The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

Presently he reached the upper fish-line, twelve feet away from the first one. First he followed this out to the log barrier, then back to the rock ledge that was supposed to be unclimbable. There he scrambled up the "impossible" rocks, negotiated the ledge foot by foot, and successfully got around the end of line No. 2. Getting between the two lines he sailed out across the slope to the elk carcasses, feasted sumptuously, and then meandered out the way he came, without having disturbed a soul. All this was done at night, and in darkness; and presumably that bear is there to this day, alive and well. No wonder Mr. Wright has a high opinion of the grizzly bear as a thinking animal. In hiding their homes and young, either in burrows or in nests on the ground, wild rabbits and hares are wonderfully skilful, even under new conditions. Being quite unable to fight, or even to dig deeply, they are wholly dependent upon their wits in keeping their young alive by hiding them. Thanks to their keenness in concealment, the gray rabbit is plentiful throughout the eastern United States in spite of its millions of enemies. Is it not wonderful? The number killed by hunters last year in Pennsylvania was about 3,500,000! The most amazing risk that I ever saw taken by a rabbit was made by a gray rabbit that nested in a shallow hole in the middle of a lawn-mower lawn east of the old National Museum building in Washington. The hollow was like that of a small wash-basin, and when at rest in it with her young ones the neutral gray back of the mother came just level with the top of the ground. At the last, when her young were almost large enough to get out and go under their own steam, a lawn-mower artist chanced to look down at the wrong moment and saw the family. Evidently that mother believed that the boldest ventures are those most likely to win.