'I'lIK .MI'SKWAT 



drift and coarse weeds. At a point farthest from the center of 

 the chainbor. immediately over the shelf, was a passage leading up- 

 ward toward the side of the house. While it did not penetrate the 

 wall, it passed through the more compact portion and enabled the in- 

 mates to obtain air. Entrace was had through a covered way, from 

 and beneath the water to the center of the house, where it ter- 

 minated in a mass of fine grass and mud, through which there was 

 a funnel-sliaped opening to the interior. 



"This house was completely destroyed, and within a week the 

 muskrats had erected a new one on the site of the old, similar 

 to it but nearly twice as large, using the material of the old and 

 clearing off the vegetation from a much lai'<i(M- space." 



Where the muskrats live in thickly populated localities or 

 along small streams they do not build houses, but make burrows 

 beneath the water and there is also a vertical hole in the bank 

 that leads down to the nest and supplies air to the inmate. The 

 burrows sometimes extend l)ack for many feet and the nest is 

 generally placed about the high-water level of the stream. 



Usually there is a place not far from the nest where the ani- 

 mals are in the habit of climbing the bank to search for food and 

 w^here they return to the water. Trappers take advantage of these 

 smoothly worn "slides" to set. their traps. For, while it can not 

 be said that the muskrat shows much ingenuity in avoiding traps, 

 the uninitiated is very a])t to meet with failiu*e the first time he 

 attempts to catch one. The animals do not often stumble blindly 

 into a trap set on the bank, and if one does get caught in a steel 

 trap so located, his first act is to brace himself with all his mighc 

 and pull to get free. If the trap is weak and the animal full grown 

 he may succeed. If not, he usually continues struggling and biting 

 until he has either broken his foot off or else he bites, it off below 

 the jaws of the trap, where it is numbed by their pressure, and 

 pulls out the stump and so escapes. 



Accordingly experienced trappers place a steel trap in the water 

 at the bottom of a "slide," where the unwary "rats" get in read- 

 ily, and the chain is fastened by a stake set in deep water, so that 

 the animal cannot get on the bank, and it is soon drowned by the 

 weight of the trap. The "rats" are also speared in the houses 

 during the winter. 



Trapping muskrats for fur has been an important source of 

 revenue to many men, especially in the marshes along the Kan- 

 kakee River. A trapper who went to the Kankakee country in 

 1865 told me that at that time muskrat houses stood so thickly 



