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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Because, before he was born, his mother had probably spoken of a negro," answered Pique-Vinaigre, with modest assurance. "To this ornament, Cut-in-half joined the trade of having I do not know how many tortoises, apes, guinea-pigs, white mice, foxes and marmots, with an equal number of little Savoyards.
Sand grouse were plentiful, half running, half flying before us as we advanced, and when we were well in the desert we saw eagles in large numbers, and farther north the marmots abounded, in appearance and ways much like prairie dogs. At first there were herds on every side.
It was especially gratifying to catch these marmots so easily, for we had been told in Urga that the Mongols could not trap them. I was at a loss to understand why, for they are closely related to the "woodchucks" of America with which every country boy is familiar. Later I learned the reason for the failure of the natives.
The marmots are splendid prospectors, always digging deep ditches, throwing out on the surface all the stones. In many places I saw mounds the marmots had made from copper ore and farther north some from minerals containing wolfram and vanadium. Whenever the marmot is at the entrance of his hole, he sits up straight on his hind legs and looks like a bit of wood, a small stump or a stone.
For the first time he smelled and tasted the warm blood of meat. And this smell and taste had come at the psychological moment in his life, just as it had come in Thor's life years before. All grizzlies are not killers of big game. In fact, very few of them are. Most of them are chiefly vegetarians, with a meat diet of smaller animals, such as gophers, whistling marmots, and porcupines.
They were very little smaller than the tawny marmots; but their tails were larger and more slender, which rendered their appearance more graceful. Their chief beauty, however, lay in their colours and markings.
"Well, madam, as they are wishing, at any rate they may as well wish that chinchillas and marmots wore their fur in the form of boas and muffs, that turkeys produced perigord pies, and that the fish were drawn out of the sea ready roasted or boiled." "Or that the sheep walked about in the form of nicely grilled chops," suggested Becker. "And you, young ladies, what would you wish?"
In order that this may not prove a cause of danger, it is always made to open up in the midst of brushwood or in a tuft of rushes and reeds. Marmots also are not afraid of the work which will assure them a warm and safe refuge in the regions they inhabit, where the climate is rough.
They are sometimes shot with guns; but, unless killed upon the spot, they will escape to their burrows, and tumble in before the hunter can lay his hands upon them." Perhaps Lucien would have carried his account of the marmots still farther for he had not told half what he knew of their habits but he was at that moment interrupted by the marmots themselves.
Then they had the marmot, roasted in its skin, for supper, and all the three were too hungry to ask themselves if marmot flesh was as toothsome as rabbit or as bitter as squirrel! And Tumbu ate the bones with an air as if he would say, "It is not bad, but to-morrow I must catch two marmots."
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