Dale Reaktenwalt, age 7, Peoria, Ill., for his question:
What is a fitch?
A fitch wears a fine fur coat. He enjoys a free 1ife in the woody wilds and on rocky hillsides. He is never found in America, but he is at home in many lands of the Old World. The fitch has many well known American cousins, though he never came to America.
Our furry skunk is sometimes called a polecat. He was given this name by the settlers who came here from England. The skunk was a new animal to them, but there was something about him that reminded them of an animal they knew back home. This Old World animal was called a polecat or a fitch. He also was known as the fitchet or the fitchet and sometimes went under the name of the foul marten.
That last name is a hint as to why the skunk was called a polecat. The word foul means a bad smell, and the skunk is famous for his horrible odor. The fitch also spreads a foul smell to defend himself from his enemies. He looks very much like the slender, graceful little animal we call the marten. In fact, the fitch is an Old World cousin of the marten and the mink, the sab1E and the skunk.
The cousins in this family have soft furry coats and rate as the best-dressed animals in the world. A fitch's fur is a blend of black and palest honey brown. His short legs and his dainty feet are black, and there is a black stripe down his tummy. His body is covered with long black hairs that form an overcoat.
In size and shape, a fitch looks like his graceful cousin, the weasel. He has a bushy little tail, a white nose and a pointed face marked with black and white. Like the weasel, he is a meat eater and a great hunter of rats and mice, frogs and lizards.
He spends his days dozing in his neat underground burrow and comes out to hunt after sunset. He has a cozy bedroom and a pantry where he stores his extra meat. The tidy fellow uses a bathroom outside the burrow.
The fitch and his folk are found in Scandinavia and many other countries of Europe. His warm coat makes it possible for him to enjoy life in cold Siberia and even on the snowy slopes of the Himalaya Mountains of India. At one time he was very common in England, but there he has been hunted and driven away. It seems that the fitch is fond of chickens, and the farmers of England shot horn down when he plundered their poultry runs.
Baby fitches, called kittens, are helpless infants born in the bedroom of the mother's burrow. They have no fur and do not open their bright eyes until they are three weeks old. The kittens thrive and grow, and at the age of six weeks, their attentive parents take them out for their first look at the world where they soon learn to make a living for themselves.