FOXES AND OTHER NEIGHBORS 253 



Sometimes you will encounter the slides on the 

 steep river-bank where the otters play. Like seals, 

 they are extremely frisky and sportive, and will 

 climb a bank to slide down into the water by the 

 hour, like small boys on a sawdust pile, or two of 

 them will pull at a stick like a couple of puppies. 

 In the water they are marvelous swimmers, and can 

 catch any fish they set out for. Last winter a 

 fisherman on Goose Pond, in the hills back of Lee, 

 Massachusetts, caught a large otter on a hook. 

 He had lost three baits, and finally put a huge one 

 on a big pickerel hook. He got a strike immedi- 

 ately and pulled. 



"I thought I had the bottom of the pond," he 

 said, exhibiting the four feet of glossy, seal-brown 

 body which was worth more to him than any fish. 



But our annual catch of otters now is relatively 

 very small, and few are the younger people who have 

 ever seen an otter cub playing with a stick in the 

 water or sliding like a small boy down a slippery 

 bank, or found his burrow into the bank, with its 

 entrance below water-level. 



Most of us, however, have seen a skunk! Indeed, 

 that family is fortunate which has never owned a 

 puppy whose natural curiosity led him to investi- 

 gate the strange visitor, only to rush half blinded 

 into the house, searching for a familiar sympathy 

 which was suddenly and rudely denied him. It is 

 rather odd that an animal so actively disagreeable 

 as the skunk can be, and consequently so persist- 

 ently shot at, should so successfully survive even 

 close to populous centers. Probably the reason 

 is that his very unpleasantness makes him com- 



