RATS AND MICE FAMILY 



253 



A few years ago a country boy was crawling 

 quietly along through the tall grass and low 

 bushes bordering the edge of a mill pond. As 

 he peered over the tops of the grass he saw just 

 above the surface of the water a brown rat-like 

 head and behind it a series of little rippling 

 waves. The boy crouched and watched with all 

 his eyes. Splash ! The animal had dived, only 

 to reappear in a few minutes, upon a shelving 

 rock with a fresh-water " clam " in its mouth. 

 It opened the shell and ate its contents with 

 seeming relish. When its meat course was 

 finished it nosed along the bank for a rod or two. 



pond. They were rather small steel traps, and he 

 sank them into the mud and also in the shallow 

 water near the shore. Then he impaled a small 

 carrot on one end of a slender stick and pushed 

 the other into the ground at such an angle that 

 the carrot came just above the pan of the trap, 

 and high above it so that the Rat would have to 

 stand upright in order to reach the tempting 

 morsel. Oftentimes he caught his Musk-rat in 

 this manner, although sometimes he found only 

 the lower part of a leg in the trap. In its 

 struggle to escape the Musk-rat had twisted or 

 gnawed off its own leg. 



Photograph by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt 



MUSK-RAT FEEDING 



A rodent that is more at home in water than on land, 

 killed for the sake of their fur 



Large numbers are 



and, finding a plant to its taste, dug into its root 

 with a few slashing strokes of its strong fore- 

 legs, and ate its vegetable course with quite as 

 evident gusto. 



" My land ! " breathed the boy to himself, 

 " what a whopper of a Musk-rat !" 



On another magic day the boy was fortunate 

 enough to see a second Musk-rat swimming 

 back and forth near the bank followed by four 

 ^mailer copies of herself. Slowly the light 

 faded and he could see them no more ; but, as 

 he stood up and turned to go home, he heard 

 the slap of the Rat's tail on the water, warning 

 others of her kind that danger threatened ; then 

 slap after slap around the pond as others heard 

 the alarm and passed it on. 



A few days later the boy set traps at the mouth 

 of the Alusk-rats' burrows in the bank of the 



If he had been an Indian boy along the Yukon 

 River of Alaska, a Creole boy in Louisiana, the 

 son of a lumberman in Maine, or a gold miner in 

 the Rockv Mountains, this boy's experience 

 would have been much the same ; for the Mus- 

 quash — as the Musk-rat is sometimes called ■ — 

 is found practically all over North America as 

 far south as the Mexican boundary. No single 

 species, however, is so widespread. The com- 

 mon eastern form, with its subspecies covers 

 most of the entire range. Of two other impor- 

 tant species, one is found in Labrador and the 

 other in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. 

 Some of the subspecies are much restricted in 

 range. The Large-toothed Musk-rat is con- 

 fined to the region on and near the coast of 

 Delaware. Maryland. Virginia and North Caro- 

 lina. The Orcnon Musk-rat is limited to the 



