Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/79

 One day when they were left outside, the pair visited a fish-pond kept by a neighbor a score of rods away and each caught a large trout. I suppose they had become tired of fish heads and suckers and wanted a taste of trout.

The last of July my grandfather, who kept the garden, complained that the woodchucks were eating the summer squashes. Some of them they ate, while they merely scooped out the seeds and left the shell of others.

A week or two later, grandfather said that something was bending down the sweet corn and then stripping off the ears. In fact, most of our first planting of sweet corn disappeared before we discovered the thieves. One day I caught them in the act. The thieves were Tobius and Cochunko. They would bend a stalk of corn down under the fore leg and then strip off the ear and eat it at their leisure.

They also visited the sweet-apple trees and ate many apples, but spoiled more than they ate. They finally became so destructive that we were obliged to place them again in the tree