46 
Northern Trails. Book I 
It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that 
game is not to be picked up tamely, like huckleberries, 
and changed their style of hunting, — creeping,* instead 
of trotting openly so that even a porcupine must notice 
them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass 
till the precise moment came, and then leaping with the 
swoop of a goshawk on a ptarmigan. A wolf that can¬ 
not catch a grasshopper has no business hunting rabbits 
— this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led 
the old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the 
thickets where game was hiding plentifully and take 
her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the edge of the 
caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted 
elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry 
moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their 
paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their 
mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle 
to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. 
Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharp¬ 
ened like exclamation points, to find another grasshopper. 
Small business indeed and often ludicrous, this play¬ 
ing at grasshopper hunting. So it seems to us; so also, 
perhaps, to the wise old mother, which knew all the ways 
of game, from crickets to caribou and from ground spar¬ 
rows to wild geese. But play is the first great educator, 
— that is as true of animals as of men, — and to the 
cubs their rough helter-skelter after hoppers was as 
