The west Tennessee star. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1888, 1888-06-22
THE GROUNDING.
An Animal That Is a Good Deal
Smarter Than He Looks.
How One Amused Himself with a Trap
Another Had LOts OF Fun with
Flock OF sagaciOus
Crows.

''Did you ever trap for a ground
hOgP" asked State Printer Z. F. Mey-
ers. "If not, don't you ever do it. In
the first place, if you catch your
grounding you won't know what to
to do with it, for the skin is no good
and the meat will spoil soap grease.
In the second place, you would never
catch one, for although the grounding
looks like "A chuckle-head he's smarter
than a mustard plaster. You will only
risk your trap if you try to catch a
grounding, for the chances are that
the sly old hibernator will come out of
his hole, spring the trap with a stick
or by tossing n stone on the plate and
then lug it off mile or so and bury it.
A friend of mine once set a trap to
catch grounding, and the ground
hog limited to him two or three times
that he didn't want the trap around
his diggings by carrying it away half
a mile and hanging it on a bush. But
my friend thought he knew what was
best for that grounding than the
patiently protesting rodent did him
self, and so kept on setting the trap
right in front Of the entrance to the
wood-chuck's dwelling-place.
Zone morning he went to look for
st, and when he got within long gun
shot of the hole he saw the grounding
dragging the trap by its chain off
across the field in the direction of my
friend barn. Tho owner of the barn
thought he would amuse himself by
quietly Watching the grounding to see
where he intended to hide the trap.
The grounding dragged the trap
straight to the barn, which was nearly
half n mile away, and my friend crept
along within easy distance of 1t. The
woodchuck took the trap around the
corner of the barn. My friend had a
young bird-dog chained in q kennel
behind the barn. He crept on after
the grounding, and peekng around
the corner, saw the cute little beast
steal up to one side of the kennel and
slyly shove the trap in front of the en-
trance. Then it gave the kennel kick
with both hind feet. Out bounced the
dog, slapped both fore feet in the trap,
and snap she went. The dog was
caught, and while his master was re-
leasing the yelping pup the ground
hog strobe away, and my friend says it
looked exactly as if it were shaking
all over with ghoulish glee. The trap
per took that hint right home with him
and made up his mind that unless he
quit trapping for that grounding it
would DO trapping for him next, and
so he quit.
May be you never went out after
crows with q gunP Don't go and waste
your time doing that either Crows
have n nice eye for a gun and big
nose for powder. You can make a
wooden gun so near like a real gun
that it would fool the best gunmake1
in the country, butt won fool crow.
You can shoulder that wooden gun and
start out thinking you will scare all the
crows out of the neighborhood on sight,
but they arc on to you at once. They
will sit right still on the fence,
in the cornheld, or in the tall, dead
tree, and just lie back and how
with Joy at the way YOU are being
fooled yourself, and won't go away
until YOU hit them with a stone The
crows will get and sail away for tho
next county before you come within hall
a mile of them. Why, if you should
shake hands with a charcoal man to
day, and year from to-day sit down
on a barrel of saltpeter, you couldn'
get within rifle range of a crow afteI
that They detect the smell of tina
combination Of charcoal and saltpetel
at once. and think you've got gun
powder about you. They know wha
powder can do. and off they 60
Speaking of crows and grounding
puts me in mind of funny thing saw
once while / was driving to Bedfor,
Springs. It was in July, and the roaC
was hot and dusty. / was driving
along, thinking what colossal fame an,
fortune awaited the man who shoulC
invent . beer key that you could carr,
under your wagon seat, and that would
keep beer ice-cold and fresh on tai
while the mercury was dallying witt
the top Of the thermometer, when
heard lot Of crows making a big fus
over in field of wheat stubble off t,
one side of the road. There were abou
fifty in the flock, and they wer,
conferred about certain spot on thu
field, and individual members weru
darting up and down and to and fro
and all the time using language tina
certainly would have been shocking I
translated into English. The nois
made by the combined throats of thu
fifty excited crows may be imagined b,
any one who has ever been within
listening distance Of a flock of crow
unusually disturbed. The way the,
were handling themselves and jawinl
made 1t plain that they had much NOR,
serious business on hand than their OF
binary drudgery in corn-tields and thei
day-long tussles with non-com bativ
scarecrows. stopped my horse an'
proceeded to observe as we'll as l coulC
what in the name of Sam Hill tn
rumpus was all about / wasn't Ions
in discovering that a grounding wa
the unfortunate creature OF all this dis
turbance. The grounding has as sen
sitive a palate 10 the grain that tum
HES down in the stubble as the GOV
has. and he had innocenuy venture,
from his hole to feed a little. Tn
crows had discovered him, and, look
inc upon him as an intruder, had a
oree set about ejecting hins. Tn
~oodohucks bulrow was on a piece o