CHAPTER III
LEARNING TO HUNT
The pup went to sleep beside his mother in a bed of leaves under a fallen tree. With her there, he did not feel cold nor miss the other pups so much. He wondered where they were and would not have been surprised had they joined him at any moment; but his mother knew they were gone forever. Her joy at having this one little fellow left to her was almost pitiful. All through the long night she cuddled and tenderly licked him.
Just as the sky began to brighten for the day, she slipped out to get a drink and something to eat. A little distance from the fallen tree was a path. Here she made her first stop, to examine the ground and find out what creatures had passed that way during the night. Moving slowly, with her keen nose to the earth, she suddenly became aware of something following her. Around she whirled with teeth bared for defense, only to find herself looking into the mild, half ashamed eyes of the pup who, too lonely to stay in the bed, had noiselessly crept after her.
He hung his head now and looked wistfully at his mother until she licked his nose to show she forgave him and would let him come with her. In this way he started on his first big hunt.
A rabbit had travelled the path shortly before them, so the mother moved with caution. Whenever she sniffed at the fresh tracks, the pup, who followed close at her heels, sniffed too and understood perfectly well that a rabbit was near. When she at last sighted Bunny and crouched, the pup copied her movement exactly, and when she leaped he sprang too, all atremble with excitement. The old rabbit jumped quickly enough to get away, but the pup saw him and enjoyed all the thrills of his first chase.
Farther on they met a black and white skunk ambling home to his den. The pup, seeing him far ahead, crouched in readiness for attack. Here was a beautiful creature, no larger than the rabbit, actually coming towards him as though it wanted to be caught for breakfast. It never occurred to him that the skunk was a privileged character in the woods, whom foxes as well as smaller and larger animals had learned to let pass with plenty of room between. The mother, however, knew all about skunks and saw that trouble was coming. She rushed at the pup, nipped his ear and fairly shouldered him out of the way of the other animal.
The skunk saw at once that all the disturbance was only over a young fox who had not sense enough to know that every path belonged to him. Therefore, he passed grandly, without even slackening his pace or changing his direction one inch.
“He became indignant”
The pup, sniffing along the trail behind him, caught a disagreeable, musky smell which told, far better than his eyes could, that this animal was to be left alone. He followed him very carefully at what seemed a safe distance, until he became indignant and whirled half around with feathery tail straight in the air. That was warning enough to satisfy even the pup’s inquisitive mind, so he turned back with a bound and found his mother sitting in the path amusedly watching him. She saw that the little fox had already learned caution—the most important lesson of the woods.