The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1889-07-27


There are people out West-away
out West, / mean, among the Rocky
Mountains and beyond them-who in
sist that the mountain lion is the king
OF American beasts" said New Yorker
who spent several years in the country
he refers to. .'Others declare that the
grizzly bear is entitled to the throne of
the animal kingdom on this continent.
Still others say that neither the noun
tain lion nor the grizzly bear can have
any pretention to kingly title while
the silver-tip-that ponderous offspring
Of the savage grizzly himself and the
willy brown bear of the Rockies-pre-
sents his formidable claim to the dis
tinction. But. for all that, 1 want to
say that neither lion, grizzly, nor
silver-tip can truly be called king of
American wild beasts as long as the
meek-looking, mast-eating, little white
Tipped peccary roots and grunts around
among the scrub oak and other mast
and nut-bearing areas Of the wild
West
THAT unassuming little beast is as
much monarch of all he surveys in his
bailiwick as Robinson Crusoe was on
his island. A mountain lion may be
doing lively business in the king of
beasts line In some particular precinct,
levying tribute by the ton on the meat
Of his covering subjects, but just let
It become known that the humped-up
little peccary has come into the locality
to test its foraging possibilities, and
King Lion will abdicate so quick that
you can hear his throne totter, and he
won't remember that he claims to be
monarch until he has put good
stretch of country between him and
the invading peccaries. Or perhaps
some great hulk OF grizzly or
staggering silvertip, carrying nearly
ton of concentrated malevolence around
with him, has been running things
with high paw in some community.
A peccary is a solid chunk of his kind
If he weighs 200 pounds. But let either
grizzly or silvertip, staggering along
in offensive self-consciousness of his
superiority, come in sight of one of
these little chaps nosing around after
his dinner among the fallen mast. In
stantly the swagger is gone. The bear
suddenly acts as If he wishes he wasn't
30 big. BE, tries to draw himself into
as contracted = space as possible. and
puts all the speed he can into his enor-
nous legs as he turns his tail upon the
grunting peccary and seeks a new do
main to do his staggering in.
''As rule the peccary isn't looking
for fight He doesn't prey on other
animals. and dozen men may ride
past q feeding drove of them without
their paying any attention unless some
one of the party is SO unwise as to fire
shot into the drove. If one peccary
10 hurt the whole drove, and there may
be hundred or more in it, instantly
abandons all other business as one pee
cary, and never does another thing
until the injury done to one of its num-
Der Is avenged, If vengeance is posi-
BILE. A man who has thus brought
down upon himself the enmity of a
drove of peccaries needs be well
mounted If he would escape their fury.
They will follow him at an amazing
pace for miles, and will not relinquish
the chase so long rs there is any hope
of overtaking the object of their pur-
suit. If he is overtaken and sur
rounded, it will not be the work of ten
seconds for the peccaries to strew the
plain with infinitesimal fragments of
himself and his horse. If man on
foot should be foolhardy enough to fire
into drove OF peccaries, and one of
them should give the peculiar snort
that calls for vengeance, it is hardly
necessary to say that the smoke of his
gun would have scarcely cleared away
before he would be separated into bits
80 small that one big enough to make
the proverbial grease spot could not
possibly be found. Experienced plains
men know this popularity of the pee
cary, and never give the animal reason
for even the slightest suspicion that
they would disturb its serenity. Like
tho mountain lion, the grizzly and the