Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 248, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1913 — FOX SKELETON IN TREE FORK [ARTICLE]

FOX SKELETON IN TREE FORK

Some Pennsylvania Naturalists Queas It Leaped There to Get Fowl and Missed. j Pittsburgh.—Local naturalists are guessing how the skeleton of a fox got in the forks of a tree on the Clarion river, near Cooksburg. The skeleton was discovered by Charles Garland, a member of the Edgewood troop. Boy Scouts, in the course of a nature study ramble with bis comrades. Thb Scouts, during the weeks spent in the woods and fields, took every opportunity to study the ways of birds and animals, the characteristics of tree and plant life. They found bones of animals occasionally which they classified, but the fox skeleton was the prize naturalistic discovery of the amateur research party. The skeleton was that of a fox full grown and perfectly formed. Foxes, as the ScOut naturalists had often read, burrow holes in the ground for their homes. Rarely are they known to leap into a tree except perhaps as a last resort when hunted by dogs. As the boys sat around tbe campfire evenings they spun theories aa to tbe possible fate of reynard. ▲ few thought the fox had Jumped into the tree to elude pursuers, had become caught in the forks of the tree and had starved to death. Others surmised the animal, sick or wounded, had climbed the tree and had chosen the tree forks as its deathbed. Still others advanced the explanation that the sly and crafty terror of barnyards had jumped into the tree to catch a stray fowl alighting on its branches and had slipped Into the forks, which proved a trap from which there was no escape.