PROFIT FROM THE MUSKRAT 77 



is in the roasting-ear stage. At times, also, 

 they have ruined ornamental ponds by eating 

 out of them the lilies and similar plants of 

 whose bulbs they are fond. But this sort of 

 destruction is rarely noticed except in the 

 neighborhood of extensive marshes. 



Far more serious, however, is the trouble and 

 loss the busy animals occasion by perforating 

 the dams and embankments of mill-ponds, 

 ice-ponds, irrigation ditches and reservoirs. 

 Every canal suffers breaks due to them, as well 

 as to brown rats, gophers, mice, crayfish and 

 moles. In the rice plantations of the Gulf coast 

 they are a serious nuisance by cutting the em- 

 bankments and flooding or draining the rice- 

 fields at the wrong time; and this has resulted 

 



in Louisiana in laws protecting the alligators 

 in some parishes because they kill the rats. 

 So serious was the situation in Plaquemine 

 Parish, La., in 1908-9, that a general slaughter 

 of muskrats took place, and fully half a million 

 are said to have been killed. The sale of their 

 pelts produced about $100,000. 



Trapping, shooting and poisoning may all be 

 made effective to a certain extent against 



