As a rule, the mesh which has square spaces is called wire-cloth, and that which has six-sided spaces is called netting. For mice, rats, chipmonks, flying-squirrels, gray and red squirrels, use about No. 2-1/2 square mesh of No. 17 galvanized wire.
For woodchucks and musk-rats use a rather small mesh and pretty heavy wire, for their teeth are strong chisels, and you will be surprised to see what skilled mechanics they are in the use of the tools with which nature has supplied them. For rabbits, a two-inch mesh or any of the nettings used for poultry answers all purposes; but for foxes, if you use a two-inch mesh, be careful to have it of heavy wire. The writer’s Skye terrier pup gnawed its way through the chicken-coop wire-netting on various occasions, and a fox has all the energy of a terrier, coupled with a most surprising amount of ingenuity and skill in jail-breaking.
I once owned could undo any knot or catch that I could invent with which to fasten them, and I was only made aware of the fact from the complaints of lost chickens which came from our neighbors.
While the neighbors were protesting, Faust and Mrs. Faust lay in front of their den, staring innocently at us with their great brown eyes, but investigation proved that the chains which apparently confined them were attached to nothing but their collars; and, furthermore, when I pushed the foxes aside with my foot, sundry quills and feathers, protruding from the fresh earth of their bed, showed only too plainly that our neighbors were not without reason in suspecting my innocent-looking rascally pets. I at last solved the problem by chaining the foxes together, and in spite of all their cunning, they never learned to go through the same opening in the fence, but each chose a different exit, and both were then held by their chain.
the reader makes will, of necessity, be of a form peculiar to his purpose and the location where it is placed. If it is for a fence-corner there will be but two sides to cover with wire-netting; if it be against the fence there will be three sides of netting: the fence forming the other side. In a hundred different ways will the surroundings modify the form of the cages, so, to simplify matters, we will suppose the proposed pen is to stand in the centre of the yard. In this case,