Another Woodland Tragedy 
DEAR FoREST & STREAM: 
DESCRIPTION of my personal ob- 
servation of the weasel’s method of 
attack, its ,unrivaled boldness and 
merciless rapacity, may interest those 
readers of Forest & STREAM who are 
denied the enjoyment of browsing in 
this inviting field of nature study. For 
the first time in more than six decades 
of outdoor recreation I have been priv- 
ileged to witness this arch assassin at 
work. *Every requisite element was 
present to insure a superb motion pic- 
ture of the tragedy—open spaces, splen- 
did light and perfect view—but, alas, 
the necessary mechanical properties 
were lacking. 
Immersed in peaceful quiet, I was 
seated alone, a few days since, at the 
base of a lofty wooded ridge near Hunt- 
ingdon. At my feet flowed a wide, 
gentle stream of mountain birth, from 
which the town obtains its generous 
water supply. The reigning spirit of 
quiet and contentment suffered only the 
agreeable intrusion of carroling birds. 
The summer’s fullness of beauty in 
stream and forest, in bird and flower, 
was there in complete interpretation of 
Nature’s generous bounty. But this 
sense of elysian repose was destined to 
fade, and that quickly. 
Through a heavy carpet of crisp, 
dead leaves from the wooded ridge 
above came the sound of hurrying feet. 
No vocal accompaniment was audible, 
but a constantly increasing speed was 
maintained until there suddenly burst 
into view a leaping red squirrel closely 
pursued by a weasel, which seemed to 
be trailing by scent alone. The in- 
stinctive fear and hopelessness of the 
squirrel were clearly apparent in its 
every movement. Yet in the very pres- 
ence of death it made a most heroic ef- 
fort to escape. 
On arriving at one of the large hem- 
lock trees nearby, the squirrel speedliy 
ascended to nearly the topmost branch, 
with the weasel closely pursuing. Then 
climbing out on one of the smaller limbs, 
hoping thereby to prevent its pursuer 
from following with its weightier body, 
the squirrel reached at last the very 
tip of the branch and there hung sus- 
pended over the flowing stream below, 
a distance of thirty feet or more. But 
the murderous weasel was not to be de- 
prived of its prey in that manner. 
Crouching closely on the frail and nar- 
row branch with its long, sinuous body, 
it slowly and cautiously wormed its 
way outward to within a few inches of 
the quivering squirrel. The latter, be- 
coming frenzied beyond all bounds of 
self-mastery, suddenly released its hold, 
and plunging downward into the stream 
began swimming valiantly toward the 
shore. 
Page 39 
As the squirrel dropped, the weasel, 
with an almost incredible rapidity, de- 
scended the tree, leaped down the em- 
bankment -of the stream and _ stood 
mercilessly waiting for its victim as it 
emerged from the water. Just as the 
hapless squirrel had reached its hoped- 
for haven of safety, the weasel quickly 
seized it by the neck and hastening with 
its prey up the embankment ‘disap- 
peared under a dense entanglement of 
roots and boulders, to indulge in its 
nauseous banquet of blood. Presently 
it reappeared at the entrance to its 
charnel house, impudently leering with 
its beady black eyes, and by its boldly 
defiant attitude apparently challenging 
any interference with its revolting 
habit of indiscriminate slaughter. 
All through the enactment of this 
woodland tragedy the wanton weasel 
showed no apparent concern at my ef- 
forts, though futile, to save the life of 
the squirrel; but with a ferocity and 
intrepidity unapproached by any other 
quadruped, relative to size, it confirmed 
its merited reputation of a ruthless and 
insatiable destroyer of helpless wild 
life. 
Wn. M. GRAFFIUS, 
Huntingdon, Pa. 
Passenger Pigeon Experiences 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
I AM a reader of your pages, and 
having been an “Outer” since early 
childhood, say since Dr. Piatt H. An- 
derson’s experience with the once plenti- 
ful but now extinct “Wild Pigeon,” in 
1878, so that I can verify his statement 
as to their casting shadows so dark, 
when flying overhead, that the ground 
below looked as though a storm were 
about to break; and well do I remember 
though one year younger than he, and 
never then having shot a gun, that I 
would fling a stick or brick at them, 
but though expecting to kill 100 or so, 
always just missed, and would have 
easily done it so low would they fly, 
had I been a little older and stronger. 
But there we’d go to the woods where 
they would light on a limb to roost, 
break the limb, and in the scramble 
plenty would be killed to fill a good sized 
basket. 
Dr. Anderson came from the same 
town in which the writer was born, 
Brownsville, Haywood County, Ten- 
nessee, and I can vouch for the fact that 
he did not in the least exaggerate about 
the flight of “Wild Pigeons” in 1878. 
Since then I have never seen one. I 
never shot a gun until I became 12 years 
old in 1882. The year of the long- 
tailed comet, seen in November, the 
whole month as I remember I was in 
camp at what is called “Open Lake” in 
Lauderdale Co., Tenn., on the Missis- 

A big cat 
sippi. My father who was a great lover 
of outdoor life was in camp there, and 
took me along for his usual 10 days’ 
camp which was always in November 
after the first black frost had killed 
summer vegetation and mosquitoes, for 
Open Lake is a body of water about 3 
miles wide and 6 or 8 miles long, filled 
with spruce and cypress stumps and 
stumps and logs, where the big fellows 
of big mouth black bass variety were in 
abundance, along with schools of hardly 
less than a dozen or two croppies. On 
one occasion he tired of the sport, as 
did I, as it was no trouble literally to 
cover the boat’s bottom in an hour’s 
fishing, and took me over in the wild 
cany woods where cane was 12 to 14 
feet high and an inch in diameter at 
base, to another shallow brockish body 
of water a mile distant from the reg- 
ular camp-site, to teach me to shoot the 
first breech-loading gun ever brought 
to Brownsville, a “Weber Double-bar- 
relled, London Eng.” 
The first and unexpected target we 
spied was, on first sight of the gleam- 
ing waters of this sought after “Right 
Arm” as it was called, what appeared 
to be a million mallards floating all 
huddled up together. 
He cautioned me to kneel down, rest 
my gun in fork of a shrub, cock both 
hammers, shut one eye, aim and pull 
one trigger and the other immediately 
afterwards. I shut both eyes and 
pulled both triggers. My first gun shot 
killed seven wild ducks, all mallards. 
I have never killed that many at. any 
hunt since, though an annual camper 
