224 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
the green plains in which the golden banner 
bloomed like broken yellow coral. A cottontail 
hopped slowly from his hole to a clump of 
Spanish bayonet; buzzing gnats and bees hum- 
med by. Grasshoppers all jumping toward 
the town limits suggested that they were aban- 
doning the congested town. 
Suddenly there were two disturbances: Near 
me an old dog was set upon by a protesting, 
noisy mob of dogs, while off on my left an invad- 
ing rattlesnake threw a locality into a frenzy of 
excitement. 
Apparently dogs aim to bury alive all enemies 
and invaders. The frightened rattler was pur- 
sued by a screeching, noisy dog mob, and driven . 
into a dog hole. While two or three dogs kept 
watch of this, other dogs were looking into or 
wildly watching other dog holes which the snake 
might reach through underground tunnels. 
Out of one of these holes he glided and at him 
went the yapping, snapping dog mob. Down 
into another hole he ducked. Evidently the 
dogs realized that this hole was detached, and 
the dogs fell over each other with efforts to 
claw earth into it. Presently the hole was 
filled to the collar and the snake buried. On 
this filled hole the dogs danced with weird and 
uncanny glee. 
The other dog mob evidently rough handled 
