WENUSK THE BADGER 237 



Once a day regularly every afternoon out of his lair 

 he emerges for the most comical sorts of athletic ex 

 ercises. Hour after hour he will trot diagonally be 

 cause that gives him the longest run from corner to 

 corner of his pen, rearing up on his hind legs as he 

 reaches one corner, rubbing the back of his head, then 

 down again and across to the other corner, where he 

 repeats the performance. There can be no reason for 

 the badger doing this, unless it was his habit in the 

 wilds when he trotted about leaving dumb signs on 

 mud banks and brushwood by which others of his kind 

 might know where to find him at stated times. 



Sunset is the time when he is almost sure to be 

 among the gopher burrows. In vain the saucy jay 

 shrieks out a warning to the gophers. Of all the 

 prairie creatures, they are the stupidest, the most beset 

 with curiosity to know what that jay s shriek may 

 mean. Sunning themselves in the last rays of daylight, 

 the gophers perch on their hind legs to wait develop 

 ments of what the jay announced. But the badger s 

 fur and the gopher mounds are almost the same colour. 

 He has pounced on some playful youngsters before the 

 rest see him. Then there is a wild scuttling down to 

 the depths of the burrows. That, too, is vain; for the 

 badger begins ripping up the clay bank like a grisly, 

 down down in pursuit, two, three, five feet, even 

 twelve. 



Then is seen one of the most curious freaks in all 

 the animal life of the prairie. The underground gal 

 leries of the gophers connect and lead up to different 

 exits. As the furious badger comes closer and closer 

 on the cowering gophers, the little cowards lose heart, 

 dart up the galleries to open doors, and try to escape 



