. Wild life near home . o. stare the Great Stone Faceout of countenance if you wish, but when askunk begins to sidle toward you, do not try tostare him out of the path ; just sidle in the direc-tion he sidles, and sidle as fast as you can. Late one afternoon I was reading by the sideof a little ravine on one of the islands in CascoBay. The sharp, rocky walls of the cut wereshaded by scrub-pines and draped with dewberry-vines. Presently the monotonous slop of thesurf along the shore, growing fainter as the tideebbed, was broken by a stir in the dry leaves atthe bottom of the ravine. I listened.
. Wild life near home . o. stare the Great Stone Faceout of countenance if you wish, but when askunk begins to sidle toward you, do not try tostare him out of the path ; just sidle in the direc-tion he sidles, and sidle as fast as you can. Late one afternoon I was reading by the sideof a little ravine on one of the islands in CascoBay. The sharp, rocky walls of the cut wereshaded by scrub-pines and draped with dewberry-vines. Presently the monotonous slop of thesurf along the shore, growing fainter as the tideebbed, was broken by a stir in the dry leaves atthe bottom of the ravine. I listened. Somethingwas moving below me. Creeping cautiously tothe edge, I looked down, and there, in a narrowyard between two boulders, not ten feet beneathme, was a family of seven young skunks. They were about three weeks old,—kittens,the natives called them,—and seemed to be play-ing some kind of a rough-and-tumble game to-gether. Funny little bunches of black and whitethey were, with pointed noses, beady black eyes,[283]. *-^s^t^ iv* A family of seven yomig skunks. and very grand tails. They were jet-black, ex-cept for white tips to their tails and a purewhite mark beginning on the top of their headsand dividing down their sides like the letter Y. My presence was unsuspected and their playwent on. It was a sight worth the rest of thevacation. When you find wild animals so far offtheir guard as to play, do as Captain Cuttle sug-gests—make a note of it. It is a red-letterexperience. I doubt if there is another set of childrenin all the out-of-doors so apparently incapableof playing as a set of young skunks. Youhave watched lambs stub and wabble about intheir gambols, clumsy and unsafe upon their legsbecause there was so little body to hold down somuch legs. These young skunks were clumsierthan the wabbliest-legged lambkin that you eversaw, and for just the opposite reason—there wasso little legs to hold up so much hodj. Suchhumpty-dumpty babies! They fell over eachother, over
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
