222 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



desist even when he was within striking distance. 

 He could have killed her with a stick, he says, from 

 which I infer that he had no stick, for it would require 

 the combined eloquence of Daniel Webster, Demos- 

 thenes, and William Jennings Bryan to persuade 

 Pred to spare a woodchuck! 



When the baby chucks are no bigger than rats 

 they go out from the burrow and will often scatter 

 to a considerable distance, either feeding or sunning 

 themselves in little balls. That is the time to catch 

 them. The mother, on the approach of danger, 

 rushes to the hole and emits a shrill squeal like a 

 whistle — a sound closely resembling that of the 

 whistling marmot. Then the little balls unwind 

 and come scurrying home. Your object is to get 

 to the hole first and bag them as they rush by. In 

 my woodchuck-hunting days there was sometimes 

 a boy who could imitate the mother's whistle,- just 

 as there was sometimes a boy or man who could 

 call the quail up to him. This boy invariably had 

 a box in his back yard in spring, full of young chucks, 

 for the superstition never died that the "Bird and 

 Pet Store" would buy them for twenty-five cents 

 apiece, in spite of the fact that it never did. To 

 catch them he would crawl stealthily to a spot be- 

 hind and over the entrance to the burrow, and wait 

 patiently till the entire family were off feeding. 

 Then he would whistle, and as the young came 

 scampering for the hole (regardless of the fact that 

 the mother had, perhaps, been feeding beside them), 

 he would capture one or two with his bare hands 

 before they could escape into the ground. Once 

 two boys I knew collected thirty young chucks, 



