Wolverine 



and foxes have been taught by hunger to practise the very 

 closest economy. When luck goes with them and they manage 

 to kill more than they can eat at one time, they usually bury 

 what is left in the snow, or drag it away to some more secrete 

 hiding place, knowing from bitter experience that all the other 

 flesh-eaters are forever on the prowl, and not a bit overscrupu- 

 lous about appropriating what they find. 



But no amount of clever hiding is likely to avail them if 

 there happens to be a wolverine in the neighbourhood. He 

 seems to be gifted with a perfectly fiendish ingenuity in the 

 matter of searching out buried treasures of meat, and at the same 

 time meanly insuring himself against being robbed in return. 

 For his capacious stomach makes it possible for him to eat 

 more than most creatures of his size, and if anything is left 

 after he has gorged himself he buries it and so defiles the snow 

 about it and scents it with his disgusting odours that it is said 

 that no other animal, no matter how hungry, will touch it. 



In warm weather he probably finds it easier to satisfy his 

 appetite in a more legitimate manner, following the summer 

 methods of hunting adopted by most of his family, skulking 

 through swamps and thickets after birds' nests and young creatures 

 of various sorts that have not yet learned to take proper care of 

 themselves. 



He also feeds on insects and reptiles, and digs out the under- 

 ground homes of mice and lemmings whenever his keen nose 

 tells him that he is likely to find the little owners at home. 

 He is even said to dig out foxes in early summer, killing and 

 eating the fox cubs when he is so lucky as to succeed in cor- 

 nering them at the extremity of their den. 



The wolverine's own home is a burrow, and here in mid- 

 summer the five or six little wolverines are born; they are some- 

 what lighter coloured and more attractive than their parent, who 

 shows her one admirable trait in her affection for them and her 

 fearless attacks on any man or beast that threatens their safety. 



When I think of the wolverine I always seem to see him 

 through distant openings in low, dark northern forests, where the 

 pointed spruce trees thin out at the edge of the barren, and 

 the dull snow-threatening winter sky hangs close over the end- 

 less snow beneath; not even the little blue fox or musk-ox 

 seems more suggestive of the northern cold. 



24* 



