Dec. 16, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
875 
A Weasel’s Work. 
Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pa., Dec. 9 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: I send you the accompany¬ 
ing photograph, thinking you may be interested 
in seeing the result of one night’s forage last 
summer of the little white miscreant shown in 
the trap to the left. He was caught on his re¬ 
turn visit the night following. These were full 
grown English pheasants, part of a flock of about 
one hundred occupying a cage 150 feet long by 
75 feet wide. The murderers entered through a 
defective mesh of the cage wire. He apparently 
was fired by the lust for killing only, as the birds 
were left untouched except the fatal deep bite 
in the neck. 
A remarkable feature of the occurrence is that 
his work was done so stealthily; none of the oc¬ 
cupants of the cage made any disturbance what¬ 
ever. The dogs that were on watch, trained to 
give notice of anything unusual, remained quiet 
throughout the night. 
Do any of your readers know how a weasel 
attacks a bird of this size and strength and dis¬ 
patches him with such awful celerity that the 
victim has no time to rise from the ground or 
shake himself clear? These pheasants were all 
powerful fliers. They could have dashed them¬ 
selves and him to death against the wires. His 
assault must evidently have been so swift and 
sure as to produce in every case practically in¬ 
stant death. Chas. C. Worthington. 
Wild Animals in Yellowstone Park. 
The wild animals in Yellowstone Park, which 
constitute so attractive a feature of the park, 
are discussed in detail in the annual report of 
the superintendent just made public by the De¬ 
partment of the Interior. 
“The bears,” says the superintendent, “seem 
to be increasing; at least, they have been very 
plentiful during the past summer around the 
hotels and camps. They are very tame. During 
the summer two grizzlies and three black bears, 
becoming dangerous to life and property, were 
killed. In one or two instances men who have 
become too bold with bears have been attacked 
and severely injured, usually by a mother bear 
that thought she was defending her cubs, but in¬ 
vestigation of cases of this kind usually results 
in a conclusion that the bear is not entirely to 
blame. During the summer there have been cap¬ 
tured and shipped alive to public parks, under 
authority of the department, the following bears: 
A mother grizzly with a pair of cubs, and a male 
grizzly to the Zoological Society of Philadelphia; 
a pair of grizzlies (male and female) to River- 
dale Zoological Gardens, Toronto, Canada; a 
mother grizzly with a pair of cubs and a male 
grizzly to Swope Park Zoological Gardens, of 
Kansas City, Mo.; and a pair of black bears 
(male and female) to the city park at West 
Bend, Iowa. 
“The fenced herd of buffalo is thriving and 
now consists of 147 head. On the date of last 
report there were 121 head—sixty-one males and 
sixty females. During the spring and summer 
twenty-nine calves were born, and on Sept. 28 
one of these, a female, was found with a broken 
leg and had to be killed. The heads, skeletons 
and robes of those that had to be killed, together 
with those of the yearling calf that died Sept. 
1, 1910, were shipped to the National Museum, 
Washington, D. C, for use as mounted speci¬ 
mens. Fifteen bulls were brought in from the 
Lamar Valley to Mammoth Hot Springs where 
they were kept under fence for exhibition. 
“Practically all of the deer that remain in the 
park during the winter are found within a few 
miles of Fort Yellowstone, where they are fed 
hay, and both white-tailed and black-tailed deer 
become very tame, many of them eating from 
the hand. About 1,000 black-tailed deer were 
counted last winter, and while many of them 
died (probably at least 100 in this vicinity), the 
loss was not considered excessive in view of the 
fact that the winter seemed to be a particularly 
hard one on the game. The white-tailed deer, 
of which there has never been above 100, win¬ 
tered well and seem to be holding their own and 
probably increasing slowly. 
“Elk in certain portions of the park are very 
numerous, and are numbered by thousands both 
in winter and summer. Last winter the deep 
snows drove them down in large herds from the 
latter part of November on and many of them 
drifted into Montana, where they did much dam¬ 
age to haystacks, fields and fences on the ranches 
near the park. Another result was to make good 
hunting in Montana along the park line during 
the closing days of the open season. At the last 
session the Montana State Legislature set aside 
a strip several miles in width and extending a’ong 
the park line from where it crosses the Yellow¬ 
stone River, west to the northwest corner, thence 
south along the, west line for about seven miles, 
as a game preserve, and this will be of great 
assistance in protecting the .game in the park. 
“The small flock of mountain sheep that win¬ 
ters on the slopes of. Mount Everts and in Gardi¬ 
ner Canon seems to be thriving. Hay is fed to 
these animals in winter, when they become very 
tame and are seen at close quarters. 
“In addition to the animals mentioned above, 
mountain lions, lynx, otters, foxes, badgers, 
beavers, marten, mink, muskrats and different 
varieties of rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks are 
found. Beavers are particularly plentiful and 
are found in nearly every stream in the park. 
“More than seventy species of birds, including 
pelicans, ducks, geese, swan and other water- 
fowl inhabit the park during the summer, and 
some of them, including some of the waterfowl, 
remain during the winter. Eight young pelicans 
that were captured at Pelican Roost in Yellow¬ 
stone Lake and held and fed during the summer 
were shipped by express to the National Zoo¬ 
logical Park at Washington, D. C., on Sept. 27, 
where they arrived in good condition on Oct. 1.” 
Blue Goose on Long Island. 
New York City, Nov. 26.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: A few days ago at the taxidermist 
shop of Thomas Rowland, in Sixth avenue, I 
was shown in the flesh a wild goose in a plum¬ 
age new to me, but which examination showed 
to. be a young female blue goose. It answers 
very well the book description of the young of 
that species. The only white on it is on the 
chin. 
As this bird is unusual in this part of the 
country, I made inquiry as to where it had been 
killed, and learned from John H. Prentice, of 
this city, that he took it at Montauk Point, L. I., 
about Nov. 10. He was goose shooting with 
live Canada goose decoys, and the bird in ques¬ 
tion came alone to the decoys. G. B. G. 
the weasel and his victims. 
