452 Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1910. 



try in suitable inclosures or to kill the individual animal 

 which is doing damage than to adopt a policy of general 

 persecution toward the tribes to which the few offenders be- 

 1-ng. 



The food; habits of other fur bearers are usually of less 

 importance. Weasels are excellent mousers; minks feed on 

 frogs, fish, mice, and other small animals; while raccoons 

 and opossums eat, in addition to a wide variety of neutral or 

 harmful small animals, many kinds of vegetable food of 

 little or no direct value to man. Muskrats and beavers live 

 on wild products of marshes and woodlands, and only in 

 rare instances are their burrows or houses objectionable. 



In short, speaking generally, fur animals transform un- 

 cultivated and useless materials into valuable peltries, with- 

 out expense or attention on our part. They are doing this 

 throughout the countr}'. When the corn is in the crib, and 

 the landscape has been browned by frost, farm lads take 

 down their traps with happy expectation and set out to 

 gather unearned increments of fur. 



The purpose of this article is to explain methods of trap- 

 ping the small wild animals of the farm, methods of pre- 

 paring skins of fur bearers for market, and methods of im- 

 proving the fur catch from year to year. 



HOW TO CATCH PESTS. 



The most destructive group of pests on the farm includes 

 the small gnawing animals known as rodents. Among 

 them are house rats and mice which have been brought to 

 this country from the Old World, and several kinds of na- 

 tive rats and mice, as wood rats, rice rats, cotton rats, kan- 

 garoo rats, meadow mice, pine mice, white-footed mice, and 

 pocket mice. Ground squirrels of several kinds are found 

 throughout the Western States and in many localities are 

 very destructive to forage and grain. Prairie dogs of the 

 plains region, related to ground squirrels, also destroy a 

 great deal of forage in the vicinity of their "towns." Here 

 and there woodchucks, or groundhogs, also related to ground 

 squirrels, are destructive to field and garden crops. In 

 mountainous and timbered regions porcupines are more or 

 less destructive to orchard and other trees. These animals 



