FOXES AND OTHER NEIGHBORS 255 



for some days not until a foursome was astonished 

 by the sight of three little black-and-white kittens 

 (as they first thought them) playing on a near-by 

 putting-green. These kittens were so tame that 

 they allowed the caddies to touch them, while the 

 players, with adult apprehensiveness, kept a watch- 

 ful eye for mamma. The kittens presently ran 

 under a fence, and then under a small tool-house in 

 the adjoining cemetery. A benevolent (and some- 

 what timid) greens committee left them in peace. 

 Just what it was the old skunk dug from the turf I 

 was never able to determine ; presumably some kind 

 of grub. The holes she made were about an inch 

 deep, and of nearly the same diameter. The next 

 season there was no nest under the tool-house and 

 no holes in the fairway. Skunks also eat largely of 

 grasshoppers and similar insects. But, like their 

 cousins, they are quite capable of destroying chick- 

 ens, and a skunk's burrow by a hen-yard is a signal 

 for traps and gun. My boyhood is filled with 

 memories of days when the death of a skunk meant 

 a family exodus to the other side of the house, and 

 a stern parental refusal to allow me to skin my 

 quarry. 



The skunk's little cousin, the weasel, which is less 

 than a foot and a half of compact muscle and fierce 

 sagacity, which is quick as lightning and as sly on 

 the hunt almost as a fox, never seems to have been 

 much more numerous than at present. It is for- 

 tunate that his numbers are not greater, for he is a 

 bloodthirsty beast, quite capable of killing a domes- 

 tic hen, a sleeping partridge or pheasant, a rabbit. 

 He is hated by the farmer especially, for he is so small 



