So they crouched and hid, like a cat, and
when a gray streak shot over the gray moss and vanished in a tuft of
grass they leaped for the spot--and always found it vacant. For Tookhees
always doubles on his trail, or burrows for a distance under the moss,
and never hides where he disappears. It took the cubs a long while to
find that out; and then they would creep and watch and listen till they
could locate the game by a stir under the moss, and pounce upon it and
nose it out from between their paws, just as they had done with the
grasshoppers. And when they crunched it at last like a ripe plum under
their teeth it was a delicious tidbit, worth all the trouble they had
taken to get it. For your wolf, unlike the ferocious, grandmother-eating
creature of the nursery, is at heart a peaceable fellow, most at home
and most happy when mouse hunting.
There was another kind of this mouse chasing which furnished better
sport and more juicy mouthfuls to the young cubs. Here and there on the
Newfoundland mountains the snow lingers all summer long. In every
northern hollow of the hills you see, from a distance, white patches no
bigger than your hat sparkling in the sun; but when you climb there,
after bear or caribou, you find great snow-fields, acres in extent and
from ten to a hundred feet deep, packed close and hard with the pressure
of a thousand winters.
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