THE STRIPED MUISHOND OR STINK CAT 
for the reason that its food is of a strictly 
vegetarian nature, and it plays havoc with the crops 
and vegetable gardens. 
The muishond, however, has incurred the hatred 
of the poultry breeder. One of these bloodthirsty 
little fellows gained access to my fowl-house one 
night and killed twenty-one fowls. In each case 
the neck bones near the base of the skull were 
crushed, or the throat torn out, or both. ‘The 
dogs the following morning traced the murderer 
to an adjacent tree. It was lodged between two 
large branches ten feet from the ground. When 
dragged down and killed it was found to be greatly 
distended with the blood of its victims. This is 
the only instance I have known of a muishond 
climbing a tree. 
The muishond is exceedingly tough and hard 
to kill. I have seen them worried by large dogs, 
and apparently they were little short of a pulpy 
mass, yet when cast aside they were found in an 
hour or two to have revived and had vanished into 
the bush. On an occasion one of them was sur- 
prised in the act of devouring a pigeon, and my 
native boy gave chase, and overtaking it battered the 
creature with a stout stick until it was apparently 
dead. Bringing the muishond home, he cast it upon 
the roof of an outhouse, and returning in an hour’s 
time to skin it, he found it had vanished. He 
traced its spoor in the mud for some distance, 
but failed to recover it. 
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