The Wise Wood Rats 



Carroll De Wilton Scott 

 San Diego, Calif. 



(This is a story specially for boys and 

 girls — and others whose hearts are still 

 young. It is about the western wood 

 rats, the builders of the wonderful stick 

 houses you often see among the chaparral. 

 These rats have nothing in common with 

 city rats save their relationship. They 

 are clean,clever,bright-eyed, soft of foot 

 and live a woodsy, romantic life). 



Mr. and Mrs. Wood Rat lived in a 

 brushy canyon near the Fremont school 

 near the outskirts of the city. Their 

 house was made of sticks and built among 

 the limbs of a laurel sumac bush. How 

 old their house was nobody knew — ^per- 

 haps ten years, perhaps fifty. Of course 

 the same sticks had not been there that 

 long. If you had dug into the bottom of 

 the house you would have found a mass 

 of decayed leaves and wood going back 



^ 



4: 



% 



'}A 



v^ 



r^.^J 



n 





268 



