My Boyhood and Touth 



ing, and the hind feet are half-webbed. They 

 look like little beavers, usually have from ten 

 to a dozen young, are easily tamed and make 

 interesting pets. We liked to watch them at 

 their work and at their meals. In the spring 

 when the snow vanishes and the lake ice begins 

 to melt, the first open spot is always used as a 

 feeding-place, where they dive from the edge of 

 the ice and in a minute or less reappear with a 

 mussel or a mouthful of pontederia or water- 

 lily leaves, climb back on to the ice and sit up 

 to nibble their food, handling it very much like 

 squirrels or marmots. It is then that they are 

 most easily shot, a solitary hunter oftentimes 

 shooting thirty or forty in a single day. Their 

 nests on the rushy margins of lakes and streams, 

 far from being hidden like those of most birds, 

 are conspicuously large, and conical in shape 

 like Indian wigwams. They are built of plants 

 — rushes, sedges, mosses, etc. — and orna- 

 mented around the base with mussel-shells. It 

 was always pleasant and interesting to see them 

 in the fall as soon as the nights began to be 

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