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The first time I climbed Long’s Peak I heard a strange, wild cry or call repeated at intervals. “Skee-ek,” “Ke-ack,” came from among the large rocks along the trail a quarter of a mile below the limits of tree growth. It might be that of bird or beast. Half squeak, half whistle, I had not heard its like. Though calling near me, the maker kept out of sight.

A hawk flew over with a screech not unlike this mysterious “Skee-ek.” I had about decided that it was dropping these “Ke-acks” when a rustling and a “Skee-ek” came from the other side of the big rock close by me. I hurried around to see, but nothing was there.

This strange voice, invisible and mocking like an echo, called from time to time all the way to the summit of the peak. And as I stood on the highest point, alone as I supposed, from somewhere came the cry of the hidden caller. As I looked, there near me on a big flat rock sat a cony. He was about six inches long and in appearance much like a guinea pig; but with regulation rabbit ears he might have passed for a young rabbit. His big round ears were trimmed short.

Rarely do I name a wild animal—it does not occur to me to do so. But as he was the first cony I had seen, and seeing him on top of Long’s Peak, I called him almost unconsciously, “Rocky.”

Rocky raised his nose and head, braced himself as though to jump, and delivered a shrill “Ke-ack.” He waited a few seconds, then another “Skee-ek.” I moved a step toward him and he started off the top.

That winter I climbed up to look for a number of objects and wondered concerning the cony. I supposed he spent the summer on the mountain tops and wintered in the lowlands. But someone told me that he hibernated. At twelve thousand feet I heard a “Skee-ek” and then another. An hour later I saw conies sitting, running over the rocks, and shouting all around me—more like recess time at school than hibernating sleep.

One of these conies was calling from a skyline rock thirteen thousand feet above the sea. I walked toward him, wondering how near he would let me come. He kept up his “Skee-eking” at intervals, apparently without noticing me, until within ten or twelve feet. Then he sort of skated off the rock and disappeared. This was the nearest any cony, with the exception of Rocky on the top of Long’s Peak, had ever let me come. His manner of getting off the rock, too, instead of starting away from me in several short runs, made me think it must be Rocky.

The American cony lives on top of the world—on the crest of the continent. By him lives also the weasel, the ptarmigan, and the Bighorn wild sheep; but no other fellow lives higher in the sky than he; he occupies the conning tower of the continent.

But what did these “rock-rabbits” eat? They were fat and frolicking the year around.

The following September I came near Rocky again. He was standing on top of a little haystack—his haystack. All alone he was working. This was his food supply for the coming winter; conies are grass and hay eaters. A hay harvest enables the cony to live on mountain tops.

Rocky’s nearly complete stack was not knee-high, and was only half a step long. As I stood looking at him and his tiny stack of hay, he jumped off and ran across the rocks as fast as his short legs could speed him. A dozen or so steps away he disappeared behind a boulder, as though leaving for other scenes.

But he came running back with something in his mouth—more hay. This he dropped against the side of the stack and ran off again behind the boulder.

I looked behind the boulder. There was a small hay field, a ragged space covered with grass and wild flowers, surrounded with boulders and with ice and old snow at one corner. Acres of barren rocks were all around and Long’s Peak rose a rocky crag high above.

Back from the stack came the cony and leaped into the field, rapidly bit off a number of grass blades and carrying these in his mouth raced off for the stack. The third time he cut off three tall, slender plant stalks and at the top of one a white and blue flower fluttered. With these stalks crosswise in his teeth, the stalks extending a foot each side of his cheeks, he galloped off to his stack.

Many kinds of plants were mixed in this haystack. Grass blades, short, long, fine, and coarse; large leaves and small; stalks woody and stalks juicy. Flowers still clung to many of these stalks—yellow avens, alpine gentians, blue polemonium, and purple primrose.

The home of Rocky was at approximately 13,000 feet. The cony is found over a belt that extends from this altitude down to 9,500. In many regions timberline splits the cony zone. In this zone he finds ample dwelling places under the surface between the rocks of slides and moraines.

Conies appear to live in rock-walled, rock-floored dens. I have not seen a cony den in earth matter. With few exceptions all dens seen were among the boulders of moraines or the jumbled rocks of slides. Both these rock masses are comparatively free of earthy matter. Dens are, for the most part, ready-made. About all the cony has to do is to find the den and take possession.

In the remains of a caved moraine I saw parts of a number of cony dens exposed. The dens simply were a series of irregularly connected spaces between the boulders and rock chunks of the moraine. Each cony appears to have a number of spaces for sleeping, hay-stacking, and possibly for exercise. One cony had a series of connected rooms, enough almost for a cliff-dweller city. One of these rooms was filled with hay, and in three others were thin nests of hay.

These dens are not free from danger. Occasionally an under-cutting stream causes a morainal deposit to collapse. Snowslides may cover a moraine deeply with a deposit of snow and this in melting sends down streams of water; the roof over cony rooms leaks badly; he vacates.

Photo. by Frank Palmer

Goat-land

Slide rock—the home of the cony—frequently is his tomb. All cliffs are slowly falling to pieces, and occasionally a clinging mass weighing hundreds and possibly thousands of tons lets go and down the slide rock it tumbles, bounding, crushing, and tearing. The conies that escape being crushed come out peeved and protesting against unnecessary disturbances.

One day while crossing the heights there came a roaring and a crashing on the side of a peak that rose a thousand feet above the level of the plateau. A cloud of rock dust rose and filled the air completely for several minutes. As the echoes died away there were calls and alarmed cries of conies. Hastening to the bottom of a slope of slide rock I found scattered fragments of freshly broken rocks. A mass had fallen near the top of the peak and this had crashed down upon the long slope of slide rock, tearing and scattering the surface and causing the entire slope of a thousand feet or more to settle. I could hear a subdued creaking, groaning, and grinding together, with a slight tumble of a fragment on surface.

This slide had been temporarily changed into a rock glacier—a slow, down-sliding mass of confused broken rocks. Its numerous changing subterranean cavities were not safe places for conies.

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Numbers of conies were “Skee-eking” and scampering. Weasels were hurrying away from the danger zone. Possibly a number of each had been crushed.

The conies thus driven forth probably found other dens near by, and a number I am certain found welcome and refuge for the night in the dens of conies in undisturbed rocks within a stone’s throw of the bottom of the slide.

The upper limits of the inhabited cony zone present a barren appearance. Whether slide or moraine, the surface is mostly a jumble of rocks, time-stained and lifeless. But there are spaces, a few square feet, along narrow ledges or in little wind-blown or water-placed piles of soil, which produce dwarfed shrubs, grasses, and vigorous plants and wild flowers.

Dried food in the form of hay is what enables the cony to endure the long winters and to live merrily in the very frontier of warm-blooded life. In this zone he lives leisurely.

Rocky placed his haystack between boulders, beneath the edge of the big flat rock on which he sat for hours daily, except during haymaking time. As soon as the stack was dry he carried the hay down into his underground house and stacked it in one or more of the rock-walled rooms. It appears that all cony stacks are placed by the entrance of the den, and in as sheltered a spot as possible. Rocky cut and stacked his hay during September, then early October I saw him carrying it underground.

These cony haystacks were of several sizes and many shapes. The average one was smaller than a bushel basket. I have seen a few that contained twice or even three times the contents of a bushel.

There were rounded haystacks, long and narrow ones, and others of angular shape. But few were of good form, and the average stack had the appearance of a wind-blown trash pile, or a mere heap of dropped hay. Invariably the stack was placed between or to the leeward of rocks; evidently for wind protection.

One stack in a place was the custom. But a number of times I have seen two, four, and once five stacks in collection. Near each stack collection was an equal number of entrances to cony dens.

But little is known concerning the family life of the cony. Nor do I know how long the average cony lives. A prospector in the San Juan Mountains saw a cony frequently through four years. I had glimpses of Rocky a few times each year for three years. During the second summer one of his ears was torn and the slit never united. Just how this happened I do not know.

All conies that I saw making hay were working alone. But there were five conies at work in one field. One of these haymakers was lame in the left hind foot. Each haycutter carried his load off to his stack. One stack was thirty steps from the field; the one of the lame fellow, fortunately, was only eight steps.

The cony is a relative of the rabbit, the squirrel, the beaver, and the prairie dog. Although he has a home underground, he spends most of his waking hours outdoors. Above ground on a rock he sits—in the sunshine, in cloud, and even in the rain.

Except during harvest, or when seeking a new home, he works but little. Much of the time he simply sits. On a rock that rises two feet or more above the surrounding level he sits by the hours, apparently dreaming.

By the entrance of Rocky’s den lay a large, flat slab of granite, several feet long. This was raised upon boulders. He stacked his hay beneath the edge of this outreaching slab and upon the slab he spent hours each day, except in busy haymaking time.

With back against his rock, without a move for an hour or longer, he would sit in one spot near his den. Now and then he sent forth a call as though asking a question, and then gravely listened to the responses of far-off conies. Occasionally he appeared to repeat a call as though relaying a message from his station. Many of these “Skee-eks” may at times be just common cony talk, while others, given with different speeds and inflections, sometimes are quick and peculiarly accented, and probably warn of possible danger or tell of the approach of something harmless.

One spring day I came by Rocky’s place and he was not in sight. I waited long, then laid my sweater upon his slab of granite and went on to the home of another cony. On returning Rocky was home. Like a little watch dog he sat upon the sweater.

Another time in June he was out in the hay meadow eating the short young plants. I stood within ten feet of him and he went on eating as though he did not know I was there. Occasionally he called “Ke-ack” that appeared to be relayed to far-off conies. He did not seem to be watching me but the instant I moved he darted beneath a rock out of sight.

Conies are shy wherever I have found them, and I found many in places possibly not before visited by people.

Rocky’s nearest cony neighbour was more than two hundred feet away across the boulders. During a winter visit to him I found cony tracks which indicated that these two conies had exchanged calls.

The cony appears something of a traveller, something of an explorer. A number climb to the summit of the nearest peak during the summer and occasionally one goes far down into the lower lands.

A few times I have seen them as explorers on top of Long’s Peak and other peaks that rise above 14,000 feet; and occasionally a cony comes to my cabin and spends a few days looking around, taking refuge, and spending the nights in the woodpile. My cabin is at 9,000 feet, and the nearest cony territory is about a mile up the mountainside.

One snowy day, while out following a number of mountain sheep, I passed near the home of Rocky and turned aside hoping to see him. Before reaching his rock I saw a weasel coming toward me with a limp cony upon his shoulder and clutched by the throat. The weasel saw me and kept on coming toward me, and would, I believe, have brushed by. He appeared in a hurry to take his kill somewhere, probably home.

I threw a large chunk of snow which struck upon a rock by him. He fell off the rock in scrambling over the snow. But he clung to the cony and dragged it out of reach beneath a boulder.

No fur or blood was found on Rocky’s rock nor on any of the rocks surrounding his den. Possibly the cony carried by the weasel was another cony. Just what may have become of Rocky I cannot be sure. Possibly he was crushed by the settling of the rock walls of his house; a fox, eagle, or weasel may have seized him. But at any rate, I never saw him again that I know of, and that autumn no busy little haymaker appeared in the meadow among the boulders.

The weasel is the most persistent and effective enemy of the cony. Evidently he is dreaded by them. Bears, lions, coyotes, foxes, and eagles occasionally catch a cony; but the weasel often does. The weasel is agile, powerful, slender bodied, and can follow a cony into the smaller hiding places of the den and capture him. During winter he is the snow-white ermine, and in white easily slips up over the snow unseen. He can outrun, outdodge a cony, and then, too, he is a trained killer. From the weasel there is no escape for the cony.

During winter rambles in cony highlands I occasionally discovered a stack of hay on the surface. Most stacks are moved into the dens before winter is on.

When a stack is left outside it commonly means that either the stack is exceptionally well sheltered from wind and snow, and in easy and safe reach of the cony, or else the little owner has lost his life—an avalanche or other calamity forced him to leave the locality.

One sunny morning I set off early on snowshoes to climb high and to search for the scattered cony haystacks among the rocks on the side of Long’s Peak. A haystack sheltered against a cliff was found at timberline. By it was the fresh track of a bighorn ram. He had eaten a few bites of the hay. No other part of the stack had been touched. Around were no cony tracks in the snow. The stack had the appearance of being incomplete. Had a lynx or other prowler captured the haymaker in the unsheltered hayfield? Evidently the owner or builder had not been about for weeks. A slowly forming icicle almost filled the unused entrance to the cony den.

Against the bottom of one large slide of rock was a grassy meadow of a few acres which during summer was covered with a luxuriant growth of grass and wild flowers. Three big stacks of hay stood at the bottom of this slide in a stockade of big rock chunks. The hay was completely sheltered from the wind; from the rich near-by hayfield the stack had been built large. Close to the stacks three holes descended into cony dens.

Had these three near neighbour conies worked together in cutting, carrying, and piling these three stacks? They were separated by only a few inches and had been cut from one near-by square rod of meadow. But it is likely that each cony worked independently.

Far up the mountainside I found and saw an account of a cony adventure written in the snow. In crossing a barren snow-covered slide I came upon cony tracks coming down. I back-tracked to see where they came from.

A quarter of a mile back and to one side a snowslide mingled with gigantic rock fragments had swept down and demolished a part of a moraine and ruined a cony home. This must have been a week or more before. The snow along the edge of the disturbed area was tracked and re-tracked—a confusion of cony footprints.

But the cony making the tracks which I followed had left the place and proceeded as though he knew just where he was going. He had not hesitated, stopped, nor turned to look back. Where was he bound for? I left the wreckage to follow his tracks.

Up over a ridge the tracks led, then down a slope to the place where I had discovered them, then to the left along a terrace a quarter of a mile farther. Here they disappeared beneath huge rocks.

In searching for the tracks beyond I came in view of a tiny cony haystack back in a cave-like place formed among the rocks. By this was the entrance to a cony den. In the thin layer of snow were numerous cony tracks. To this entrance I traced the cony.

As I stooped, examining things beneath, I heard a cony call above. Edging out of the entrance I saw two conies. They were sitting on the same rock in the sunshine. One probably was the owner of the little haystack—the other the cony from the wrecked home.