WITHOUT FOOD.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue X, 7 March 1896, Page 254

WITHOUT FOOD.

Some very long survivals are on record, but none, perhaps, more interesting or remarkable than a well~ authenticated case which comes from France. Mr Gely, a farm superintendent at Dampierre, in the Department of the Upper Saone, has a dog named Rigolet, which although past ten years old, and almost toothless, has never abated the activity of his warfare against all animals of the field, and especially against foxes. A short time ago, as Mr Gely, with his dog, was passing the mouth of a fox burrow, Rigolet, made a sudden and furious descent on the burrow, showing plainly that it was inhabited. It had so spacious an opening that the dog forced himself into it quite out of sight. Presently the master heard the tumult of a combat within. The dog was barking fiercely. Then there came a sound of a caving in, and the noise ceased. Either Rigolet had been silenced by the fox. or he had been engulfed by the collapse of the gallery in which the fight was taking place. Mr Gely set about digging him out, but found the ground so stony that he was obliged to give it up, and the old dog was left to his fate. Gely went home, and after mourning the dog a few days, thought of him no more. Twenty-one days went by. It happened that the miller of the neighbourhood, passing the fox burrow with a friend, said, ■ There’s the place where poor old Rigolet was buried alive.’ Just then he heard a feeble whining, which seemed to come from underground. He called and listened, and the whining was repeated louder than before. There was certainly a dog within the fox burrow. The miller ran to apprise Gely, who this time brought picks and shovels, and a sufficient number of hands to open the burrow. After five hours of active digging the old dog was unearthed at a considerable depth. As soon as he was brought to the open air Rigolet fell to the ground, apparently dead. But his master succeeded in reviving him with doses of beef tea and milk, and the old dog was soon seemingly as good as ever. It became a question whether he had fasted in the burrow for the twenty-two days, or whether he had subsisted on the fox which he certainly found. It was assumed by his master that he was too nearly toothless to have been able to devour a fox; and those who dug him out declared that there was no sign that he had had anything to eat.