On the plains and along the broad bottoms of the Missouri
River are the colonies--often a community of many members,
with villages of wide extent--of the American marmots, or
prairie-dogs. Merry, cheery, chipper little fellows these
gregarious villagers sit on the mound above or beside the open
door that leads to their comfortable subterranean dwellings, and
hold converse in short not unmusical barks, each greeting his
neighbor and rejoicing in the sunshine. But into the sanctity
of the home which he and his have constructed with much labor,
the burrowing owl comes, uninvited, and becomes a tenant with a
life lease, without so much as “by your leave”; and one of the
most atrocious results of this swindling arrangement is that the
dog (a strict vegetarian) finds that the owl, whose young shares
the nest with the infant marmots, feeds upon them and rears
its young upon the bodies of the children of its victimized
landlord.--Mrs. M. J. GORTON, _Popular Science
News_.
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