While snowshoeing in the forested mountains to the southeast of Long’s
Peak I came upon a mountain lion track startlingly fresh. I followed
it to a den beneath a rock pile at the bottom of a cliff. Evidently
the lion was in. Seeing older tracks which he had made on leaving the
den, I trailed these. After zigzagging through the woods he had set
off in a bee-line for the top of a cliff. From this point he
evidently saw a number of deer. He had crawled forward, then
back-tracked and turned to the right, then made round to the left. The
snow was somewhat packed and his big feet held him on the surface. The
deer broke through.
The lion climbed upon a fallen tree and crept forward. He was screened
by its large upturned root. At last he rushed out and seized a near-by
deer and killed it, evidently after a short struggle. He had then
pursued and killed a young deer that had fled off to the left where it
was struggling in the heavy snows. Without returning to the first kill
the lion fed off the second and returned to the den.
I followed the other deer. In a swamp they had fed for a time on the
tops of tall weeds among the snow and willows. I came close to them in
a thick growth of spruce. Here the snow was less deep. A goodly
portion of the snow still clung to the trees.
These deer circled out of the spruce swamp and came into their trail
made in entering it. Back along this trail they followed to where the
lion had made the first kill. Leaping over this dead deer they climbed
up on the rocky ridge off which so much snow had blown that they could
travel speedily most of the time over the rocks with only now and then
a stretch of deep snow.
Often during my winter trips I came upon a porcupine. Both winter and
summer he seemed blindly content. There were ten thousand trees
around, and winter or summer there were meals to last a life-time.
Always he had a dull, sleepy look and I doubt if he ever gets
enthusiastic enough to play.
Birds that remain all winter in snowy lands enjoy themselves. Like the
winter animals, usually they are well fed. But most species of birds
with their airplane wings fly up and down the earth, go northward in
the spring and southward in the autumn, and thus linger where summer
lingers and move with it when it moves.
Around me the skunks hibernated about two months each year; some
winters possibly not at all. Generally the entire skunk family, from
two to eight, hole up together. One den which I looked into in
mid-winter had a stack of eight sleepy skunks in it. A bank had caved
off exposing them. I left them to sleep on, for had I wakened them
they might not have liked it. And who wants to mix up with a skunk?
Another time a snowslide tore a big stump out by the roots and
disclosed four skunks beneath. When I arrived, about half an hour
after the tear-up, the skunks were blinking and squirming as though
apparently too drowsy to decide whether to get up or to have another
good sleep.