Woodchuck 
much damaged fish line and hook thrown in. He was much 
too young to eat solid food, so we fed him on milk with a bottle 
and rubber nipple. When being fed he always sat up perfectly 
straight, grasping the rubber firmly between his little black hands, 
which always looked as if clothed in close-fitting black gloves, 
so sharply was the line drawn between the black of his paws 
and the brown fur on his wrists and shoulders. When _ nearly 
satisfied he would grip it so tightly that none of the milk could 
escape and, taking it from his mouth, turn away his head for 
a few seconds of breathing space and then fall to again. He 
grew rapidly on this diet, and soon developed a_ liking for 
green things generally, especially caraway blossoms. As_ these 
grew far out of his reach, often three or four feet from the 
ground, he found it necessary in order to get at them to sit up 
beside the stem and, grasping it in his paws, bend it over 
towards him, pulling it down hand over hand until he had 
reached the umbel shaped cluster of flower, every particle of 
which he ate, allowing the stalk to spring back into place when he 
had finished. Strangly enough, he never troubled the vegetables 
in the garden in any way, although allowed to wander about 
the place at his own discretion. He managed to get along 
fairly well with the cats, though there was not much affection 
on either side. Whenever he saw one of them drinking milk 
from a saucer, he liked to come up softly from behind and nip 
its heels, and then scuttle off to some place of concealment in 
time to escape punishment. He often persisted in this amuse- 
ment until the cats retired in disgust, whereupon he would pro- 
ceed to help himself to the milk they had left. If he felt sleepy, 
he would sit upright, letting his head hang down until his nose 
almost reached his hind feet, and then drop over on one side, 
rolled up into a perfect ball. Late in the season, he began to 
make extensive tunnels about the doorsteps and underneath the 
paths, the caving in of which was the cause of several mis- 
haps to various members of the family. Although ~ perfectly 
familiar, he was never affectionate, and towards the close of 
summer he left us for his native heath; and the rest of his 
history is hidden in obscurity, though it is safe to assume that 
he lived to grow up and eventually developed all the selfish and 
bearlike traits characteristic of his family. 
137 
