Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1899 — CRIMINALS AMONG WOLVES. [ARTICLE]

CRIMINALS AMONG WOLVES.

Great Canning; ManifeeAd by These Animals in California. IL’ Seton Thompson, naturalist to the Government of Manitoba, hath under the title, “Wild Animals I Have Known,” given a series of observations on the cunning of beasts. That quality is In general the device of the weak, but the helplessness which it indicates may be of different grades. There is the cunning of wolves, which use their wits to rob man of his flocks and cattle, that of the domesticated creatures, which sometimes delight in criminal acts, and the cunning belonging to selfpreservation among those animals on which others prey. Mr. Thompson claims for certain animals, says the Scientific American, a Share of the deference paid to depraved greatness. For example, there was the wolf urtiich, in the fourteenth century, terrorized all Paris for ten years; a lame grizzly bear which, in two years, ruined all the hog-raisers and drove half the farmers out of business, in the Sacramento Valley, and a certain wolf in New Mexico, which was reported to have killed a cow every day for five years. This wolf grew to be so well known that an Increasing price was set upon his scalp, until the sum reached a thousand dollars. Ordinary means of hunting or trapping failed completely. The wolf and his mate brought up their cubs among some rocky precipices, within a thousand yards of the farm, and killed cattle daily. At this period Mr. Thompson made the acquaintance of the vandal, and tried to kill him by scientific methods. He melted cheese mixed with fat of a heifer in a china dish, cut it Into lumps with a bone knife, to avoid the taint of metal, and concealed in the lumps strychnine and cyanide, in odor-proof capsules. Ln doing this he wore gloves steeped in cow’s blood, and even avoided breathing on the bait. One of these lumps, placed In a tempting position, disappeared. Mr. Thompson followed the track to the next lump, and the next, and noticed that those also were gone. At the fourth he found that the wolf had laid all four together and scattered dirt over them. The wolves now took to stampeding and killing sheep. Half a dozen goats are usually kept with each flock, as leaders, and they are not easily stampeded at night: so when wolves are about the slieep crowd about these leaders and remain there while the shepherds drive the wolves away. The object of the wolves is to stampede the sheep, and then pick them up, day by day, afterward. One night they ran over the backs of the huddled flock, and killed all the goats fn a few minutes. The sheep were then available for prey. Traps to the number of a hundred and thirty were set in different parts of the big ranch. The trail of the pack was followed, and it became apparent that the leader, warned by the scent, stopped all the rest, and advanced alone to the trap. He scratched until he laid bare a dozen buried chains and pickets. Then he entered an H-shaped series of traps, realized his danger, and slowly backed out, putting down each paw backward until he was off the dangerous ground. Afterward he sprung as many traps as possible, by scratching clods and stones at them with his hind feet.