When made to kill skunks often they
become seasoned; but always perform the loathsome task expeditiously,
then rush away with frothing mouths to rub their faces in the wet clay
and rid themselves of the fiery sensation. At one time I possessed only
one dog that could be made to face a skunk, and as the little robbers
were very plentiful, and continually coining about the house in their
usual open, bold way, it was rather hard for the poor brute. This dog
detested them quite as strongly as the others, only he was more
obedient, faithful, and brave. Whenever I bade him attack one of them
he would come close up to me and look up into my face with piteous
pleading eyes, then, finding that he was not to be let off from the
repulsive task, he would charge upon the doomed animal with a blind fury
wonderful to see. Seizing it between his teeth, he would shake it madly,
crushing its bones, then hurl it several feet from him, only to rush
again and again upon it to repeat the operation, doubtless with a
Caligula-like wish in his frantic breast that all the skunks on the
globe had but one backbone.
I was once on a visit to a sheep-farming brother, far away on the
southern frontier of Buenos Ayres, and amongst the dogs I found there
was one most interesting creature, He was a great, lumbering, stupid,
good-tempered brute, so greedy that when you offered him a piece of meat
he would swallow half your arm, and so obedient that at a word he would
dash himself against the horns of a bull, and face death and danger in
any shape.
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