Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/215

194 Thus, one rarely sees the track of a chipmunk or woodchuck in truly wintry weather; and never, so far as I know, have the trails of jumping mouse or mud turtle been seen in the snow. These we can track only in the mud or dust. Such trails cannot be followed as far as those in the snow, simply because the mud and dust do not cover the whole country, but they are usually as dear and in some respects more easy of record. How to Make Pictures of Tracks

It is a most fascinating amusement to learn some creature'sway of life by following its fresh track for hours in good snow. I never miss such a chance. If I cannot find a fresh track, I take a stale one, knowing that, theoretically, it is fresher at every step, and from practical experience that it always brings one to some track that is fresh.

How often I have wished for a perfect means of' transferring these wild life tales to paper or otherwise making a permanent collection. My earliest attempts were in free-hand drawing, which answers, but has this great disadvantage.—it is a translation, a record discolored by an intervening personality, and the value of the result is likely to be limited by one's own knowledge at the time.

Casting in plaster was another means attempted; but not one track in ten thousand is fit to cast. Nearly all are blemished and imperfect in some way, and the most abundant—those in snow—cannot be cast at all.

Then I tried spreading plastic wax where the beasts would walk on it, in pathways or before dens. How they did scoff! The simplest ground squirrel knew too much to venture on my waxen snare; around it, or if hemmed in, over it, with a mighty bound they went; but never a track did I so secure.

Photography naturally suggested itself, but the difficulties proved as great as unexpected, almost as great as in casting. Not one track in one thousand is fit to photograph; the essential details are almost always left out. You must have open sunlight, and even when the weather is perfect there are practically but two times each day when it is possible—in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when the sun is high enough for dear photographs and low enough to cast a shadow in the faint track.

The Coon that Showed Me How

Then a new method was suggested in an unexpected way. A friend of mine had a pet coon which he kept in a cage in his bachelor quarters up town. One day, during my friend's