Skunk 



without seeing so much as one of their footprints during either 

 of these months. And again, their tracks will be fairly numerous 

 throughout the winter; and this does not depend entirely on the 

 mildness or severity of the season either. 



Early in February they are pretty certain to put in an 

 appearance, sparingly while the cold weather lasts, but after the 

 first really penetrating thaw the snow in all woods is thickly 

 punched with their footprints, and for yards about their holes 

 it takes on the colour of the dirt brought up from the depths 

 on their feet. 



Now that they are fairly awake and hungry, cold weather 

 is powerless to keep them indoors. During the still cold nights 

 of February they shuffle about over the snow-crust from sunset 

 to sunrise, judging from the amount of ground they manage to 

 cover each night. 



They are now very different creatures from the heavy-bodied 

 sluggards of the autumn. Those that can still boast a goodly layer 

 of fat on their ribs must soon part with it. Insects in February 

 are so scarce as hardly to be worth considering at all, an oc- 

 casional grub or beetle dug out of a moulding stump being 

 about all that can be safely counted on at this season. For 

 their daily sustenance the skunks are now obliged to kill creatures 

 far more active than themselves, and I have always wondered 

 how, even in their reduced state of flesh, they can possibly com- 

 pete successfully with the foxes and weasels in the chase. 



It is hard to imagine one, even though half famished, making 

 so much as a short dash of sufficient speed to enable it to 

 seize so swift an animal as a rabbit, yet in one way or another 

 they manage to do so quite frequently. It is probable that they 

 often succeed in surprising them in their holes, for while the 

 wood-chuck burrows, which the rabbits occupy, are nearly always 

 constructed with several openings, the simple-minded creatures 

 almost invariably make no effort to keep more than one of them 

 .open, allowing all the rest to become closed with snow and ice 

 early in the winter. 



As the snow grows less there is a marked tendency among 

 the skunks to abandon the woods and thickets for the more open 

 land, where they may hunt for meadow-mice about the newly 

 exposed patches of moist turf, and snap up such snakes as have 

 been driven from their winter retreats by the melting snow. 



227 



