"Let's see the skin," said the buyer.
The Indian showed the skin, which was that of a young animal, and very small, the stripe extending the entire length of the skin.
"You said short stripe," said the indignant buyer, pointing the finger of scorn at the runty little skin.
"Short skunk, short stripe," said the Indian with a shrug. "What you pay?"
I cut out an item from the daily paper last week which had this headline: "Skunks sent him to college." Can you draw your own inferences? The fur of skunks is very valuable now and in many fashionable Paris shops it is advertised with large placards printed distinctly for their English-speaking customers, "Veritable Skong."
TRAPPING WOODCHUCKS
Judging by the tales they tell, New England boys of the passing generation spent most of their time trying to outwit the woodchucks which infested their farms. If all their tales were true, the barn doors of their respective states must have needed stretching to hold all the skins of all those woodchucks, and no boy could possibly have been long without that valuable possession, a whiplash made of woodchuck hide. This little cousin of the squirrels is neither very fleet nor very cunning. He has, though, very quick ears and quicker eyes, and knows that his hole is the safest place for him when boys are around.
The only excuse for hunting woodchucks is that they sometimes get so numerous as to do real damage in the garden, either by their holes and the mounds of earth they throw out, or by eating more vegetables than can reasonably be spared. A better game than hunting them would be to discover how they build their underground galleries. Are these mere holes deep enough to crawl into for safety? Is there more than one tunnel? Has the owner an exit as well as an entrance to his home? Has he a nest, and where and what is it? Does he hoard for winter, or hibernate?
TRAPPING MOLES
It is hard to get a new point of view. Having been brought up in the belief that the mole is a nuisance, pure and simple, I find myself unable on short notice to believe that this little blind miner is actually useful. If only he would confine his sphere of usefulness to some other neighbourhood than our lawn! We all think that his underground passages disfigure the lawn. But does the grass die where the tunnels run? I think not. You see patches of dead grass on many lawns, but do you find moles at work in these same lawns? In fact, the brown, dead patches of grass are probably killed by the white grub, arch enemy of grass roots. The mole is arch enemy to the white grub and others of his ilk. According to people who know about moles, we ought to decorate them with medals instead of trapping them and decorating the barn door with their tiny skins.