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Long, William Joseph, 1866-1952

"Wilderness Ways"

Breakfast hour was long past,
evidently, and they were hungry.
Suddenly one, who was at that moment watching from the tree trunk,
leaped down; the second joined him, and both paced back and forth
excitedly. They had heard the sounds of a coming that were too fine
for my ears. A stir in the underbrush, and Mother Lynx, a great savage
creature, stalked out proudly. She carried a dead hare gripped across
the middle of the back. The long ears on one side, the long legs on
the other, hung limply, showing a fresh kill. She walked to the
doorway of her den, crossed it back and forth two or three times,
still carrying the hare as if the lust of blood were raging within her
and she could not drop her prey even to her own little ones, which
followed her hungrily, one on either side. Once, as she turned toward
me, one of the kittens seized a leg of the hare and jerked it
savagely. The mother whirled on him, growling deep down in her throat;
the youngster backed away, scared but snarling. At last she flung the
game down.


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