* * * * *
Soon the food that was brought home at dawn--the rabbit or grouse, or
the bunch of rats hanging by their tails, with which the mother
supplemented their midday drink of milk--became altogether too scant to
satisfy their clamorous appetites; and in the bright afternoons and the
long summer twilights the mother led them forth on short journeys to
hunt for themselves. No big caribou or cunning fox cub, as one might
suppose, but "rats and mice and such small deer" were the limit of the
mother's ambition for her little ones. They began on stupid grubs that
one could find asleep under stones and roots, and then on beetles that
scrambled away briskly at the first alarm, and then, when the sunshine
was brightest, on grasshoppers,--lively, wary fellows that zipped and
buzzed away just when you were sure you had them, and that generally
landed from an astounding jump facing in a different direction, like a
flea, so as to be ready for your next move.
It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that game is not to be
picked up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of
hunting,--creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine
must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till
the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on
a ptarmigan.
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