228 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 



United States, touching even the northern border, while 

 the Ocelot always kept well to the south, having once 

 been found in Arkansas and Louisiana, but now in 

 our limits has retreated to or beyond the Rio Grande. 

 The Ocelot is a spotted beauty, plucky, and a real game 

 animal, with his skin as vari- colored and bright as a 

 Leopard's, one of our few richly colored Mammals. 

 He is also, as it says on this picture, a ' spotted disas- 

 ter ' to birds and smaller beasts who venture in or 

 under the tree where he chooses a branch for a divan 

 whereon to take his noontime rest. Mottles of light 

 and shadow playing upon the tree bark and nestling 

 in the moving leaves, help hide his ten sharp claws 

 sheathed between elastic foot-pads. His four cruel 

 dog teeth, covered by the tightly shut whiskered lips, 

 tell no tales of the bristle-covered tongue within, that 

 licks and licks the skin of its prey, until it is filed 

 away, and the l)leeding flesh made ready for the meal. 



"' When he hunts by stalking, lie [)refers the dark 

 hours, his eyes shining like lanterns. Li truth, the 

 Ocelot wears a coat of many colors, in which orange, 

 brown, and yellow blend and mingle as a groundwork 

 for tawny, l)lack-edged spots, stripes and streaks which 

 cover two and a half feet of body and fifteen inches of 

 tail. Li habits, he is more of a tree cat than the others ; 

 he too, like them, is no carrion eater, only feeding upon 

 prey that he catches himself. See the crouching figure 

 with ears well up, back feet braced, and tail lashing. 

 It is in the exact position of a House Cat watcliing a 

 Moitse. Li a moment, if the birds pass under tlie 

 tree, there will be a spring, a flutter, and a mass of 

 feathers borne to the ground, and a meal for the Ocelot. 



