CHAPTER VIII 



OTHER LITTLE ANIMALS BESIDES WAHBOOS THE RABBIT— BEING 

 AN ACCOUNT OF MUSQUASH THE MUSKRAT, SIKAK THE 

 SKUNK, WENUSK THE BADGER, AND OTHERS 



I 



Musquash the Muskrat 



Every chapter in the trapper's life is not a " stunt." 

 There are the uneventful days when the trapper seems to do 

 nothing but wander aimlessly through the woods over the prairie 

 along the margin of rush-grown marshy ravines where the stagnant 

 waters lap lazily among the flags, though a feathering of ice begins 

 to rim the quiet pools early in autumn. Unless he is duck-shooting 

 down there in the hidden slough where is a great "quack-quack" 

 of young teals, the trapper may not uncase his gun. For a whole 

 morning he lies idly in the sunlight beside some river where a round- 

 ish black head occasionally bobs up only to dive under when it 

 sees the man. Or else he sits by the hour still as a statue on the 

 mossy log of a swamp where a long wriggling-wriggling trail 

 marks the snaky motion of some creature below the amber depths. 

 To the city man whose days are regulated by clock-work and 

 electric trams with the ceaseless iteration of gongs and "step fast 

 there !" such a life seems the type of utter laziness. But the best- 

 learned lessons are those imbibed unconsciously and the keenest 

 pleasures come unsought. Perhaps when the great profit-and-loss 

 account of the hereafter is cast up, the trapper may be found to 

 have a greater sum total of happiness, of usefulness, of real knowl- 

 edge than the multi-millionaire whose life was one buzzing round 

 of drive and worry and grind. Usually the busy city man has 

 spent nine or ten of the most precious years of his youth in study 



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