kind is apt to be considered a joke ever afterwards.
But an uncontrollable desire for human intimacy is only one item of the oddities of this little beast. As a vagabond of the wilderness he was like other vagabonds there, and got on well enough without any human association. Carnivorous entirely, he cannot be accused of looking for the well-filled granary of later times; he invades no cabbage-patch, and is entirely guiltless of succulent sweet potatoes and milky roasting-ears. His presence in increased numbers among the fields and farms of civilization is accounted for by the fact that he has simply declined to move on. He will not retire to the wilds of the pan-handle or the neutral strip, driven thither by the too copious outpour of civilization. His conduct indicates the just conclusion that he can endure all the vicissitudes of the school-house States if they can, in turn, endure him. Doubly armed, this autocrat of the prairies holds in unique dignity the quality of absolute fearlessness, and, aside from any hydrophobic endowments, is now the chiefest terror of the free and boundless West.
A figure-head seems to be necessary in the conduct of all the larger affairs of life. From this idea have come all the griffins, and the sphinxes, and the St. Georges and Dragons, the hideous caryatids, gnomes, gorgons, chimeras dire, the eyes of Chinese junks, and the wooden cherubs that until later years looked over the waste of unknown waters beneath the bows of every ship that sailed. On the seals of one-half of all the Western States and territories mephitis might figure as the chiefest animal of their natural fauna, and for him might the buffalo and the bear be properly discarded. They are gone: he remains and impresses himself upon the community unmistakably. But mottoes and great seals and epitaphs are things not expected to be governed in their making by anything like actual fact.
It will be conceded that no other beast approaches this in the particulars of his armament. So confident of his resources is he that the idea that he can be worsted never enters his elongated cranium. Though he never uses his phenomenal powers except upon what he considers an emergency, these supposed emergencies arise quite too frequently for the general comfort and piety of his neighborhood. It is said that the little western church never thrives greatly in a neighborhood that is for some reason peculiarly infested by him. Yet it is a remarkable fact that when he visits the farmer's hen-roost, which he often does, the owner, if he came from some timbered country, nearly always lays the blame upon the much-maligned "coon;" meaning, of course, that pad-footed and ring-tailed creature who is credited with a slyness verging upon intellect, but who never visited a prairie in his life. He does this because there is no penetrating and abiding savor left behind – except in case of accident – in any of these maraudings. It is a mere piece of cunning. He wishes to come again some other time. The victims of his appetite, comprising everything smaller than himself in that region, are never subjected to his caudal essences, and a good reason for this would be that he wishes to eat them himself. Those who know mephitis well, and also know this trait of his character, are impressed anew by the mercifulness of some of nature's instincts and freaks.
And here arises the question of a certain occult power apparently possessed by this creature alone. It seems to be established by undisputed testimony that he is the most skilful packer of meats, with the least trouble and expense, known in the annals of the art preservative. His hollow logs have been repeatedly split in his absence, and found full of dead fowls, killed in a neighboring farm-yard, squeezed in closely side by side for future use, and all untainted and fresh. How does he accomplish this? There are evidently various things to learn from the field of natural history which might be turned to the uses of man. To say nothing of the value of the patent, this would be a very useful household recipe if known. The inference is that there may be an occult quality in his strange and characteristic endowment not heretofore suspected.
Our western friend has an extensive family relationship. There are at least six varieties of him in various latitudes. No one branch of the family is believed to have any fellowship with any other branch, probably for weighty and sufficient family reasons; though to the ordinary human senses there is so little difference in the sachet that one cannot see reason for being so particular among themselves. Two of him are very common west of the Missouri – one as big as a poodle and variously striped, and the other of a smaller and more concentrated variety, more active also in his habits. It is the bigger of these two who goes about waving his plume and seeking new acquaintances, as though he contemplated going into the Bohemian oats business among the farmers, and who courts admiration while he spreads consternation. It is he who lies in ambush in the corn-shocks, in the early days of the yellow autumn, apparently for the express purpose, through the media of the farmer's boys and the district school, of informing the whole neighborhood, and especially the little girls, that he is still about. It is he who is borne oftenest, in spirit and essence, through the open windows of the settler's house, causing the mistress thereof to wish, and to often say that she wishes, that she had never come away from Ohio, or wherever she used to reside, and where she declares mephitis to have been a nuisance utterly unknown. It is he who lopes innocently along the railroad track, declining to retire, meeting death without a murmur, knowing, perhaps, that his dire revenge will follow the fleeting train, whose wheels have murdered him, for many a mile, even across the plains and into mountain passes, and perhaps return with it and add a little something, a piquant mite, to the loud odors of the Missouri River terminus. The passengers all know he has been killed, and know it for the remainder of the journey, or else they wonder at the pungency of the atmosphere apparently pervading a stretch of country as big as all New England, and which they will talk about as one of the western drawbacks after they have returned home. It is he who rather rejoices than otherwise at the number and ferocity of the farmer's dogs, and who is indirectly blessed if they have the habit of going into the house and lying under the beds. Then indeed may he fulfil his mission. When they at first, and through inexperience, attack him, he routs them all without excitement or anger on his part, causes an armed domestic investigation of them, and their banishment without extradition, and through them impresses himself upon the unappreciative western understanding.
The little one, the other common variety, is perhaps more rarely seen, but he is at least frequently suspected. Not much bigger than a kitten, and almost or quite black, he lacks the look of innocence and the appearance of docility so falsely worn by his relative. Once they both hibernated: at least the books say so. Now, as one of the changes wrought by the settlement of the country, this small one becomes a frequent all-the-year tenant of the farmer's out-buildings. His battery is quite as formidable as the other's is, and may, indeed, be considered as an improvement in the way of rapidity and concentration, like the Gatling gun. The barn is not always his residence; and without inquiring if it is entirely convenient he frequently takes up his domicile in or under the dwelling. A mephitis in the cellar is one of the Kansas things. He does not, while there, produce any of the mysterious noises that indicate ghosts. The house is known not to be haunted, for everybody understands quite well who is there. But the owner must not attempt ejectment. Peace and quiet he insists upon. You must bar him out some time when he is absent on business, wait until spring, or move to another house. It is the middle one of these remedies that is usually adopted, if any. While he stays, there are no joint occupants with him in the place he has pre-empted. He will catch mice like a cat, and the joy of his life is the breaking of a rat's back with one nip behind the head. He has a most formidable array of teeth, and eschews vegetables entirely. He is the foe of all the little animals who live in walls or basements, or in holes or under stones. Even the weazel, that slim incarnation of predatory instinct, declines to enter into competition with him, and goes when he comes, or comes when the other goes. One of them is suspected, from this fact, of eating the other, and mankind, with the only form of disinterestedness of which we can justly boast, does not care which of the two it is.
The biggest one of the mephitis family lives in Texas, and that empire is not disposed to boast itself withal on that account. He came there from Mexico, possibly on account of his being preposterously considered a table luxury in the latter country. But it is a land of which such eccentricities may be expected. They eat the ground-lizard there, – a variety of the celebrated "Gila monster," – and some other creatures to our pampered notions not less repulsive; though they seem to avoid, by peculiar management, that quadrennial banquet of crow which constitutes our great national dish. Mephitis is, however, purely American wherever he comes from. Europe knows him not in quadrupedal form. He is one of the things got by discovery, though he may not take rank, perhaps, with the gigantic grass