It is not that they do him no injury, but
because they do it indirectly, that they have so long enjoyed immunity
from persecution. It is amusing to see the sheep-farmer, the greatest
sufferer from the vizcachas, regarding them with such indifference as to
permit them to swarm on his "run," and burrow within a stone's throw of
his dwelling with impunity, and yet going a distance from home to
persecute with unreasonable animosity a fox, skunk, or opossum on
account of the small annual loss it inflicts on the poultry-yard. That
the vizcacha has comparatively no adverse conditions to war with
wherever man is settled is evident when we consider its very slow rate
of increase, and yet see them in such incalculable numbers. The female
has but one litter in the year of two young, sometimes of three. She
becomes pregnant late in April, and brings forth in September; the
period of gestation is, I think, rather less than five months.
The vizcacha is about two years growing. A full-sized male measures to
the root of the tail twenty-two inches, and weighs from fourteen to
fifteen pounds; the female is nineteen inches in length, and her
greatest weight nine pounds. Probably it is a long-lived, and certainly
it is a very hardy animal. Where it has any green substance to eat it
never drinks water; but after a long summer drought, when for months it
has subsisted on bits of dried thistle-stalks and old withered grass, if
a shower falls it will come out of its burrows even at noonday and drink
eagerly from the pools.
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