22 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 



Numbers of conies were "Skee-eking" and 

 scampering. Weasels were hurrying away from 

 the danger zone. Possibly a number of each 

 had been crushed. 



The conies thus driven forth probably found 

 other dens near by, and a number I am certain 

 found welcome and refuge for the night in the 

 dens of conies in undisturbed rocks within a 

 stone's throw of the bottom of the slide. 



The upper limits of the inhabited cony zone 

 present a barren appearance. Whether slide 

 or moraine, the surface is mostly a jumble of 

 rocks, time-stained and lifeless. But there are 

 spaces, a few square feet, along narrow ledges 

 or in little wind-blown or water-placed piles 

 of soil, which produce dwarfed shrubs, grasses, 

 and vigorous plants and wild flowers. 



Dried food in the form of hay is what enables 

 the cony to endure the long winters and to live 

 merrily in the very frontier of warm-blooded 

 life. In this zone he lives leisurely. 



Rocky placed his haystack between boulders, 

 beneath the edge of the big flat rock on which 

 he sat for hours daily, except during hay- 

 making time. As soon as the stack was dry 

 he carried the hay down into his underground 

 house and stacked it in one or more of the rock- 

 walled rooms. It appears that all cony stacks 

 are placed by the entrance of the den, and in 



