And what does he do to save himself, and insure the survival of the fittest?
He burrows far down in the slide-rock that falls from the cliffs, where he is protected by a great bed of broken stone so thick that no predatory animal can dig through it and catch him. There in those awful solitudes, enlivened only by the crack and rattle of falling slide-rock, the harsh cry of Clark's nut-cracker and the whistling wind sweeping over the storm-threshed summits and through the stunted cedar, the pika chooses to make his home. Over the slide-rock that protects him, the snows of the long and dreary winter pile up from six to ten feet deep, and lie unbroken for months. And how does the pika survive?
[Illustration with caption: WILD CHIPMUNKS RESPOND TO MAN'S PROTECTION. J. Alden Loring and his wild pets]
[Illustration with caption: AN OPOSSUM FEIGNING DEATH]
When he is awake, he lives on hay, of his own making!
In September and October, and up to the arrival of the enveloping snow, he cuts plants of certain kinds to his liking, he places them in little piles atop of rocks or fallen logs where the sun will strike them, and he leaves them there until they dry sufficiently to be stored without mildewing. Mr. Charles L. Smith declared that the pikas know enough to change their little hay piles as the day wears on, from shade to sunlight. The plants to be made into hay are cut at the edge of the slide-rock, usually about a foot in length, and are carried in and placed on flat- topped rocks around the mouth of the burrow. The stems are laid together with fair evenness, and from start to finish the haymaking of the pika is conducted with admirable system and precision. When we saw and examined half a dozen of those curing hay piles, we felt inclined to take off our hats to the thinking mind of that small animal which was making a perfectly successful struggle to hold its own against the winter rigors of the summits, and at the same time escape from its enemies.
The common, every-day Cotton-Tail Rabbit (Lepus sylvaticus) is not credited by anyone with being as wise as a fox, but that is due to our own careless habits of thought. It has been man's way, ever since the days of the Cavemen, to underrate all wild animals except himself. We are not going to cite a long line of individual instances to exhibit the mental processes or the natural wisdom of the rabbit. All we need do is to point to its success in maintaining its existence in spite of the enemies arrayed against it.
Take the state of Pennsylvania, and consider this list of the rabbit's mortal enemies:
450,000 well-armed men and boys, regularly licensed and diligently gunning throughout six weeks of the year, and actually killing each year about 3,500,000 rabbits!
200,000 farmers hunting on their own farms, without licenses.