18 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
me, until within ten or twelve feet. Then he 
sort of skated off the rock and disappeared. 
This was the nearest any cony, with the excep- 
tion of Rocky on the top of Long’s Peak, had 
ever let me come. His manner of getting off 
the rock, too, instead of starting away from me 
in several short runs, made me think it must be 
Rocky. 
The American cony lives on top of the world 
—on the crest of the continent. By him lives 
also the weasel, the ptarmigan, and the Big- 
horn wild sheep; but no other fellow lives higher 
in the sky than he; he occupies the conning 
tower of the continent. 
But what did these “rock-rabbits” eat? 
They were fat and frolicking the year around. 
The following September I came near Rocky 
again. He was standing on top of a little hay- 
stack—his haystack. All alone he was working. 
This was his food supply for the coming winter; 
conies are grass and hay eaters. A hay harvest 
enables the cony to live on mountain tops. 
Rocky’s nearly complete stack was not knee- 
high, and was only half a step long. As I stood 
looking at him and his tiny stack of hay, he 
jumped off and ran across the rocks as fast as 
his short legs could speed him. A dozen or so 
steps away he disappeared behind a boulder, 
as though leaving for other scenes. 
