OF WILD ANIMALS 295 



It is my belief that at first the male did not intend to 

 murder the female. I think his first impulse was to play with 

 her, as he had always done with the male comrade of his own 

 size. But the joy of combat seized him, and after that his only 

 purpose was to kill. My verdict was, not premeditated 

 murder, but murder in the second degree. 



In the order of carnivorous animals, I think the worst 

 criminals are found in the Marten Family (Mustelidae)\ and 

 if there is a more murderous villain than the mink, I have 

 yet to find him out. The mink is a midnight assassin, who 

 loves slaughter for the joy of murder. The wolverine, the 

 marten, mink and weasel are all courageous, savage and merci- 

 less. To the wolverine Western trappers accord the evil 

 distinction of being a veritable imp of darkness on four legs. 

 To them he is the arch-fiend, beyond which animal cunning 

 and depravity cannot go. Excepting the profane history of 

 the pickings and stealings of this "mountain devil" as recorded 

 by suffering trappers, I know little of it; but if its instincts are 

 not supremely murderous, its reputation is no index of its 

 character. 



The mink, however, is a creature that we know and fear. 

 Along the rocky shores of the Bronx River, even in the Zoo- 

 logical Park, it perversely persisted long after our park- 

 building began. In spite of traps, guns, and poison, and the 

 killing of from three to five annually in our Park, Putorius 

 vison would not give up. With us, the only creatures that 

 practiced wholesale and unnecessary murder were minks and 

 dogs. The former killed our birds, and during one awful 

 period when a certain fence was being rebuilt, the latter 

 destroyed several deer. A mink once visited an open-air yard 

 containing twenty-two pinioned laughing gulls, and during 

 that noche triste killed all of those ill-fated birds. It did not 

 devour even one, and it sucked the blood of only two or three. 



On another tragic occasion a mink slaughtered an entire 

 flock of fifteen gulls; but its joy of killing was short-lived, for 

 it was quickly caught and clubbed to death. A miserable 



