Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
Cottontails I found up to eight or nine thousand feet, but even higher I ran across their cousins, the snowshoe. He quite excelled me in manipulating his "webs" his tremendous hind feet with long, clawlike toes, covered with stiff and, I judged, waterproof hairs. He made his way nimbly over the soft, deep snow, while I on my webs often floundered and fell.
It means escape from a man or dog, a fox or a bird of prey, but it means sudden death if the foe is a ferret, mink, skunk, or weasel. There were but two ground-holes in the Swamp. One on the Sunning Bank, which was a dry sheltered knoll in the South-end. It was open and sloping to the sun, and here on fine days the Cottontails took their sun-baths.
Evidently she thought she had made an important discovery, for she several times paused and looked in our direction and barked. But we were too hungry to investigate, and soon she disappeared from our view. When we reached the ambulance the boys put a few cakes of hard bread in their pockets, and, taking their shot-guns, went out to look for some "cottontails" while supper was being prepared.
Amongst them, the travelers had bagged numerous quail and cottontails, and Jonas had brought in at noon a huge jack rabbit. This they could not eat but its left hind foot, Jonas claimed, would make a sensation in Washington. Supper was a festive meal, Na-che producing a rabbit soup, and Jonas broiling the quail, which he served with hot biscuit that the most accomplished chef might have envied.
But Rag's life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call old age. The Cottontails had enemies on every side. Their daily life was a series of escapes.
"No one of the animals would have gotten us into such a fix but those Cottontails," he said. "In the first place, their ears are so short they never heard quickly like some others of that family, and then those tails why they can be seen for yards and yards. I should have known better than to ask them. "And everyone knows they have no sense.
Ranger was the name of a young hound in the neighborhood. To train him his master used to put him on the trail of one of the Cottontails. It was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young buck enjoyed the runs as much as they did, the spice of danger in them being just enough for zest. He would say: "Oh, mother! here comes the dog again, I must have a run to-day."
"Simple justice," said the old man, "for that hide was raised on stolen feed that the team would a' turned into horse-power anyway." The Cottontails were now sole owners of the holes, and did not go near them when they could help it, lest anything like a path should be made that might betray these last retreats to an enemy.
If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was only the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted.
What a pack they were! Thin, undersized black-and-tans, or spotted beasts of doubtful breed, called "houn's" by courtesy; long legged, sleepy watch-dogs from the "quarters," brindled or "yaller" mongrels, which even courtesy could not term other than "kyur dogs"; sharp-voiced "fises," busier than bees, hunting like fury, as if they expected to find rats in every tuft of grass; and, when the hares got up, bouncing and bobbing along, not much bigger than the "molly cottontails" they were after, getting in everyone's way and receiving sticks and stones in profusion, but with their spirits unbroken.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking