It was easy to see on the snow what had happened. At first, when the rabbit saw the weasel looping along its trail like a hunting snake, it had started off with a sprint that in a minute carried it out of sight. Then a strange thing happened. Although a rabbit can run for an hour at nearly top speed, and in this case had every reason to run, after a half-mile of rapid circling and doubling, the trail changed and showed that the rabbit was plodding along as if paralyzed.
One of the weird and unexplained facts in nature is the strange power that a weasel appears to have over all the smaller animals. Many of them simply give up and wait for death when they find that a weasel is on their trail. A red squirrel, which could easily escape through the tree-tops, sometimes becomes almost hysterical with fright, and has been known to fall out of a tree-top in a perfect ecstasy of terror. Even the rat, which is a cynical, practical animal, with no nerves, and a bitter, brave fighter when fight it must, loses its head when up against a weasel. A friend of mine once saw a grim, gray old fellow run squealing aloud across a road from a woodpile and plunge into a stone wall. A moment later a weasel in its reddish summer coat came sniffing along the rat’s trail and passed within a yard of him.
This night the rabbit, with every chance for escape, began to run slowly and heavily, as if in a nightmare, watching the while its back trail. And when the weasel came in sight again, the trail stopped as the rabbit crouched in the snow waiting for the end. It came mercifully quick. When the weasel saw the rabbit had stopped, its red eyes flamed, and with a flashing spring its teeth and claws were at poor bunny’s throat. There was a plaintive whinnying cry, and the reddened snow told the rest.
So the last story of the snow ended in tragedy, as do nearly all true stories of the wild-folk. Yet they need not our pity. Better a thousand times the quick passing at the end of a swift run or of a brave fight, than the long, long weariness of pain and sickness by which we humans so often claim our immortality.
[IV]
A RUNAWAY DAY
It is a wise man who knows when to run away. To quote rightly the words of a great poet, whose name has escaped me:—
He who works and runs away