254 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



paratively immune to molestation by other animals, 

 while he can subsist on a more easily acquired diet 

 than the much more formidable weasel or mink. 

 Far less active than either of his cousins, far less 

 clever and crafty, you will see ten skunks now^to 

 one weasel, and twenty to one mink, at least in our 

 section. Skunks are easily tamed, it is said (frankly 

 I never domesticated one), and are not necessarily 

 offensive. If they are not frightened they remain 

 odorless. Many years ago the proprietor of a 

 Berkshire hotel, a tender-hearted man, gave 

 positive orders that no skunks were to be killed 

 on his premises. The animals used to come up 

 to the garbage-pails behind the hotel in the early 

 evening to feed, and after a brief season of pro- 

 tection they became so tame that the guests 

 would go out to watch them, as you go out to 

 see the bears behind the inns in Yellowstone and 

 Glacier parks. At times there would be as many 

 as a dozen skunks in the yard. But this pro- 

 prietor is dead now, and the custom died with 

 him. Skunks still come up to the garbage-pails 

 in our town, however. In winter I have often 

 found their tracks around mine, and, alas! the dog 

 had found more than the tracks. They also breed 

 near our dwellings. 



Not long ago, at the golf club, we were troubled 

 by little holes appearing in a certain fairway every 

 morning, just large enough to give a ball a heavy 

 lie. At first we thought the crows made them, but 

 one of our workmen insisted they were made by 

 skunks. At last he arose very early and saw an 

 animal at work. We did not find its hole, however, 



