46 WILD NEIGHBORS chap. 



This introduces the subject of the puma's food, 

 which might be succinctly disposed of by the 

 statement that he ate anything he could get his 

 teeth upon in the way of flesh. As Spears pictu- 

 resquely writes of it (in Patagonia) : " It claws 

 down the whirring partridge, as she springs from 

 her nest, which it afterward robs of its eggs ; it 

 kills the ostrich as he sits on his nest, and then, 

 after hiding his body, it returns to the nest and 

 eats the eggs with gusto ; it snatches the duck or 

 the goose from its feeding-place at the edge of a 

 lagoon ; it crushes the shell of the waddling arma- 

 dillo ; it digs the mouse from its nest in the grass ; 

 it stalks the desert prairie-dog, and, dodging with 

 easy motion the fangs of the serpent, it turns to 

 claw and strip out its life before it can coil to strike 

 again. The mainstay of his natural bill of fare in 

 the North was the Virginia deer, especially fawns 

 and yearlings, and in South America the guanaco." 



Elks and moose could fight him off, as cattle 

 are able to do, except when seized by surprise and 

 from behind. In his admirable history of the 

 quadrupeds of the Adirondacks, Dr. C. Hart Mer- 

 riam gives the following lucid description of the 

 cougar's method of hunting : 



" Panthers hunt both day and night, but un- 

 doubtedly kill the larger part of their game after 

 nightfall. When one scents a deer he leaps to 

 the leeward and creeps stealthily toward it, as a 

 cat does after a mouse. With noiseless tread and 



