Part 14 (1/2)
SUCH NEAT CHAMBERMAIDS!
The prairie-dogs like sandy or gravelly soil for their homes, and in making them they do a lot of ploughing. And besides they supply this same soil with a great deal of humus--the gra.s.s that they use for bedding. They're very particular about changing their beds every day; always clearing out the old bedding and putting in new. They do this along about sundown. You can see them do it right in New York City, for there is a flouris.h.i.+ng colony of them at the zoo.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS MUST BE A PLEASANT DAY
In nice weather the Prairie Dog's front door stands wide open like this, but before a rain he stuffs it tight with gra.s.s because, when it _does_ rain in the arid regions where he lives, it comes down in bucketfuls!]
Mr. Prairie-Dog is about a foot long and as fat as b.u.t.ter. The reason he's called a dog isn't because he is a dog or even looks like one, but because he has a sharp little bark like a very much excited puppy. He thinks he sees something suspicious: ”Yap! Yap!”
Or he spies a neighbor down the street: ”Yap! Yap! h.e.l.lo, neighbor!
Looks like another fine day, doesn't it?”
”Yap! Yap!” says neighbor. (This ”yap” pa.s.ses for ”yes,” no doubt--although it isn't quite the way Mr. Webster would say it, perhaps.)
Then maybe a neighbor from away over on the avenue, that he hasn't seen for some time, comes calling--as they're always doing, these neighborly little chaps. Then it's:
”Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Why, how _are_ you? And what have you been doing?
And how are the little folks?”
And so it goes, all day long.
The prairie-dog's native home is on our Western plains, but he has a cousin away off in South America--although he may never have heard of him--called the viscacha.
The viscachas live on the great gra.s.sy plains of the La Plata in colonies of twenty or more, in villages of deep-chambered burrows with large pit-like entrances grouped close together; so close, in fact, that the whole village makes one large irregular mound, thirty to forty feet in diameter and two to three feet high. These villages being on the level prairie, the viscachas are careful to build them high enough so that floods will not reach them. They make a clear s.p.a.ce all around the town. In doing this these little people seem to have two purposes: (1) To make it more difficult for enemies to slip up on them unnoticed, and (2) to furnish a kind of athletic field for the community; for it is in these open s.p.a.ces that they have their foot-races, wrestling matches, and the like.
If you ever happen down their way, the first thing that will strike you is the enormous size of the entrances to the central burrows. You'd think somebody as big as a bear lived in them. The entrance is four to six feet across and deep enough for a tall man to stand in up to the waist.
Like our prairie-dogs, the viscachas are very sociable, and little paths, the result of neighborly calls, lead from one village to another.
They are neighborly indeed; and in the Bible sense. Of course, they like to get together of an evening and talk things over and gossip and all that, but that isn't the end of it. To take an instance: These South American prairie-dogs, like our prairie-dogs up North, are not popular with the cattlemen; and the cattlemen, to get rid of them, bury whole villages with earth. Then neighbors from distant burrows come--just as soon as the cattlemen go away--and dig them out!
[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. P. GOPHER AS THE MASTER PLOUGHMAN
Thompson Seton calls the pocket-gopher ”the master ploughman of the West,” and this is how he ill.u.s.trates the extent of his labors.]
Another ploughman besides the prairie-dog and the viscacha, who isn't popular with farmers--although Thompson Seton calls him ”The Master Ploughman of the West”--is the pocket-gopher. He has farmed it from Canada to Texas, all through the fertile Mississippi Valley. The reason he has that queer expression on his face--you couldn't help noticing it--is that each cheek has a big outside pocket in it; and, like the big pockets in a small boy's trousers, they're there for business. On each forefoot he has a set of long claws; and dig, you should see him! He's a regular little steam-shovel. He sinks his burrow below the frost-line and into this, stuffed in his two pockets, he carries food to eat when he wakes up during the following Spring, before earth's harvests are ripe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: POCKETS OF THE POCKET-MOUSE]
IV. THE HOME OF THE RED FOX
Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made houses among the rocks of the mountainside.
THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE
The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his cunning--and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox family--is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or Mrs. Fox--depending on which is going marketing--stops and looks about to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and behind this the family bedroom and nursery.
Mr. and Mrs. Fox are among the thriftiest folks I know. They not only provide for to-day, but for to-morrow and the day after. For example, when Mr. Fox visits a poultry-yard, he doesn't simply carry off enough for one meal. He keeps catching and carrying off chickens, ducks, or geese--whatever comes handy--all night; working clear up to daybreak.