[3] Later investigations point to this having been the work of a wood rat instead of a skunk.—C. B.
I wish some one would tell me why this night prowler so often seems to spray the midnight air with his essence which leaves no trace by day. He never taints his own fur with it. In the wilds our Eastern species is as free from odor as a squirrel or a woodchuck. Kill or disturb one by day or night in his haunts, and he leaves an odor on the ground that lasts for months. While at a friend's house in the Catskills last August a wood pussy came up behind the kitchen and dug in the garbage-heap. We saw him from the window in the early evening, and we smelled him. For some reason he betrayed his presence. Late that night I was awakened by a wave of his pungent odor; it fairly made my nose smart, yet in the morning no odor could be detected anywhere about the place. Of course the smell is much more pronounced in the damp night air than by day, yet this does not seem an adequate explanation. Does he signal at night to his fellows by his odor? He has no voice, so far as I know. I have never heard him make a vocal sound. When caught in a trap, or besieged by dogs in a stone wall, he manifests his displeasure by stamping his feet. He is the one American who does not hurry through life. I have no proof that he ever moves faster than a walk, or that by any sign, he ever experiences the feeling of fear, so common to nearly all our smaller animals. His track upon the snow is that of a creature at peace with all the world.
V. CHANCE IN ANIMAL LIFE
Chance plays a much larger part in the lives of some animals than of others. The frog and the toad lay hundreds of eggs, the fishes spawn thousands, but most birds lay only five or six eggs.
A spendthrift with one hand, Nature is often a miser with the other. She lets loose an army of worms upon the forests, and then sends an ichneumon-fly to check them. She wastes no perfume or color upon the flowers which depend upon the wind to scatter their pollen. Cross-fertilization is dear to her, and she invents many ingenious ways to bring it about, as in certain orchids. She will rob the bones of the fowl of their lime to perfect the shell of the egg. She wastes no wit or cunning on the porcupine or on the skunk, because she has already endowed each of them with a perfect means of defense.
Two things Nature is not chary of—fear and pain. She heaps the measure here because fear puts her creatures on the safe side; it saves them from many real dangers. What dangers have lurked for man and for most wild things in the dark! How silly seems the fear of the horse! a fluttering piece of paper may throw him in a panic. Pain, too, safeguards us; it shields us against real dangers. The pains of childbirth are probably no check upon offspring, because the ecstasy of procreation, especially on the part of the male, overcomes all other considerations.
VI. MOSQUITOES AND FLEAS
Mosquitoes for the North and mainly fleas and ticks for the South—this seems to be Nature's decree, at least in this country. The mosquitoes of the Far North pounce upon one suddenly and ferociously, while our Jersey mosquitoes hesitate and parley and make exasperating feints and passes. On the tundra of Alaska, if I stopped for a moment a swarm of these insects rose out of the grass as if they had been waiting for me all the years (as they had) and were so hungry that they could not stand upon the order of their proceeding, but came headlong.
In Jamaica the dogs were persecuted almost to death by the fleas. They were the most sorry, forlorn, and emaciated dogs I ever saw. Life was evidently a burden to them. I remember that Lewis and Clark, in their journey across the continent, were greatly pestered by fleas. I have found that our woodchucks, when they "hole up" in the fall, are full of fleas.