80 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 



prey, than if they deferred their ramblings until daylight. 

 Being out nights is a bad practice ! The prairie rattle- 

 snakes are especially fond of mice ; minks, weasels, skunks, 

 and badgers eat as many as they can catch, and this proba- 

 bly is not a few ; domestic cats hunt them eagerly, seem- 

 ing to prefer them to house-mice no doubt they are more 

 sweet and delicate ; foxes also enjoy them ; dogs and wolves 

 dig them out of their burrows and devour them ; prairie 

 fires burn multitudes of them, and farmer-boys trap them. 

 But, after all, perhaps their chief foes are the flesh-eating 

 birds. I hardly ever take a walk without finding the re- 

 mains of an owl's or hawk's dinner where our little subject 

 has been the main dish. 



We have in this country two black, white, and gray birds 

 called shrikes, or butcher-birds, which are only about the 

 size of robins, but are very strong, brave, and noble in ap- 

 pearance. These shrikes have the curious habit of killing 

 more game than they need, and hanging it up on thorns, or 

 lodging it in a crack in the fence or the crotch of a tree. 

 They seem to hunt just for the fun of it, and kill for the 

 sake of killing. Now their chief game is the unhappy 

 field-mouse; and in Illinois they are known as "mouse- 

 birds." They never seem to eat much of the flesh of their 

 victims, generally only pecking their brains out, but murder 



