244 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



entirely, and builds himself a good imitation of a small 

 beaver lodge out of reeds. An old lodge often resembles 

 a hummock in the shoal water, and would readily 

 escape detection. Next to man, the muskrat's chief 

 foes are the horned owls and the foxes. When he 

 hears, sees, or smells one of these enemies, he dives into 

 the water, slapping it with his tail in warning to his 

 fellows, and swims under an overhanging bank. The 

 owl, however, often waits patiently over the spot where 

 he dove, and gets him when he comes up. He can hardly 

 be a savory meal, but owls are notoriously not particular. 

 There are otters in our stream, but most people have 

 never seen them. A few of those men who are still 

 born with the woodcraft instinct amid an alien genera- 

 tion, and surreptitiously trap on the outskirts of our 

 groomed and gardened villages, know where the otters 

 are to be found, know where they have established 

 then: cross-country trails, and now and then in Spring 

 mysterious bundles are shipped to West Twelfth Street, 

 New York. But most of us never guess that the otter is 

 our neighbour. Where the main stream is polluted, 

 he appears to keep to the tributaries, and only rarely, 

 in a secluded spot, will you find a trace of his slide down 

 the bank, or his web-footed tracks leading away from 

 the stream, probably cross-country to some other 

 stream. It is this habit of the otter to establish regular 

 overland crossings which is his undoing, for it enables 

 the hunter to place his traps. 



