OF WILD ANIMALS 251 



But now, throughout the animal world, the fear of man is 

 paramount. Nearly all the wild ones have learned it. It is 

 only the enraged, the frightened or the cornered bear, lion, 

 tiger or elephant that charges the Man with a Gun, and seeks to 

 counter upon him with fang and claw before it drops. The 

 deadly supremacy of the repeating rifle that kills big game at 

 half a mile, and the pump shotgun that gets five geese out of a 

 flock, are well recognized by the terrorized big game and small 

 game that flies before the sweeping pestilence of machine guns 

 and automobiles. 



The Fighting Canada Goose. In essaying to illustrate 

 the home defense spirit, my memory goes out to one truculent 

 and fearless Canada goose whose mate elected to nest in a 

 horribly exposed spot on the east bank of our Wild-Fowl Pond. 

 The location was an error in judgment. As soon as the nest 

 was finished and the eggs laid therein, the goose took her place 

 upon the collection, and the gander mounted guard. 



There were so many hostiles on the warpath that he was 

 kept on the qui vive during aU daylight hours. At a radius of 

 about twenty feet he drew an imaginary dead-line around the 

 fanuly nest, and no bird, beast or man could pass that line 

 without a fight. If any other goose, or a swan or duck, at- 

 tempted to pass, the guardian gander would rush forward with 

 blazing eyes, open beak, wings open for action, and with dis- 

 tended neck hiss out his challenge. If the intruder failed to 

 register respect, and came on, the gander would seize the 

 offender with his beak, and furiously wing-beat him into flight. 

 That gander was afraid of nothing, and his courage and readi- 

 ness to fight all comers, all day long, caused visitors to accord 

 him full recognition as a belligerent power. 



The Case of the Laughing Gull. About that same time, 

 a pair of laughing gulls had the temerity to build a nest 

 on the ground in the very storm centre of the great Flying 

 Cage. Daily and hourly they were surrounded by a truculent 

 mob of pelicans, herons, ibises, storks, egrets and ducks, the most 

 of whom delighted in wrecking households. The keepers 



