Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/77

 lively. At first they tried to bite and scratch, but seeing we did not intend to hurt them, they became quite docile. I took them home in a grain sack in which we had brought the horses' noon feed and later on made a cage for them with a small wire netting yard. Here they lived for a month, but they grew so rapidly and seemed so active that I finally decided that these quarters were too confining for them. In the front yard there was a small ash tree, tall and slender, so I built a chicken wire fence ten feet from its base which entirely encircled the tree. In this yard I put the raccoons' house and left them free to climb the tree at their own sweet will. This pleased them greatly and they chased each other up and down the tree with great glee. They often slept in the tree and really lived in it far more than they did on the ground.

I finally named the raccoons Tobius and Cochunko and we called them Toby and Chunk for short. All the boys and girls in the neighborhood came to see them, and they were often let out of their tree pen so that they might get