188 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
one or more coon-trees, which he would locate by 
signs unknown to any white hunter. In each tree he 
would find from four to six fat coons, whose fur and 
flesh he would exchange for gunpowder, tobacco, 
hard cider, and other necessities of life. 
Mr. and Mrs. Coon are good parents. They keep 
their children with them until the arrival of a new 
family, which occurs with commendable regularity 
every spring. A friend of mine once saw a young coon 
fall into the water from its tree in the depths of a 
swamp. At the splash, the mother coon came out 
of the den, forty feet up the trunk, and climbed down - 
to help. Master Coon, wet, shaken, and miserable, 
managed to get back to the tree-trunk and clung 
there whimpering. Mother Coon gripped him by 
the scruff of his neck and marched him up the tree 
to the den, giving him a gentle nip whenever he 
stopped to cry. 
In spite of his funny face and playful ways, Mr. 
Coon is a cheerful, desperate, scientific fighter. In 
a fair fight, or an unfair one for that matter, he will 
best a dog double his size, and he fears no living 
animal of his own weight, save only that versatile 
weasel, the blackcat. I became convinced of this one 
dark November morning many years ago, when I 
foolishly used to kill animals instead of making 
friends of them. All night long, with a pack of alleged 
coon dogs, we had hunted invisible and elusive 
coons through thick woods. I had scratched myself 
all over with greenbrier, and, while running through 
the dark, had plunged head first into the coldest 
