[Illustration: _Photo. by Frank H. Rose_ _Bear Feet. A bear footprint is humanlike_] [Illustration: _Photo. by George F. Diehl_ _A Black Bear_] [Illustration: _Photo. by E. R. Warren_ _Antelope_] At one point they apparently defended themselves. Coyote tracks behind a log within ten feet of them, their own tracks showing an attitude of defense, and a wild leap and retreat of the coyote--this was the story in the snow. The majority of my lively skunk experiences were the result of my trying to get more closely acquainted with him. On a number of occasions, however, I was an innocent bystander while some other person had the experience. Then through years of outdoor life I have known skunks to do numerous things of interest in which skunk character and not skunk scent was the centre of interest. During a night of flooding rain a mother skunk and five tiny skunkies came into the kitchen of a family with whom I was temporarily staying. They probably had been drowned out. Mother skunk was killed and the little ones thrown out the window to die. But father skunk still lived. The next evening when I went in search of the young ones, as I stood looking about, father skunk walked into a bunch of grass and lifted a little skunk out. Taking mouth hold on the back of its neck he carried it a few feet, laid it down, and then picked up another little skunk with it. With the two youngsters hanging from this mouth hold he carried them off into the woods. An entire family of skunks out on a frolic came unexpectedly upon me. They numbered eight. I was sitting on a log against a pine, and resolved not to move. In front of me the mother stepped upon a thorn, flinched, and lifted her foot to examine it. All gathered about her. As they moved this way and that, in the sunshine then in the shadows, their shiny black and clean white showed as though just scoured and polished. Surely they were freshly groomed for a party. Without noticing me they began playing, jumping, and scuffling about. Then single file they pursued one another round a tree. In a mass they suddenly started to rush round the pine against which I sat. I saw them vanish behind the northwest quarter but when they swept round the southeast I was not there. In Montana I was sitting on top of a low cliff looking down into a willow thicket below, when a deer shied from the willows and hurried on. Then a coyote came out mad and sneezing. A squirrel went down to investigate but quickly climbed a pine sputtering and threatening. The unusual ever lured me--appealed to my curiosity--and often this brought adventure plus information. So down into the willows I started. From the side of the cliff I reached an out-thrust limb of a pine, swung out, and let go to drop just as the ascending air filled with skunk publicity.