Scorecard

Agreed. And the boys have gained some notion of what they will have to go through when they grow up to be adult businessmen.

THE INSIDE TRACK

?Owners of Jamin, France's great trotter, have turned down $50,000 for his first foal, a colt named Samos. To avoid European competition, they will not sell Jamin progeny on the Continent but will sell to an American if the price is right.

?Australian bookmakers have set 3-to-1 odds against their sloop Gretel winning the America's Cup race but with the expectation that odds will shorten to 3 to 2.

?Behind the unique August 14 American Football League draft, which will involve switching uniforms by 30 players, is an effort to placate television people, who complain of one-sided games. Strengthening of such weak sisters as Oakland and Denver is expected.

?Basketball as an Olympic sport is under a two-pronged attack. Some foreign countries would like to see it out, because of U.S. dominance, and certain AAU leaders would, too, chiefly because most American team members have enjoyed college athletic scholarships, an offense against pure amateurism. But so have most U.S. track and field stars.

THE NONFISHING FISHER

Aside from chewing up ax handles for the salt that's on them and riddling the snouts of foolish dogs with their quills, porcupines wreak annual damage of $1.5 million in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. They have recently undergone a population explosion because so many bobcats and cougars—who sometimes will risk a porcupine meal—have been killed to reduce predations on sheep and cattle. So, with fewer enemies to bother them, the porcupines have been almost unhindered in their work of girdling the bark from trees, thereby killing the trees.

Into this ominous situation now slithers the sleek, agile fisher, a nocturnal beast who looks very like a giant mink but is much less familiar to forest or nightclub. He is, in fact, one of the least known of the sylvan animals. Even his name is founded on ignorance of his habits. Trappers caught him in traps baited with fish and assumed that he fished. He does not. He lives on small game animals and some fruits, but most of all he dearly loves a feast of fat porcupine. He is, indeed, the only animal that consistently dines on porcupine. Therefore he may be just the fellow to take care of what lumbermen call "the skulking pine-pig."

He is faster in the treetops than any other North American mammal and he is so fond of the treetops that he is classified as arboreal. The treetops just happen to be where the porcupines do their worst. And the fisher is deft enough to kill a porcupine without getting himself a snootful of quills. He corners the porcupine in a cul-de-sac in the tree, then flips him onto his back and slashes his unprotected throat and belly. He makes it look easy.