Page:Hunting and trapping stories; a book for boys (IA huntingtrappings00pric).pdf/217

 There is nothing pretty about a grampus which, by the way, is a warm-blooded, breathing animal, and not a fish. It is always in a hurry, rushing about looking for fish to gobble up. Nothing suits a grampus better than to run across a great school of cod. It rushes in among the fish slaying and eating them until it is gorged. Sometimes the fish, in trying to get away from their enemy, swim into shallow water; but even there they do not escape, for the grampus will rush after them, and often when this happens gets stranded on the beach. It is then almost helpless, and seldom lives until the tide comes to float it off.

The Arctic foxes never allow such a grand feast as a stranded grampus to escape them, and worry and tear at the giant with their sharp teeth until it is dead. The grampus lashes about with its tail and some of the foxes get killed; but the majority are very nimble, and skip out of the way of the flail-like blows. When the huge body quivers in death it is a signal for a general onslaught. Rats, sea-gulls, foxes, auks, all flock to the feast, gorging themselves, snarling, screaming and fighting the while.

Sometimes a grampus will tackle narwhales, murdering the right and left. A narwhal is as large as a big shark, but the grampus itself is often over thirty feet long. The narwhales being swift swimmers, endeavor to run away, but their only real safety is in scattering.

The grampus does not come much below the Arctic circle, for the cold seas are simply alive with fish and there it makes its hunting ground. Its enormous body requires vast quantites of food, consequently it does little else but endeavor to satisfy its hunger.

A trick of the grampus is to swim along at a great rate with its mouth wide open. In this way a large number of fish of all sizes, from sardines to cod, find their way into its stomach. Even the swift swimming porpoise falls a victim to the grampus. There is no doubt that when a grampus is really in a hurry it can move along about as quickly as an express train.

The only amusement a grampus seems to indulge in is to tease the Greenland whale. Five or six will join in the fun. They will surround the whale, spring out of the water and dealing it terrific blows with their tails. They do not often kill a whale, but simply worry and hustle it from place to place. The whale does not fight back, but swims off as fast as it can.

Sometimes the grampusses will follow a whale hundreds of miles until it is all but worn out. The color of the grampus is blue-black, while its belly is a shining white. Its head is small in proportion to its body.