27C NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



"He nearly got me that time", gasped Mrs. Wood Rat. "I 

 couldn't see him till he sprang". 



"We are safe here", answered Mr. Rat looking anxiously around. 

 "We will never starve here anyway", eyeing the rosy cactus 

 apples above. "Where shall we build?" 



"Here — build up aroimd the trunk of this prickly pear cactus", 

 indicated Mrs. Wood Rat. 



All night they worked, swiftly as moon beams, silently as 

 shadows. They carried sticks from the bushes close by. Some- 

 times they cut off stems of green sumac or the shatp ends of Span- 

 ish bayonet leaves. They left three open spaces for doors but 

 all aroiind these doors they laid pieces of cactus stems prickly 

 with thorns. A clumsy skimk would get his paws full of prickles 

 if he tried to enter. A snake would not like to crawl over them. 

 But the Wood Rats hopped nimbly over them like the fairies that 

 in picture books play leap frog over toad stools and were never 

 once stuck. In among two hollows Mrs. Wood Rat stowed dry 

 grasses and made cozy, warm nests, one for each of them. An- 

 mother hollow as a store room and dining room. 



They did not build their house in one night of course. In the 

 daytime they stayed in their new home. But at night they piled 

 load after load of sticks and leaves on their house nest making it 

 the shape of a giant pine cone to shed the winter rains. Each 

 night they visited the old home bringing food that they had stored — 

 cured grasses and elderberry leaves and seeds of chilicothe and 

 simmondsia. 



One night when the pair were about to enter the old home they 

 heard a strange sound. A muffled murrmur filled the whole house. 



"What is it", whispered Mrs. Wood Rat. 



"Bees — let's go — come quickly", answered Mr. Wood Rat. 

 So away they scampered. 



True enough, a swarm of bees from a hive in the neighborhood 

 had chosen the empty nest for a snug home. I am told that next 

 day there were several swelled faces in several homes near the 

 Fremont school. One dog, Bowser by name, will never again dig 

 into a wood rat's nest as long as he lives. But all this is another 

 story. The wood rats knew nothing about all this for they were 

 safe in their new home munching dried elderberries. 



