course, an omelet made out of them tasted ever so much better than if made out of home-laid eggs; now I should not like the taste so well, probably, for there is a wild flavor to the egg, as there is to the flesh of the bird. Many a time I've stepped right into the nest, so well was it hidden. After a prairie fire is a good time to go egging, the nests being in plain sight and the eggs already roasted. I have tried again and again to raise the chickens by setting the eggs under the tame hens, but it cannot be done; they seem to inherit a shyness that makes them refuse to eat, and at the first opportunity they slip off in the grass and are gone. Every kind of food, even to live insects, they will refuse, and will starve to death rather than eat in captivity. There are but few chickens here now; they have taken Horace Greeley's advice and gone west. As to four-footed game, there were any number of the little prairie-wolves and some big gray ones. Could see the little wolves running across the prairie any time o' day, and at night their continual yap, yap was almost unendurable. They developed a taste for barn-yard fowl that made it necessary for hens to roost high. They are cowards in the daytime, but brave enough to come close to the house at night. If people had only had foxhounds, they would have afforded an opportunity for some sport. I have seen people try to run them down on horseback, but never knew them to succeed.
"One of my standard amusements was to go every little while to a den the wolves had, where the rocks
cropped out of the ground, and poke in there with a stick, to see a wolf pop out scared almost to death. As to the big wolves, it was dangerous sport to meddle with them. I had an experience with them one winter that would have begotten a desire to keep a proper distance from them, had I not felt it before. An intensely cold night three of us were riding in an open wagon on one seat. The road ran for about a mile through the woods, and as we entered it four or five gray wolves sprang out at us; the horse needed no urging, you may be sure, but to me it seemed an age before we got out into the moonlight on the prairie; then the wolves slunk back into the woods. Every leap they made it seemed as if they would jump into the wagon. I could hear them strike against the back of it, and hear their teeth click together as they barely missed my hand where I held on to the seat to keep from being thrown out. My most prominent desire about that time was to sit in the middle, and let some one else have the outside seat.
"Grandfather was very fond of trapping, and used to catch a great many wolves for their skins and the bounty; also minks and muskrats. I always had to help skin them, which I considered dreadful, especially skinning the muskrats; but as that was the only condition under which I was allowed to go along, of course I submitted, for I wouldn't miss the excitement of seeing whether we had succeeded in outwitting and catching the sly creatures for any consideration. The beautiful
minks, with their slender satiny bodies, it seemed a pity to catch them. Muskrats I had no sympathy for, they looked so ratty, and had so unpleasant a smell. The gophers were one of the greatest plagues the farmers had. The ground would be dotted with their mounds, so round and regular, the black dirt pulverized so finely. I always wondered how they could make them of such a perfect shape, and wished I could see way down into their houses. They have more than one entrance to them, because I've tried to drown them out, and soon I would see what I took to be my gopher, that I thought I had covered so nicely, skipping off. They took so much corn out of the hills after it was planted that it was customary to mix corn soaked with strychnine with the seed corn. Do they have pocket gophers in the East? [No.] They are the cutest little animals, with their pockets on each side of their necks, lined with fur; when they get them stuffed full they look as broad as they are long, and so saucy. I have met them, and had them show fight because I wouldn't turn out of their path,—the little impudent things!
"One nuisance that goes along with civilization we escaped until the railroad was built, and that was rats. The railroads brought other nuisances, too, the weeds; they soon crowded out the native plants. I don't want to be understood as calling all weeds nuisances; the beautiful flowers some of them bear save their reputations,—the dandelion, for instance; I approve of the dandelion, whatever others may
think. I shall never forget the first one I found in the West; it was like meeting an old friend. It grew alongside of an emigrant road, about five miles from my home; here I spied the golden treasure in the grass. Some of the many 'prairie schooners' that had passed that way had probably dropped the one seed. Mother dug it up and planted it in our flower-bed, and in two years the neighborhood was yellow with them,—all from that one root. The prairies are gone now, and the wild flowers, those that have not been civilized to death like the Indians, have taken refuge in the fence-corners."
I had asked her what she knew about cranes, and she replied as follows:—
"During the first few years after we came West, cranes, especially the sand-hill variety, were very plentiful. Any day in the summer you might see a triangle of them flying over, with their long legs dragging behind them; or, if you had sharp eyes, could see them stalking along the sloughs sometimes found on the prairie. In the books I see them described as being brown in color. Now I should not call them brown, for they are more of a yellow. They are just the color of a gosling, should it get its down somewhat soiled, and they look much like overgrown goslings set up on stilts. I have often found their nests, and always in the shallow water in the slough, built out of sticks,—much as the children build cob-houses,—about a foot high, with two large flat eggs in them. I have often tried to catch them on their nests, so as to see how they
disposed of their long legs, but never quite succeeded. They are very shy, and their nests are always so situated as to enable them to see in every direction. I had a great desire to possess a pet crane, but every attempt to raise one resulted in failure, all on account of those same slender legs.