Muskrat 549 



The lodges are resting places and sleeping places, as well 

 as the nurseries for the young. They are truly the homes of 

 these animals. 



The inborn home-feeling that the Muskrat has for its 

 raft — that is, its house beginning — is shown in this incident. 

 During my early days in the Souris Plains (May, 1882) I once 

 fired at a Muskrat sitting on a large raft. It dived off into 

 the water, but returned to clamber onto the floating reeds. 

 I walked gently near, then waded out to find it was the same 

 Muskrat — stone dead. It had come back to its raft to die. 



A higher development of these outlying posts is thus 

 described by Dr. John Rae:^ 



**The house-buildinp; habits of the Muskrat, in nearly every eating- 



HUTS 



part of British North America, are well known, but there is one 

 plan to which it sometimes resorts under certain circumstances 

 which appears to show great intelligence in enabling it to get 

 its food more readily. The Muskrat, when about to build its 

 house, selects a pond or swamp of good, pure water, on the 

 bottom of which grow the plants which constitute its winter 

 supply of food. If the pond or swamp is of considerable 

 extent, and the house a large one containing many Rats, they, 

 when the water begins to freeze in early winter, keep several 

 holes open in the ice in different directions, and at a distance 

 from the house, and build a Httle hut of mud and weeds (just 

 large enough to hold one Rat comfortably) over each hole, 

 which — especially when covered with snow — prevents it 

 freezing up. These huts enable the Rats to extend their 

 feeding-ground to all parts of the pond, which could not be 

 reached at all, or with difficulty, from the house if they had to 

 swim home every time with a mouthful of food to eat it. With 

 these little shelters they are saved a great amount of labour 

 and are enabled to reach all the food in the pond. I remember, 

 when on a snow-shoe journey, one of my men went very 

 quietly up to one of these miniature mud-huts and knocked it 



^ Birds and Mam., H. B. Co. Ter, Linn., Soc. Joum. Zool., XX, Pt. X, 1888, 

 pp. 142-3. 



