If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, I suppose the breath
of the obscene fungus by any other name would smell as rank. The
defensive weapon of our black-and-white wood pussy would probably not be
less offensive if we called him by that name alone, instead of the
common one by which he is universally known.
While in southern California last winter I heard of one that took up his
abode in the basement of a house that stood on the side of a hill in the
edge of the country. It was in a sort of lumber-room where all sorts of
odds and ends had accumulated. On some shelves was a box of
miscellaneous articles, such as lids to tin cans, bed castors, old
toothbrushes, bits of broken crockery, pieces of wire, chips of wood,
and the dried foot and leg of a hen. One morning, on opening the door of
the basement, the mistress of the house was surprised to see the whole
collection of trash laid out in a line across the floor. The articles
were placed with some degree of regularity covering a space about
fifteen inches wide and ten feet in length. There were sixty-one
articles in the row.
Having such an unsavory creature in the basement of one's house is
rather ticklish business; not so perilous as a stick of dynamite, yet
fraught with unpleasant possibilities. They cleared away the exhibit and
left the door open, hoping their uninvited guest would take his
departure. But he did not. A few nights later he began another
collection, finding a lot of new material--among other things a box with
old atomizer bulbs, four of which bulbs he arranged here and there, in
the row--a motley array.
What is his object? I confess I do not know. No one has seen him do it,
as he works at night, but there is little doubt that it is his work.[3]
The Western skunk is a small creature, not much bigger than a gray
squirrel. He can hide behind a dustpan.
[3] Later investigations point to this having been the
work of a wood rat instead of a skunk.--C. B.
I wish some one would tell me why this night prowler so often seems to
spray the midnight air with his essence which leaves no trace by day. He
never taints his own fur with it. In the wilds our Eastern species is
as free from odor as a squirrel or a woodchuck. Kill or disturb one by
day or night in his haunts, and he leaves an odor on the ground that
lasts for months. While at a friend's house in the Catskills last August
a wood pussy came up behind the kitchen and dug in the garbage-heap. We
saw him from the window in the early evening, and we smelled him. For
some reason he betrayed his presence. Late that night I was awakened by
a wave of his pungent odor; it fairly made my nose smart, yet in the
morning no odor could be detected anywhere about the place. Of course
the smell is much more pronounced in the damp night air than by day, yet
this does not seem an adequate explanation. Does he signal at night to
his fellows by his odor? He has no voice, so far as I know. I have never
heard him make a vocal sound. When caught in a trap, or besieged by dogs
in a stone wall, he manifests his displeasure by stamping his feet. He
is the one American who does not hurry through life. I have no proof
that he ever moves faster than a walk, or that by any sign, he ever
experiences the feeling of fear, so common to nearly all our smaller
animals. His track upon the snow is that of a creature at peace with all
the world.