TEXAS NATUJRE OBSERVATIONS AND REraNISCENCBS. 167 



ets, where they build their peculiar 

 woodnests and breed enormously, 

 but held in check by their enemies 

 — snakes, owls, hawks and other 

 carnivorous animals of prey. Miles 

 and miles of such ratnests can be 

 seen in some of the olden time 

 pastures, with, usually, one nest 

 conijecting with the other through 

 rat trails — narrow paths cleared 



rat however, is strictly nocturnal, 

 and for this reason none of the 

 hundreds of rat nests, met with 

 occasionally in cactus jungles show 

 any rat in day-time, and it is 

 rarely the case some are seen 

 very early, at sunrise, or late 

 in the evening when other night- 

 . marauding animals appear around 

 their secluded haunts. 



A Typical Texas Prairie Rat Nest and Rats in Cactus Jungi-e (Leona Hills) 



by the rats through all the ob- 

 structing underbrush and the small 

 -serpentine prickley' pear bearing 

 red fruit. 



Comparatively the ground squirrel 

 is a much tamer rodent than the 

 prairie rat and it can often be 

 met with in its haunts early in 

 the morning up to midday, a,nd 

 also toward evening; the prairie 



Occasionally these prairie rats 

 migrate in immense numbers over 

 the prairie plains into pastures and 

 gardens, where they do immense 

 harm to the crops,. An old German 

 farmer at the Cibolo once told me 

 how he witnessed during a bright 

 moonlight night thousands of the 

 rodents migrating and devastating 

 his fruits. This happened years ago. 



