Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-01-03
SN0WYRUFF FINDS FOOD
TO N0URISH LITTLE ONES
Silver Fox Provides for Offspring and
Guards Her Cubs with Motherly
Care During Helpless
Infancy

Skunk cabbage and hellebore were
forgotten as events. Liverleaf and adj
derS tongue were winning a hearing
for the tidings that they bring, and as
the grass moon followed the crow
moon, an influence filled the air, the
woods, the ground, with fecund prom
Use of wild life renewed. And then
came change in SnOwyruff. She
avoided Domino as though he were an
enemy. When he tried to follow into
the den she savagely warned him to
keep away. This was puzzling; but
the tall, black fox was of a race that
had learned to respect the she ones
way simply because it was the way of
the she one, and this, though on the
lowest and most animal plane, is surely
the foundation-stone of chivalry. He
kept away from the den for days, and
during that absence the great event
took place.
Who is it bids the human mother love
and fondle and feed the newborn
babe? Who guides her hand to lift it
gently, wisely? Who teaches her to
keep it warm, to shield it from all dam
ger with her body, or to buy it's safety
with her very life? Who is her teach
er? Not another woman; not any hui
man mind. The untaught savage moth
er does the same as the WiSest of our
kind. And call this teacher any name
you will, it was the very same that
taught that little mother fox. Alone,
alone by preference, was she in that
dark den when the hour appointed
came. All that the most skillful, wisest
could have done was done by herself,
that in all her previous life had had no
knowledge of this time.
Five little foxes there were, small,
shapeless, ugly men have said but
Ia fhn 7nfI fIn = ~
precious things that ever were known,
and love, newborn, heartful, overflow
ing and complete, was there for them,
to hedge them about, to cherish them,
ard wholly to change her life.
1t was many hours before she left
them alone, and then only to seek for
herself a cooling draught at the nearby
rill. Domino was there on the bank.
watching. She laid back her ears
little, but made no sound, and other
wise ignored him. He crouched, with
head fiat on the leaves, and she re-
turned to the den. That day she had
no desire to eat. The next day she was
hungry, but was little minded to hunt.
Why hunt, indeed? This very need,
this very strait. had happened to every
mother fox since ever mother foxes
were, and deep in their brain was an
instinct rOoted-the habit to prepare.
For this, unwittingly perhaps, she had
AdlO Tie WOOQCnOCh ny. III IIlS .SnS
found her food.
Two days later, when again forced to
face the food problem, she went to the
door and found not far away a little
pile of new-killed mice. Maybe they
were brought there for the young. Who
knows? OF this we are sure-that they
reached and nourished the young,
though the mother it was that devoured
them. Thenceforth every day there
was food left at the door, or hidden in
the grass, or under the leaves near by.
For nine days the cubs remained
blind, then their eyes opened; they
Whimpered less; the mother went forth
more confidently. Now Domino found
her less disposed to drive him off; in a
few more days he had joined the fam
lily group.
This was the beginning of a new ex-
perience for him. He had been quite
ready to love the cubs, and coming near
them warmed his heart. There are all
degrees of fatherly feeling in foxes.
from that of the reprobate who forgets
to that of the faithful father who is as
good as another mother, and Domino,
robler-natured than most foxes, re-
sponded as nobly. Maybe never before
had fox cubs been so guarded or been
the objects of such devotion as these
that were born that spring on the
Shawban. the offspring of Snowyruff,
the brood of the silver foX.-From Err
nest Seton's Domino Reynard Of
Colour Town." in the Century.