| Show 7 e f a BRUTES TAMED BY DISTRESS would you believe that the nature if f beasts is softened by distress and suffering 9 asked a man who has spent most of his life in the delta it Is 19 a f ct et more than once I 1 I 1 have nave had lemarl able abl instances of the truth or of this assertion tion brought under my very eyes by our ouri own feelings we know krow that men when a great calam ity befalls a community forget all differences of race or creed and go into the rescue business with a whole soni soul just in the same way animals lose their savage natures experience a change of feeling as to other ani ant mals and become softened when brought face to face with almost in evitable doom it is a somewhat curl curi ous thing but even when starvation i is one of the chief s offerings iffe rings which beset them they have been known to refrain froni from feeding on weaker ani ant mals which under ordinary circum stances are their natural prey here are some instances tn in 1882 during the flood of that year I 1 had a good many cattle in the lowlands that were hemmed up on a ridge I 1 paid as high as 50 a day for a flatboat to ferry them out this ridge was about two miles long and yards wide it Is no exaggeration to say that some sort of an animal occupied every ten foot square of that space horses bogs hogs cows calves wolves and rab bits were so crowded on the ridge that you could hardly walk for them I 1 I 1 have seen wolves crouch at the tle ap cf men and barring a surly growl and the display of white teeth give no othel sign of their bavage nature I 1 have seen a rabbit shiv ering with cold and nibbling at the stub of a green can squatting with in fifteen feet of a hungry gaunt wolf and under ordinary circum stances the volf v v have pounced upon the rabbit and devoured him ard I 1 have seen young calves within several hundred yards of a whole pack of hungry wolves and yet not one ore to my kno cledge was ever de the wolves even approached near our camp fires either cov coveting covet etin ln the warmth of the fire or the food we had and instead of a lusty frightened howl they off offered ered us only a whine they were half tamed by their suffer ing by the helplessness of their situa tion and evidently realized that they them were at the mercy of some powel powei over which they had not the sight est control liae a natures of these wil beasts had charged under the weigh of a distress that was common among them I 1 have seen rabbits jump into the boats from floating logs as we passed through the cane breal s and tamely crouch at men s feet sherea a greyhound could scarcely have caught one had there been room for a race As strange as it may seem these things are true and any one who can explain them Is welcome tc the task |
