Part 3 (2/2)

I suppose there must have been miles of gophers' underground tunnels, leading from hole to hole. They popped their heads up, and you saw them scampering away wherever you went; and in the early morning it was very funny to see the rabbits jumping and leaping to get off out of sight when they heard people stirring. They were of a beautiful gray color, with a short bushy tail, white at the end. On account of this white tip to their tails, they are called ”cotton-tails.”

When Mr. Connor first moved up on the hill, Jim used to shoot a cottontail almost every day, and some days he shot two. The rabbits, however, are shyer than the gophers; when they find out that they get shot as soon as they are seen, and that these men who shoot them have built houses and mean to stay, they will gradually desert their burrows and move away to new homes.

But the gopher is not so afraid. He lives down in the ground, and can work in the dark as well as in the light; and he likes roots just as well as he likes the stems above ground; so as long as he stays in his cellar houses, he is hard to reach.

The gopher is a pretty little creature, with a striped back,--almost as pretty as a chipmonk. It seems a great pity to have to kill them all off; but there is no help for it; fruit-trees and gophers cannot live in the same place.

Soon after Mr. Connor moved into his new house, he had a present of a big cat from the Mexican woman who sold him milk.

She said to Jim one day, ”Have you got a cat in your house yet?”

”No,” said Jim. ”Mr. George does not like cats.”

”No matter,” said she, ”you have got to have one. The gophers and squirrels in this country are a great deal worse than rats and mice.

They'll come right into your kitchen and cellar, if your back is turned a minute, and eat you out of house and home. I'll give you a splendid cat. She's a good hunter. I've got more cats than I know what to do with.”

So she presented Jim with a fine, big black and white cat; and Jim named the cat ”Mexican,” because a Mexican woman gave her to him.

The first thing Mexican did, after getting herself established in her new home in the woodpile, was to have a litter of kittens, six of them.

The next thing she did, as soon as they got big enough to eat meat, was to go out hunting for food for them; and one day, as Mr. Connor was riding up the hill, he saw her running into the woodpile, with a big fat gopher in her mouth.

”Ha!” thought Mr. Connor to himself. ”There's an idea! If one cat will kill one gopher in a day, twenty cats would kill twenty gophers in a day! I'll get twenty cats, and keep them just to hunt gophers. They'll clear the place out quicker than poison, or traps, or drowning.”

”Jim,” he called, as soon as he entered the house,--”Jim, I've got an idea. I saw Mexican just now carrying a dead gopher to her kittens. Does she kill many?”

”Oh, yes, sir,” replied Jim. ”Before she got her kittens I used to see her with them every day. But she does not go out so often now.”

”Good mother!” said Mr. Connor. ”Stays at home with her family, does she?”

”Yes, sir,” laughed Jim; ”except when she needs to go out to get food for them.”

”You may set about making a collection of cats, Jim, at once,” said Mr.

Connor. ”I'd like twenty.”

Jim stared. ”I thought you didn't like cats, Mr. George,” he exclaimed.

”I was afraid to bring Mexican home, for fear you wouldn't like having her about.”

”No more do I,” replied Mr. Connor. ”But I do not dislike them so much as I dislike gophers. And don't you see, if we have twenty, and they all hunt gophers as well as she does, we'll soon have the place cleared?”

”We'd have to feed them, sir,” said Jim. ”So many's that, they'd never make all their living off gophers.”

”Well, we'll feed them once a day, just a little, so as not to let them starve. But we must keep them hungry, or else they won't hunt.”

”Very well, sir,” said Jim. ”I will set about it at once.”

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