194 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



fox or a deer uses a far-away crow or a jay as a picket, 

 and dashes away at its warning of the coming of an 

 enemy. 



Soon afterwards I was on my way to a spring down 

 in the pasture. As I passed near a stone wall half 

 hidden in a tangle of chokecherries and bittersweet, 

 there was a piercing whistle, followed by a scrambling 

 and a scuffling as the woodchuck dived down among 

 the stones, and I understood why, below Mason and 

 Dixon's Line, he is always called the "whistlepig. " 

 It is a good name, for he whistles, and he is certainly 

 like a little pig in that he eats and eats and eats 

 until he seems mostly quivering paunch. According 

 to the farmers of Connecticut, he eats to get strength 

 enough to dig, and then digs to get an appetite to 

 eat, and so passes his life in a vicious circle of eating 

 and digging and digging and eating. In spite of his 

 unwieldy weight, the woodchuck is a bitter, brave 

 fighter when fight he must. 



I once watched a bull-terrier named Paddy tackle 

 a big chuck near a shallow brook. Round and round 

 the dog circled, trying for the fatal throat-hold. 

 Round and round whirled the brave old chuck, 

 chattering with his great chisel-like teeth, which 

 could bite through dog-hide and dog-flesh and bone 

 just as easily as they gnawed through stolen apples. 

 Every once in a while Paddy would clinch, but the 

 woodchuck saved himself every time by hunching 

 his neck down between his round shoulders and 

 punishing the dog so terribly with his sharp teeth 

 that the latter would at last retreat, yelping with 



