Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

If one of these little colonies could be laid open, a very curious sight would present itself. The earth would be seen to be pierced with multitudinous tunnels, each complete and independent in itself, and never interfering with burrows belonging to other owners. Each burrow, too, is of a very complex character, and by no means consists of a single tunnel, with a rude nest at the extremity. There are three or four distinct passages, each of which opens into the common chamber, which is of considerable dimensions, and serves as a starting-place whence the inhabitant can seek refuge in either of its passages, according to the direction in which it apprehends danger.

This chamber is not, however, the nursery for the young, a second cavity being used for that purpose. The nursery is not of great dimensions, and communicates by a passage with the chamber already mentioned. The reader will see, therefore, that in some respects the habitation of the Arctic Fox corresponds with that of the mole, both having a kind of fortress from which a number of passages lead in different directions, and the nursery being in both instances separate from the general habitation.

Five or six young ones are mostly bred in these subterranean nurseries; and in the outer chamber, and in several of the passages that lead to it, are placed good stores of food. In one such nest were found many bodies of two species of lemming, and several stoats; and the abundance of bones belonging to hares, fishes, and ducks, showed that the wants of the young Foxes had been amply supplied.

This Fox is a very intelligent animal, though the accounts of the earlier Arctic voyagers would lead the reader to imagine that it was peculiarly stupid. It could be caught without the least difficulty; any rough contrivance answered for a trap, and any number of Foxes might be taken in it. The hunter might make a trap and bait it while the animal looked on, and as soon as he retired, the Fox would walk into the snare. Fifteen have thus been taken in four hours in a single trap.

Other voyagers tell very different tales of the same animal. Their note-books abound in anecdotes of its exceeding craft, and the difficulty of catching it; and they tell us how the Arctic Foxes learned to remove the baits without falling into the traps, or being shot by the spring-guns. The reason is evident. Those who commemorate its stupidity are the earlier voyagers—those who describe its craft are the later travelers. Before the advent of the former, the Foxes knew nothing of the European, and his traps and guns, and had no suspicion that a bait was meant for any other purpose than to be eaten. Before the European came into these northern regions, the Fox was very little molested; but when men found that its skin was a little fortune, and that its flesh was generally eatable, the Fox was subjected to a merciless persecution. For, even in its ordinary state, the skin of the Arctic Fox is in great favor as a fur; but when it is bleached by the dread cold of the regions in which the animal resides, and is of a pure snowy whiteness down to the very roots of the hair, it is so exceedingly costly, that a mantle made of that fur is only to be purchased by millionaires, or placed on imperial shoulders. I am afraid to say how many thousand pounds have been paid for a mantle of white fox-skins. In consequence of the value of the fur, scarcely a Fox can show his sharp nose without being tempted by baits or followed by riflemen; and so many have fallen victims, that the survivors have learned wisdom.

All persecuted animals learn wisdom. Try to catch an old rat, and see how long you will have to wait before you see him in the trap. Try to snare an old raven, or even to hook an old trout, and you will find that your best energies will be taxed, and all your ingenuity tested, before you will succeed. So it has been with the Foxes. They like the bait as well as ever, but they have acquired a rooted distrust of wires, or sticks, or strings, or indeed of any thing to which they are not accustomed in their everyday life, and therefore keep carefully aloof from every thing that conveys suspicion to their eyes or nostrils.

The flesh of the young Fox is very good eating, but that of the old animal is almost valueless except to starving men, being hard and stringy, and having a very unpleasant flavor. Even the water in which it has been boiled is acrid, and apt to blister the mouth and gums. But, although the flesh is valueless, the skin is almost beyond price, and the fur of a fine old Fox in perfect condition is worth many times its weight in gold.

THE habitation of the common Fox of this country is by no means so complicated as that of the Arctic species. Whenever it can, the Fox avoids the labor of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of a badger, or even a rabbit. In the former case there is very little to be done to the burrow, and in the latter the cunning animal finds its labor greatly diminished; for though the Fox is a much larger animal than the rabbit, and needs a rather larger tunnel, it finds that the task of enlarging a ready-made burrow is very much less than if it had to drive a passage through solid ground. Every one who has worked with carpenters' tools knows that a large gimlet passes easily through wood, if it follows the track of a smaller one, and on the same principle, the Fox passes easily through the earth on the track of the rabbit. The burrow of the latter animal is moreover much larger than is absolutely required for its passage, while the former is quite satisfied if he can pass through the tunnel with tolerable rapidity.

Sometimes, however, the animal is not fortunate enough to find any ready-made habitation, and in such cases sets determinately to work, and scoops out a burrow on its own account. Herein it lies asleep all day, as is the custom with most predaceous animals, and only sallies forth at night. Herein the mother produces and nurtures her young, and sometimes on a summer's evening, the whole family, the father, mother, and cubs, come out to enjoy the fresh air. They never wander far from the mouth of the burrow, and as the young are gamesome little creatures, as playful as puppies, and much prettier, and the mother helps her young ones in their sports as a good mother ought to do, the group presents a very pretty sight. When young the cubs are certainly not prepossessing, and scarcely any one would take the sprawling gray-coated, broad-muzzled creatures, with their little short pointed tails and stumpy ears, for the young of the Fox, with its ruddy fur, its active limbs, its narrow muzzle, its fine bushy tail, and its erect, intelligent-looking ears.

Though there is but one burrow for the nursery, the Fox generally has access to "earths," as they are called, at considerable distances apart, and, as all huntsmen know, when he finds that one of his earths is stopped, will straightway start off for another which may probably be at a distance of several miles, not to mention his accurate knowledge of drains and similar places of refuge. Therefore to keep an old experienced Fox above ground is a task which needs great skill and considerable endurance, for he is by no means above availing himself of clefts in rocks, should the country be of a mountainous nature, or using holes in decayed trees; and, indeed, if within a radius of some ten or twelve miles there is a cavity which is capable of concealing a Fox, the cunning animal is sure to know it.

THE Weasels have been said to be great burrowers, but I am inclined to think that very few of them are in the habit of tunneling below the ground. The Otter is generally thought to be a burrower because it has certain caves in the river banks, to which it flies for refuge when pursued, and in which it produces and rears its young. But I believe that in every instance the animal takes advantage of some ready-made cavity, mostly contenting itself with accepting the retreat, and at the best, merely scraping and adapting the spot to suit its own purposes.

The Weasel is certainly no excavator. It takes up its habitation in rocky crevices, under the gnarled roots of old trees, in the interstices between stones, and similar localities, stone-heaps being always favorite spots. Ladies who build their picturesque rockeries for the culture of ferns, would be very much surprised if they knew how often the Weasel takes possession of the stones, and how the interior of the mimic rock is tenanted by these snake-necked, red-bodied, bright-eyed little creatures. Should they perchance see a Weasel poking its intelligent little head out of a crevice, they should not be alarmed, but do their best to encourage an animal so useful, a little ally that will do more toward clearing the garden of mice and other nocturnal depredators than all the ratcatchers in the neighborhood.

One of the Weasel tribe is, however, a most powerful and industrious excavator. This is the BADGER (Meles taxus), an animal which was formerly considered as our only surviving British representative of the bear tribe, but is now found to belong to the weasels.

The Badger makes a most gloomy, dark, and tortuous burrow, generally excavated in some retired and shadowy spot, such as dense thickets, or the recesses of thickly-wooded forests. As is the case with several burrowing animals, there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and grass. The Badger is an animal that can not live in close proximity to human beings, and has, in consequence, been gradually banished from the greater part of England. Forest after forest falls before the woodman's axe, mile upon mile of barren bog-land is drained and converted into fertile, food-producing soil; and so, to the very great satisfaction of the political economist, and the very great discomfiture of the naturalist, all our large carnivora, whether furred or feathered, are gradually ousted from the soil wherein they formerly exercised unquestioned sway. The Badger has long ago been driven out of the land; the otter is but seldom seen in the rivers where it was once so plentiful; the polecat and martens have retired into the deepest recesses of the few forests which are still left to us, but over which the demon of bricks and mortar already casts a longing glance; and the stoat and weasel only hold their own on account of their diminutive size, and the comparative ease with which they obtain a supply of food. They are among the animals which are gradually eliminated out of existence by the encroachments of man, and it may be that in a few years a stoat or weasel may be as rare in England as a Badger is at the present day.

The fossorial limbs of the Badger are useful in various ways; for not only do they enable their owner to dig a domicile which none dare invade without the help of man, but they aid him in obtaining a kind of food to which he is particularly partial. The Badger is tolerably omnivorous, but has a special liking for insects in their immature state, and will dig up the nests of wasps and other subterranean hymenoptera, for the sake of devouring the larvæ. Some writers say that the Badger scrapes out the wasp-combs on account of the honey contained in them, but as no British wasp makes a cell that can hold honey, or is capable of gathering and storing that sweet substance, the Badger might scrape for a very long time before it earned a meal.