The record-union., 1896-04-21
MUSKRATS AT HOME.
Traits and Tricks of the Little Bur-
rowing Animals,

Year by year, as the beautiful fur
bearing animals grow more scarce, and
the trappers and traders bring in at
the close Of each succeeding season a
smaller pack of pelts than the year be-
fore, they have more recourse to the
commOner and less -priZed creatures.
Cats, dogs, rabbits and skunks gradu-
ally take the place of otter, sable, mar
ten, beaver and mink. Even the musk
rat, whose warm thick coat was form
erly despised, is to-day eagerly hunted
and trapped. The great loads Of furs
that come in from the far-away Canada
woods nowadays contain ten rat skins
to every one of other sorts.
The local trappers, farmers sons and
backwoodsmen mostly, spend much of
the late fall and winter season collect
ing muskrat skins. These bring good
price GO cents apiece in good year,
and the animals are still plenty, even
near the big cities, after the fiercest
sort of hunting and killing. Their Won
derful keenness of sight, scent and
hearing, and their unsurpassed swim
ming power combine to enable them to
a great extent to defy the united efforts
of men and boys, assisted by dogs and
traps innumerable.
The winter habits of the rats are well
worth study. Interesting they are at
all seasons, from the time they first be-
gin to crop the new herbage on the creek
banks in April till they settle in their
winter dwellings,. But it is when the
frosty days begin to warn Br'er Musk
rat of coming snow and ice that all his
genius and energy are put to play.
The early settlers used to say, and the
tradition is still strictly believed in
many rural regions, that when the rats
build very Slight nests or none at all the
approaching winter will be very mild
and open. When the dwellings are big
and firmly built a severe, stormy season
may be expected. Like many such say
ings, this one has no foundation in fact,
and the recorded observations of several
naturalists have shown that the rats
possess no instructive prescience of the
weather, but frequently suffer from
their own iTnprovidence.
One of the large, carefully con-
structed nests requires many days pa
tient labor to build. The wide, ram
bling burrows in the meadow banks in
which they live all the summer through
would offer but a bare, bleak shelter in
December. So, selecting a marshy spot
where food is plenty and building ma
terials are near at hand, the muskrats
settle in whole colonies of a score or
more families. The nest is a dome
shaped affair, from two to three feet in
hight and about yard in diameter at
the base. Rushes, flags, long swamp
grasses and a few coarse fagots are
used all cemented tightly together with
moist clay. After one of these houses
has baked in the sun a vast amount of
strength is required to break it down
Inside the walls, which are five inches
or more thick, is one single central
round room. This is fioored with mud
and sticks, and above there is a warm.
soft carpet of grasses and leaves. The
door is a round hole in the middle Of
the floor, and leads into a half-dozen or
more paths. These pass under the
water level and extend to the dry
ground. Some of the artful trappers,
by plugging up all the exits, can catch
whole family of rats at home but it
is very hard to do. Usually there is one