RASTUS EARNS HIS SLEEP 261 
Rastus was born, because it had become em- 
bedded in an ice cake during the winter hiberna- 
tion. After thus heroically freeing himself (it 
must be admitted, perhaps, that the heroism was 
not quite so great as it seems, for a ’coon can take 
more punishment with apparently less pain than 
almost any other animal), he came out from his 
den into a sloshy March world, and foraged for 
food, being lean and cold and brittle of fur. He 
was caught in the act, and put in a washtub, with 
a barrel inverted into the tub and a piece of two 
by four braced between the barrel and the ceiling 
of the cellar, to keep him locked in. When morn- 
ing came, the two by four had fallen, the barrel 
was heaved off the tub, and the father of Rastus 
had vanished through a cellar window. That 
very night he was again captured, at a neighbor- 
ing house, and put in a chicken coop and fed 
bananas. In the morning he was gone, having 
gnawed his way out, preferring freedom to trop- 
ical fruit. These two Houdini-like performances 
gave him a certain distinction, and certainly 
argued great strength in a body weighing only 
twenty pounds when fattened for the autumn, 
