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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 20, 1908. 
“Much obliged, Mr. Keith, I am ready to go 
any time,” I ventured to suggest. 
“All right, git yer horse an’ come on.” 
I found the old fellow of seventy to be one of 
the keenest observers I have ever met. His 
attention seemed principally to be directed at 
bobcats and prairie dogs, though he had a won¬ 
derful knowledge of other animals. Trapping 
he never tired talking about. Gradually I 
learned that his equipment was not complete 
for his purpose and agreed to order some ad¬ 
ditional traps and paraphernalia, for trapping 
was a weakness of mine also. It was a genuine 
pleasure to talk to him. 
Down the valley a couple of miles we crossed 
the river, tied our horses and approached a 
great bluff which rose perpendicularly a hun¬ 
dred feet or more. At the bottom there was an 
opening large enough for a man to crawl into 
and leading to it was a well-defined path. 
As we passed along Mr. Keith stooped and 
observed, “Bobcat tracks a-plenty. We’ll git 
one, shore. I haven’t trapped here this year.” 
He went to a bush nearby, picked up a bunch of 
traps, some pieces of wire and three dead quail 
and returned to the path. 
Digging several holes the size of his No. 4 
traps, we set them, placed paper especially cut 
for the purpose over the treddles, then covered 
them, so there was practically no evidence of 
the earth having been disturbed. He also dug 
trenches for the chains, covered them and with 
wire fastened the ends to roots of big trees. He 
took no precaution against human scent, saying 
he would with wolf, and maybe with coyote, but 
not with bobcat, as it was not necessary. He 
walked away from the bluff, so that all of the 
traps were between him and the great rock, tore 
feathers from his birds and dropped the birds 
into the trail. “We’ll have a cat, shore!” he 
said as we parted. 
The next morning I jumped on my horse and 
started to the bluff, but Mr. Keith had pre¬ 
ceded me there. “Got him all right!” he ex¬ 
claimed when I came into view. And I saw 
the big cat tugging at the chain, while the old 
man and his bulldog, Tige, stood back, inter¬ 
ested spectators. 
“I can make Tige kill him if he is big,” he 
boasted. “But I don’t want to git ’im cut up.” 
We watched the cat for some time, then, with 
a big stick, he killed the brute. He was a 
powerful man, even if quite aged. 
Seemingly he thought of nothing but cats, traps 
and prairie dogs, and the entire day we spent 
in looking over his various catalogues and pam¬ 
phlets and scheming against the wild things. 
He never desired to kill a prairie dog, as I 
didn’t; he merely wished to catch them to pet 
and study them. Late in the afternoon he rode 
away, saying we would have another cat the fol¬ 
lowing morning. And so we did. Out of that 
bluff we caught four, then directed our attention 
to the prairie dogs. His farm and wife he 
seemed to forget altogether until late in the 
afternoon, when he would gallop off home, but 
lie would invariably return the next morning. 
There were hundreds of dogs in holes in 
front of the house, but catching them was not 
quite so easy as the uninitiated imagine. Our 
smallest traps were No. 1, and we set these, 
sunken into the ground and covered with dirt, 
around many holes. But it was several days 
before we caught one of the little quadrupeds. 
We had constructed a little cage in a V-shaped 
corner, using window-screen wire, and into that 
we placed the little fellow, but we were short¬ 
sighted in putting only a slight weight on top of 
it, and during our absence the dog climbed to 
the top, pushed it up with his nose, and es¬ 
caped. 
Mr. Keith was sorely disappointed. “We’ll 
git another and as many as we want! You jest 
see!” 
The next morning he came with his wagon, 
five barrels and many buckets. I had “Ihe 
Prairie Dog of the Great Plains,” by Dr. C. 
Hart Merriam, and by a former experience, I 
knew that his diagram on page 261 was accurate 
—sometimes; so I did not go into the thing 
with the same degree of enthusiasm that my 
trapper friend evinced. At the spring I filled 
buckets and handed them up until his barrels 
were filled, when we drove to a dog hole. Four 
loads in all we hauled to that hole without filling 
it. And four days in all we devoted to hauling 
water, but “nary er dog did we git.” 
“Just watch the hole you see a dog go in last 
at night,” Mr. Miers suggested. “There he lives 
and there is but one entrance to it.” 
Taking this suggestion, I marked many holes; 
into them I threw rag balls saturated with 
kerosene and fired, so as to burn up the food 
which is usually at the bottom; then.in each I 
set a No. o steel trap; and lastly I covered the 
tops over, so as to make it quite dark and thus 
prevent the little quadrupeds from avoiding the 
traps in their endeavors to get out. This scheme 
was perfectly successful, and I caught all of the 
dogs I wished. 
Many plainsmen will tell you that they can be 
drowned out quite readily, and it really seems 
it might be done; yet as a result of perhaps fifty 
efforts I have caught but four dogs, and they 
came from one hole in the flats just north of the 
Capitan Mountains in New Mexico, into which 
I turned an irrigating ditch, although the ditch 
was turned into many other holes also at the 
same time. 
One dog slightly more than half grown I 
kept near me for the purpose of taming and ob¬ 
serving. For three or four days he was sullen, 
but at the end of that time he began to eat 
cooked prunes, sugar and sweet potatoes and 
drink an abnormal amount of water for. an 
animal of his size; and at length he would rear 
up on his hind legs and yell if his food and 
drink were not supplied regularly. No bed 
would suit him. He would cut up bags and 
other soft material and arrange and rearrange 
his home. Yet somehow he could never please 
himself and finally he began to occupy my host’s 
bed, going under the top quilt usually. And if 
there were any attempts to remove him, he 
would become furious and bark and snap and 
jump as if he were a great beast. He would 
even grab my finger in his mouth but never bite 
it. Even in the middle of the night he would 
leave his own bed, if he had been made to go 
there, and climb up on the big bed. 
At the house at that time was a pretty yellow 
kitten which laid claim to the bed part of the 
day, and I feared he and the dog might get inlo 
a rumpus; so my surprise can easily be 
imagined when I observed the kitten pinning 
the dog under the cover with his forepaws, so 
the little prairi'e animal could barely move. Yet 
when the kitten finally relaxed, the little fellow 
came forth, licked the kitten’s mouth, and told 
him something in prairie-dog language and the 
two lay down together much as two kittens 
would. Thereafter they were the best of friends, 
sleeping side by side every day. 
Altogether the little dog was one of the 
keenest animals in intelligence I have ever 
known, although he could never understand the 
glass in the windows. For an hour at a time I 
have seen him examine and paw it. This he did 
repeatedly, even after he became so gentle as to 
be given his freedom. 
Occasionally a stray dog would be brought 
into the room to warm. Often he would just 
about arrive at his ease, when little Buck would 
stick his teeth into one of his toes, then dart 
away. He never liked dogs. Yet he seemed 
naturally to be a fighter. I have known him to 
leave the house, go into a dog hole and fight, 
evidently returning scarred and bleeding. 
As to prairie dogs and snakes, there are many 
contradictory statements, so I observed Buck 
very carefully one day, when I saw him run 
almost on a rattler near a hole. He stood back 
until the rattler went into the ground, when he 
took a careful survey of the surroundings, piled 
in dirt as fast as he could until it was filled and 
battered it hard with his nose. Nor did he stop 
at this. He went directly to another hole, into 
which he knew that one opened, perchance, and 
filled it likewise. 
Buck was death on rats, although of course 
he did not eat them. 
I was relating a fierce encounter he had with a 
large rat one night, when a man remarked, 
“Yes, prairie dogs beat cats for killing rats. 
An old uncle of mine in Texas learned that 
many years ago, and when wharf rats were 
about to overrun Forth Worth, he caught and 
tamed about thirty prairie dogs and took them 
to town. He told the merchants what they 
would do, but they hardly believed him. Finally 
a number of them agreed to go near the depot 
where his wagon was and where rats were, also, 
and let him demonstrate. Six pet dogs were 
loosened, boards were raised so rats were in 
full view, and in less than no time the dogs had 
killed and piled up twenty. So his dogs were 
sold like hot-cakes. He got five dollars a pair 
for them and special places were made for them 
in the big stores. And they did the work.” 
As to whether this statement is true or not, I 
do not know, though I have owned prairie dogs 
other than Buck which killed rats. Buck was 
never happier than when I brought his sister 
from the smokehouse to live with him. He 
was wild with delight. She was very different 
from him. Her bed she would accept as it was 
provided, and while she liked also to get on the 
large bed, she would never leave her own if she 
were placed there; neither would she cut it in 
the least, nor did she ever exhibit a bellicose 
spirit. Perfectly kind and quiet she was in her 
disposition, but also she was shiftless and never 
attempted to do anything for herself. 
As to what became of Buck I never knew. I 
left him asleep under the stove one day—his 
head between his fore feet and sitting half up¬ 
right—and when I returned, I found the door 
open, Buck absent and by the stove a setter 
dog, which chased prairie dogs half of the day, 
so I presume he killed him. His sister was 
killed by something on the porch, and there I 
found her, still warm. 
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