Muskrat 



midway even in the coldest weather, when everywhere except 

 in midchannel the water is hard frozen to the bottom. 



The upper chamber in the cabin is lined with soft grass and 

 moss and here the owners spend much of their time in winter 

 curled up asleep, often three or four together. Some of the 

 smaller cabins have only the upper chamber without any down- 

 ward passage whatever; others are large enough to contain four 

 or five apartments at least. Many of them are built in low 

 willow trees or on rough frameworks of sticks which the musk- 

 rats arrange among the alders; and here they exhibit much of 

 the constructive ability of the beavers, cutting their wood on 

 shore in a similar manner and often towing it long distances to 

 their building sites where they wattle it firmly between the alder 

 stems for a foundation. 



Cabins so placed are generally composed largely of cattail 

 stalks and green twigs, while those on the ground are more 

 often built of mud and pieces of sod. The cabins are not much 

 used except at times of high water and in winter, though I doubt 

 if they are ever wholly abandoned at any season. So long as 

 the streams remain frozen, the muskrat is practically free from 

 care and danger. The temperature about him hardly varies a 

 degree whatever the weather may be above the ice. He knows 

 nothing of snowstorms or sleet or high winds while the ice 

 holds firm, though the rushing wind-driven water may be deep 

 over the ice in times of freshet. Down where he is at work 

 it flows with the same gentle motions as in summer, barely 

 swinging the water weed and cresses as it slips between them. 

 There is generally plenty of air to be had close up under the 

 edge of the bank beneath the ice, and when this is not within 

 reach, he has only to expel the air from his lungs against the 

 undersurface of the ice when it is quickly purified by contact 

 with the freezing water. 



It frequently happens that the water, falling away from the 

 ice, leaves extended caverns the width of the stream at high water 

 and roofed over with semitransparent ice, like ground glass, that 

 admits only a dim half-light from above. 



The banks of coarse wet grass and mud show dimly along 

 this strange underworld with the quiet unfrozen water holding its 

 still course between them; and here the muskrats are free to come 

 and go as they please, and swim, with their heads out of water, 



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