Like our prairie-dogs, the viscachas are very sociable, and little paths, the result of neighborly calls, lead from one village to another. They are neighborly indeed; and in the Bible sense. Of course, they like to get together of an evening and talk things over and gossip and all that, but that isn't the end of it. To take an instance: These South American prairie-dogs, like our prairie-dogs up North, are not popular with the cattlemen; and the cattlemen, to get rid of them, bury whole villages with earth. Then neighbors from distant burrows come--just as soon as the cattlemen go away--and dig them out! [Illustration: MR. P. GOPHER AS THE MASTER PLOUGHMAN Thompson Seton calls the pocket-gopher "the master ploughman of the West," and this is how he illustrates the extent of his labors.] Another ploughman besides the prairie-dog and the viscacha, who isn't popular with farmers--although Thompson Seton calls him "The Master Ploughman of the West"--is the pocket-gopher. He has farmed it from Canada to Texas, all through the fertile Mississippi Valley. The reason he has that queer expression on his face--you couldn't help noticing it--is that each cheek has a big outside pocket in it; and, like the big pockets in a small boy's trousers, they're there for business. On each forefoot he has a set of long claws; and dig, you should see him! He's a regular little steam-shovel. He sinks his burrow below the frost-line and into this, stuffed in his two pockets, he carries food to eat when he wakes up during the following Spring, before earth's harvests are ripe. [Illustration: POCKETS OF THE POCKET-MOUSE] IV. THE HOME OF THE RED FOX Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made houses among the rocks of the mountainside. THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his cunning--and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox family--is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or Mrs. Fox--depending on which is going marketing--stops and looks about to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and behind this the family bedroom and nursery.