346 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



of listening. After a moment or two of alert attention the fox 

 gave a high leap in the air like a diver from a springboard and 

 came down in the snow with nose and forepaws together. In half 

 the cases the lemming was caught at that instant, in half the 

 remainder he was caught a moment later, but in a few instances he 

 escaped — probably into a hole in the frozen ground. If left un- 

 disturbed, the fox would kill the lemming with a sharp nip or 

 two, drop it on the snow, look at it contemplatively for a moment, 

 pick it up again and bury it in the soft snow to trot off and — I 

 have no doubt — forget all about it. For days and days the lem- 

 ming catch would be far in excess of appetite, and before the fox 

 became hungry a hundred miles might intervene. If these buried 

 lemmings are ever found and eaten it is probably by a wolf or some 

 other fox. 



But the fox rarely buried the lemming undisturbed. From a 

 nearby knoll an owl was watching with eyes and interest as keen 

 as mine. When the fox paused, alert for a sound beneath the snow, 

 an owl on a nearby hill half-turned and part-crouched for flight; 

 while yet the fox was on its springboard leap and dive through the 

 air the owl's broad wings were spreading; and before the fox had 

 buried its kill the owl was upon him. This must have been the 

 thousand and first experience of the sort for the fox but it acted as 

 if completely surprised. No doubt its attention had been so fo- 

 cussed on the business of securing the lemming that owls were tempo- 

 rarily forgotten. At the wing swish and approaching shadow the 

 fox cringed as if in abject fear, but nevertheless evidently half 

 realized that the object of the owl was robbery rather than mur- 

 der, for with the very cringing and slinking motion of fear and 

 flight the fox picked up the lemming (if it had been dropped). 

 Then came a dash away, fast for a fox but slow as compared with 

 the easy glide of the owl, at the end of a short second of which the 

 owl was directly over the fox, reaching for it with its talons but 

 never touching, for evidently discretion was part of its campaign. 

 After two or three sharp doublings and vain attempts to get away 

 from the owl the fox would turn on his pursuer and make a great 

 leap in the air towards her. Apparently the owl's object was to 

 make the fox snap at her, thus in excitement dropping the lemming 

 from its mouth. In this I never saw the owl successful, for in 

 every case watched by me the owl gave up worrying the fox after 

 half an hour or so, but I was told by Eskimos that they had seen 

 foxes drop their lemmings in snapping at the owls, whereupon 

 the owl snatched the lemming from the snow and was up and 



