HAIRY-TAILED PACK RATS 39 



upon making an honest trade, but of course this 

 is not true, the rat finds some object, picks it up, 

 and starts to carry it away; during its journey it 

 comes across some other object, which, for some 

 unknown reason, appeals to its fancy, so it simply 

 drops the thing it has and takes up the other ob- 

 ject and thus gets the reputation of being too 

 honest to steal, and of making an attempt to pay 

 for everything it takes. Here are a few reports of 



PACK RAT PRANKS: 



A paste pot was left over night in the assay 

 office of the Silver Queen Mine; when the office 

 was opened in the morning the paste was gone, but 

 the pot was filled with a number of articles, 

 among which was an unbroken glass funnel, the 

 end of a stick, a bit of rope, some scraps of wire, 

 and numerous other similar articles. The pack 

 rats had been busy that night. 



A man who was building a shanty in Pueblo 

 sent to Denver for a keg of nails, he knocked out 

 the head of the keg and let it stand over night. In 

 the morning the keg was filled with table knives, 

 spoons, a lot of pebbles, fragments of a buckskin 

 glove, a set of false teeth, and a tin saucer, but 

 there was not a nail left in the keg. The man who 

 lost the spoons found his floor strewn with nails; 

 the man who had lost the buckskin glove found in 

 its place a woolen sock, and the prospector who 

 left his false teeth in a cup of water found in their 



