FOXES AND OTHER NEIGHBORS 249 



large enough, and seem out of all scale with his head. 

 Just as the domestic cat differs from the dog, the 

 wildcat differs from the fox. He is self-sufficient, 

 aloof, unsocial, and capable of great fierceness. I 

 have seen but one in captivity, and that was a female 

 caught as a kitten in the northern Massachusetts 

 hills. She never became tame, and as she grew 

 larger she spit through the bars of her cage, with 

 terrifying ferocity. Finally she attracted another 

 cat in the woods near by, which used to emit wild 

 yowlings at night, and the neighborhood decreed 

 an execution. 



The great bulk of our Berkshire wildcat popula- 

 tion lives in the so-called hill towns, some miles from 

 the railroad and cultivated valleys, though they fre- 

 quently come down to the edge of the plain in 

 winter. They make their homes in the great acre- 

 age of second-growth timber and scrub over the 

 rocky slopes, and, the trappers agree, prefer fallen 

 hollow logs for their nests, but will use tiny natural 

 caves lined with dead leaves. In summer, when 

 there are plenty of mice, rabbits, and birds, it is al- 

 most never one of them is seen, though you will 

 occasionally come upon a wild-catnip bed rolled 

 down and trodden. This is not always the case, 

 however, for last summer our game warden and his 

 wife, while camping at a mountain pond near the 

 state motor highway over Jacob's Ladder from 

 Springfield, were followed by a wildcat for several 

 hundred feet. It was in the evening, and they were 

 walking along a back-country road through the 

 woods. The cat, which evidently had kittens some- 

 where about, followed them in the bushes beside 



