Though the bizcacha is not so very much bigger than a rabbit yet he makes a very much bigger burrow to live in, and the entrance to it especially is enormous, being five or six feet across, and deep in proportion, so that if a man were to jump into one he would lie hidden up to the waist. It is from the earth that is dug out of this great pit that the mound is made, and as bizcachas make their burrows very close together, the mound round one becomes part of that round another, so that at last there comes to be one great mound like a low hillock, with several large pits all over it, and this is the bizcachera, or village of the bizcachas—the bizcacha warren as we should call it. But though it is their village and they have made it, it is not only the bizcachas who live in it. Quite a colony of birds and animals dwell there, some of them not at all for the good of the rightful owners. Chief amongst the latter are the fox and the weasel of the pampas. The fox—a beautiful, grey animal, something like a dog in appearance—comes to the village, and having driven a pair of the poor bizcachas out of their burrows, takes up his abode in it himself. That, at present, is all the harm he does, for the young bizcachas are not yet big enough to come out of their burrows, and, beyond this first act of spoliation, he does not interfere with the old ones. But, by and by, the young bizcachas, who have grown to be nice plump little things, begin to leave their burrows and play about on the mound, and then day by day—or rather night by night—the fox pounces upon them and eats them. If the fox itself is a mother with a family of cubs to feed, the havoc she does in the bizcachera is tremendous. The poor little village children are chased from one hole to another, and killed, often in their very own nurseries, in spite of the efforts of their parents to defend them—for a pair of grown bizcachas are no match for a single fox. At length, when all the fat little succulent things—the “_marmots d’enfants_,” as we may call them—have been eaten off, and only the bereaved parents—who are tough—remain, the fox—a good mother—collects her own young ones about her, and leads them to the next village, which she hopes will be better supplied.