150 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



sight of an unexpected hole on the other side. I 

 managed to stay with him wherever he went, and 

 came back all right ; yet it is a marvel that none 

 of us lost our seats, if not our lives, in that wild 

 chase. But we caught the antelope ! 



The entrance to the burrow of a badger is much 

 larger than that to a prairie-dog's hole, and no 

 hillock is raised about it. It reaches below the 

 frost-line, and may be almost any length. The 

 animal changes its abode frequently, and con- 

 stantly digs more holes than it needs, thereby sav- 

 ing a great deal of labor for coyotes, foxes, ferrets, 

 etc., who take possession of its abandoned en- 

 trenchments and probably are welcome to them. 

 They form a retreat for snakes, too, Dr. Suckley 

 making the gruesome note that in western Minne- 

 sota, about 1857, he found old badger-earths in- 

 habited by vast numbers of a gregarious species 

 of garter-snake : " I have seen at times, at the bot- 

 tom of a vacated hole, a dozen or more in a knot 

 the writhing, excessively serpentine mass dis- 

 gusting all but the naturalist." The rattlesnake 

 is a frequent and dangerous tenant in the South- 

 west ; and the prairie-owl a comical one. 



This ubiquitous turning up of the soil, by which, 

 within a century or less, over the widest districts, 

 every square yard of earth, to the depth of several 

 feet, must be brought to the surface, and exposed 

 to the air, while an enormous amount of fertilizing 

 material has, meanwhile, been dragged into the 



