THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
“They have sharp, pink noses, snapping black eyes, gray fur, and the 
longest, barest tails. I think that the most interesting picture I ever saw 
in the woods was an old mother opossum with eleven little young ones cling- 
ing to her. She was standing off a dog as I came up, and every one of the 
eleven was peeking out, immensely enjoying this first adventure. The quiz- 
zing snouts of six were poked out in a bunch from the cradle pouch, while 
the other five mites were upon their mother’s back, where they had been 
playing Jack-and-the-beanstalk up and down her tail.” 
An old number of The American Naturalist (September, 1886) contains 
a capital story of the wild creatures which used to come at night about the 
cabin of the writer, I. Lancaster, who had made a temporary hermit of 
himself in the South Florida wilds. By placing a strong light in the low 
window he could easily watch from behind it the creatures which nightly 
assembled to eat of the scraps thrown out to attract them. ‘‘This kind of 
lamplight scrutiny,” he records, ‘‘was of never-failing interest. The ani- 
mals were fresh from the hand of nature and on their native heath. The 
opossums were particularly interesting; when several females with their 
broods were on hand, there occurred a mixing of families, for the mother 
which had secured a bone at once shook off her progeny while she ate it. 
Her discarded infants would fasten on the nearest female, and sometimes 
a single mother went about with four families of children hanging to her. 
When a fox appeared, the incumbered animal at once took to the bushes, 
the others covering her retreat with wide-open mouths which, with their 
serried rows of teeth, seemed indeed formidable. Reynard always respected 
this show of ivory, as the raccoous did also. But in spite of all the precau- 
tions taken by the mothers, a strict count of children after home was reached 
would show loss. When they were shaken off, one would be a little late in 
regaining a position of safety, and in the hurry consequent on the fox’s 
arrival, this tardy scrambler would prove to be the one not fitted to survive. 
It left no legacy to its descendants, for it never had any.” 
The young stay with their dams about two months; nor are 
these little mothers ever long free from the burden and anxicty 
of a big family, for hardly has one litter dispersed than another 
arrives. Thus’ the multiplication of opossums is almost as 
rapid as that of mice or rabbits, and they form one of the main- 
stays in the menu of all the carnivores not only of our woods, 
but of the countries south of the United States. To attempt to 
relate the ways and means of the opossum in detail would far 
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