Wild Animals of North America: Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal KingdomNelson, Edward William
Science
Wild Animals of North America: Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal Kingdom
Nelson, Edward William
Mammals -- North America
On New Year’s night of 1906, while I was at the village of Cape
San Lucas, at the extreme southern end of the Peninsula of Lower
California, a large-sized old male spotted skunk entered the open door
of a neighboring house and bit through the upper lip of a little girl
sleeping on the floor. Her screams brought her father to the rescue,
and with a well-aimed blow he killed the offender. The next morning the
skunk was brought to me and added to my collection. As I left a few
days later I never learned the result of this bite, but while there
was informed that a man had died the previous year from a similar
bite. The occasional instances of this kind are remembered and appear
more numerous than they are in fact. For years many men have slept in
the open where these animals abound, without being molested. It is
interesting to find that when the voyager Duhaut-Cilly visited the Cape
in 1826, the natives feared these skunks because they entered houses at
night, biting people and infecting them with hydrophobia.
The little spotted skunks have extremely animated, playful natures,
as I have had several occasions to observe. Two instances serve to
illustrate this. Once at the mouth of a canyon at the southern end of
the San Joaquin Valley, California, I camped several days at a deserted
ranch. At night I spread my blankets on the bare floor of the house,
from which the doors were gone. Under it led several burrows of some
animal which I at first supposed to be a ground squirrel. Each night
while there I was awakened by the sound of little footfalls padding
rapidly about over the floor on which I was sleeping, and in the dim
light from the moon could see two or three little spotted skunks
pursuing one another around me like playful kittens. At the slightest
movement on my part they dashed out the door and into their dens under
the house. As there was no food of any kind in this room, it was
evident that the little fellows were there for a frolic on the smooth
board floor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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