HAIRY-TAILED PACK RATS 41 



A PACK RAT'S TREASURE TROVE. A LEGEND OF 

 THE LAKE CHELAN COUNTRY. 



Paddy, the pack rat, and all of the little pink 

 brothers and sisters were born as blind as art 

 critics and as bald as college professors, but, un- 

 like the latter individuals, young pack rats learn to 

 see, in time, and age cures their baldness. Not 

 far from the rats' nest, in a steep bank of treach- 

 erous slide rock, there lived a rattlesnake, dec- 

 orated with dark stripes and spots, the skin of this 

 same snake or one like it is a conspicuous object on 

 my study wall, but its markings approach so 

 closely to the color of the sun-baked stones that 

 a live rattler of this kind is scarcely distinguishable 

 among the slide rocks. 



How it happened that the snake ever discovered 

 the rats' nest is uncertain; however, I am inclined 

 to think that, dog like, it used its nose to follow 

 the trail of the mother rat. Even such devoted 

 little creatures as 



MOTHER PACK RATS 



cannot provide against all accidents, and accidents 

 sometimes happen to their helpless offsprings. 

 Oldtime prospectors and trappers do say that pack 

 rats in the gold mining districts of Arizona pro- 

 tect their nests from snakes by barricades built of 

 prickly cactus.* That this plant does not grow in 



*It is possible that the rats do carry the cactus to their nests, but it is 

 > more than probable that if i1 

 /atch, nails or any other object 



also more than probable that if they do so they do it ES they would a 

 :h, nails or any other object without any idea of deferse. 



