THE RARE FURS 303 



promiscuous remnants of other quarries brought to the burrow 

 by the mink, when a little cattish s-p-i-t! almost touches his hand. 

 His palm closes over something warm, squirming, smaller than a 

 kitten, with very downy fur on a soft, mouse-like skin, eyes that 

 are still blind and a tiny mouth that neither meows nor squeaks, 

 just spits! — spits! — spits! — in impotent, viperish fury. All 

 the other minklets the mother had succeeded in hiding under the 

 grasses, but somehow this one had been left. Will he take it home 

 and try the experiment of rearing a young mink with a family of 

 kittens ? 



The trapper calls to mind other experiments. There was the 

 little beaver that chewed up his canoe and gnawed a hole of escape 

 through the door. There were the three little bob-cats left in the 

 woods behind his cabin last year when he refrained from setting out 

 traps and tied up his dog to see if he could not catch the whole 

 family, mother and kittens, for an Eastern museum. Furtively at 

 first, the mother had come to feed her kittens. Then the man had 

 put out rugs to keep the kittens warm and lain in wait for the 

 mother ; but no sooner did she see her offspring comfortably cared 

 for, than she deserted them entirely, evidently acting on the proverb 

 that the most gracious enemy is the most dangerous, or else deciding 

 that the kits were so well off that she was not needed. Adopting 

 the three little wild-cats, the trapper had reared them past blind- 

 eyes, past colic and dumps and all the youthful ills to which live 

 kittens are heirs, when trouble began. The longing for the wilds 

 came. Even catnip green and senna tea boiled can't cure that. 

 So keenly did the gipsy longing come to one little bob that he 

 perished escaping to the woods by way of the chimney flue. The 

 second little bob succeeded in escaping through a parchment stop- 

 gap that served the trapper as a window. And the third bobby 

 dealt such an ill-tempered gash to the dog's nose that the combat 

 ended in instant death for the cat. 



Thinking over these experiments, the trapper wisely puts the 

 mink back in the nest with words which it would have been well for 



