced violently away, for suddenly the air was nauseous with stink so thick that a knife might almost have cut it. Obviously the owl didn't mind at all, but to Frosty it was a repulsive odor. However, he had learned something else; no matter where they were encountered or what they were doing, skunks were better left alone. After running a hundred yards, Frosty continued at a fast walk. The air still reeked and he wanted to get away from the stench. As soon as he had gone far enough so that there was only faint evidence of the unfortunate skunk's fate, he resumed prowling.
The swamp interested him greatly and he wanted to learn as much as possible about it. Because exploration was currently more fascinating than fighting, he detoured around another rattlesnake and continued on his way. He mounted a little rise that was literally honeycombed with the burrows of striped gophers and stopped to watch.
Flitting from their burrows, the gophers were feasting upon a veritable inundation of grasshoppers that had come among them. Moving like an animated streak, one of them would pounce upon a grasshopper and at once dodge back to its burrow or into the shelter of some huckleberry brush that grew upon the knoll. The wise little animals never exposed themselves for more than a few seconds at a time, for they knew too well the many perils that threatened.
As Frosty watched the gophers, disaster struck them.
Another rattlesnake, lying like a strip of carelessly discarded velvet upon the little rise, struck a gopher when it paused nearby to snatch up a grasshopper. Forgetting his grasshopper, the stricken animal bounced toward his burrow. But he no longer moved like a streak. The injected venom made itself felt almost at once, and instead of ducking into his refuge, the gopher crawled down it.
After a moment, in no hurry at all and following his quarry by the scent it left on the ground, the snake moved sluggishly on the gopher's trail, finally disappearing down the burrow which the stricken creature had entered.
Frosty circled the little rise and went on. He was far too well-fed even to think of hunting the gophers, but the colony was something to remember when he should be hungry. Any rodent at all was not only acceptable but desirable food.
Coming to a slough, Frosty slunk like a wraith along its edge and sank down to watch a baby muskrat. Visible only from the bank upon which the kitten crouched, hidden from every other direction by a curl of overhanging grass, the youngster was busily engaged in digging succulent bulbs from the mud on the bank's far side. Thus Frosty learned what even Andy had not yet discovered.