58 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



the leg or foot of a small animal without inflicting 

 serious injury or causing an undue amount of suf- 

 fering. Enough of this painful subject I am glad 

 to say that there are other ways of capturing ani- 

 mals for study or for pets, and that the pack-rat 

 is the only animal shown in this book which was 

 captured by such a cruel method. 



Charles Dana Gibson, the artist, and his brother, 

 Langdon Gibson, the Arctic explorer, were my 

 companions on many long tramps through the 

 fields, woods, swamps, and over the soft meadows 

 and I only wish that I could remember half of the 

 interesting things we saw or the discoveries we 

 made. Nothing escaped the keen eyes of these two 

 boys. It was vain for the wild creatures to attempt 

 to conceal their whereabouts. 



We knew the location of every crow's nest, 

 where the red-tailed hawk built, the holes in which 

 the screech owls hid and the grove where the black 

 crested night herons reared their families of fiend- 

 ish looking offspring. Sometimes we would re- 

 turn with our pockets full of turtles and frogs, 

 or strange and interesting insects, or plants. At 

 other times we would have our handkerchiefs tied 

 together enclosing in their folds field mice, and 

 other living creatures. 



A SHORT-TAILED MEADOW MOUSE 



which I brought home from one of these excursions 

 proved to be a very savage pet. The white-footed 

 mouse's cage of wire-netting with a tin bottom, I 



