bt 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.

V. CHANCE IN ANIMAL LIFE

Chance plays a much larger part in the lives of some animals than of
others. The frog and the toad lay hundreds of eggs, the fishes spawn
thousands, but most birds lay only five or six eggs.

A spendthrift with one hand, Nature is often a miser with the other. She
lets loose an army of worms upon the forests, and then sends an
ichneumon-fly to check them. She wastes no perfume or color upon the
flowers which depend upon the wind to scatter their pollen.
Cross-fertilization is dear to her, and she invents many ingenious ways
to bring it about, as in certain orchids. She will rob the bones of the
fowl of their lime to perfect the shell of the egg. She wastes no wit or
cunning on the porcupine or on the skunk, because she has already
endowed each of