The Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 13, number 3. March 1930

              bears and other beasts 279 i have never eaten it i understand that the meat is much like chicken if parboiled several times to destroy the strong wild flavor and now quite properly at the end of the chapter we come to that little animal which has caused more headlong ignominous flights and has inspired more fear horror and repulsion in the human breast than the most ugly and fero cious of jungle beasts we come in short to the skunk the polecat the striped kitty the introduction of a skunk into a motion picture at the present time is a sure method of gaining a laugh and its habits are well known so that i need not here dwell on its disagreeable mode of defense one thing can be said and that is that they become offensively oderiferous only when the necessity for self-preservation arises i have often had one come into a tent where i was sleeping give everything in sight a careful survey and depart for further exploration elsewhere when this happened i was always careful to be very meek and still it pays unless one likes to be socially ostracized for a week following like almost all other wild animals they are harmless enough if unharmed but they do have abnormal appetites for chickens and they will raid and rob a chicken coop as neatly and cleverly as our lumberjacks cleaned out mrs brown's at turin michigan chapter xiv human nature in the woods not so many years have passed since the greater portion of the immensely wealthy timber and mineral lands of wisconsin and michigan were owned by the federal govern ment in the gradual change from public to private owner ship which lasted several decades there was experienced one of the greatest periods of graft and exploitation of public resources that this nation has ever gone through the rule