Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1869 — Canning sf the Fox. [ARTICLE]

Canning sf the Fox.

A certain jagare, who was one morning keeping watch in the forest, saw a fox cautiously making his approach toward the stomp of an old tree. When suffl ciently near, he took a high and determined jump on to the top of it, and, after looking round awhile, hopped to the ground again. After Reynara had repeated this knightly exercise several times, he went his way, but presently returned to the spot bearing a pretty large and heavy piece of dry oak in his mouth, and thus burdened, and as it would seem for the purpose of testing his vaulting powers, he renewed his leaps on to the stump. After a time, however, and when.he found that, weighted as he was, he could make the ascent with facility, he desisted from further efforts, dropped the piece of wood from his mouth, and coiling himself upon the top of the stump, remained motionless as if dead. At the approach of evening, an old sow and her progeny, five or six in number, issued from a neighboring tbiciet, and, pursuing their usual track, passed near to the stump in question. Two of her sucklings followed somewhat behind the rest, and, just as they neared hto ambush, Michel, with the rapidity of thought, darted down from hto perch upon one of them, and in the twinkling of an eye bore it in triumph on to the fastness he had so providentially prepared beforehand. Confounded at the shrieks of her offspring, the old sow re turned in fury to the spot, and until late in the night made repeated desperate attempts to storm the murderer’s stronghold ; but the fox took the matter coolly, and devoured the pig under the very nose of its tnother. —Naturalitt in Norway.