4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 82 



Desiring to secure the most marked expression of this scientifically 

 unknown form, I left Marco Island at once and proceeded by auto- 

 stage to the town of Everglades, located about the middle of the 

 east side of Chokoloskee Bay. 



The next morning I went to the fishing village of Chokoloskee, near 

 the southern end of the bay, where a trapper with a small motor boat 

 was employed and at the expiration of about ten days we had a 

 series of i6 specimens, all taken on the small mangrove keys lying 

 between Chokoloskee Bay and the open waters of the Gulf of 

 Mexico. The delay in getting these animals was due to the fact 

 that I had arrived at the end of the trapping season and the number 

 left was comparatively small. 



Previously I had always thought of raccoons as animals dependent 

 on available fresh water and it surprised me to find them living in 

 great numbers among the mangrove islands, both in the Ten Thousand 

 Islands and on other Florida keys, without any possible source of 

 such water. Their food consisted of an abundant supply of fish, 

 crustaceans, and shellfish left exposed on the mud at each low tide. 



The haunts of the raccoons among the mangrove roots of the Ten 

 Thousand Islands were shared by great numbers of roof rats (Rattus 

 rattus alexamdrinus) . These were so numerous that they interfered 

 with our success in trapping the raccoons, dozens of them being 

 caught. Another interference was the frequency with which fish and 

 crabs ate the bait above the traps while they were submerged during 

 high tide. As a result of these marine visitants the traps sometimes 

 capture curious prey. Several kinds of fish and crabs, in wallowing 

 about when tugging at the bait, now and then spring the trap and 

 are caught. My trapper said that on one occasion he caught a small 

 shark about i8 inches long. His method of trapping, which he in- 

 formed me was the regular practice among these keys, was to make 

 a little U-shaped enclosure by sticking pieces of dead mangrove roots 

 into the mud in a small opening among the mangrove roots at the 

 head of small bay-like indentations of the shore line, where the 

 animals patrolling the bare mud at low tide would find it on their way 

 from point to point. A piece of fish for bait was impaled on a small 

 stick, the other end being stuck in the mud at the inner part of the 

 enclosure. The steel trap was then set on the bare mud at the entrance 

 of the enclosure guarding the bait, without the slightest effort to 

 conceal it — a stick thrust through the ring at the end of the chain and 

 deep in the mud serving to hold any animal caught (see pi. i, fig. 2). 



At high tide this trap would be more than two feet under water. 

 Trapping among these keys is practically all done by using small 

 boats with outboard motors, or small gasoline engines. 



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