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. 
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