he’ll pick up as many muskrats as the 
old timer did when he was forced to 
limit his operations to one locality. 
With a car a man can trap ten or 
twenty small lakes or along many 
miles of a stream, and although the 
furbearers are scarce the amount of 
territory covered more than makes up 
for this deficiency. 
The body of the muskrat is about 
a foot in length, and the tail, a long 
scaly appendage, is ten inches or so 
long. The outer fur of the muskrat 
is a reddish brown and the under fur 
is drab. In many respects the animal 
is similar to the beaver; the forefeet 
are small and the hind ones compara- 
tively large and partly webbed. 
| Ress ’rat swims only with his hind 
feet, the front ones being more 
efficient as hands. The eyes are small 
and beady and the animal is near 
sighted. His teeth, that is the incisors 
or cutting teeth, are sharp and chisel- 
edged, on a small scale the exact coun- 
terpart of the beaver’s. 
Muskrats are very fond of most 
vegetables, such as carrots, parsnips, 
apples and the like, but their natural 
foods are grasses and roots. Musk- 
rats do not eat fish, as some persons 
have claimed. But we have known 
them to eat clams when other food was 
scarce. Their natural habitat is along 
ees 
sluggish streams or around the shores 
of lakes. They do not work in water 
beyond a certain depth or where the 
bottom is rocky. 
Ne seldom will one find a beaver 
country that is not also good for 
a few ’rats. In extremely hard win- 
ters I have known the beavers to allow 
muskrats the freedom of their domi- 
cile. That may sound fictitious, but 
it’s a fact that can be verified by con- 
sulting any north country trapper. 
The muskrat’s home is built on the 
order of the beaver lodge, though of 
course on a smaller scale. The former 
is built mostly of reeds and grasses, 
a large house being three or four feet 
in diameter and rising above the sur- 
face of the water a couple of feet. As 
high as ten and even a dozen of the 
animals will live in the same house. 
Sometimes the animals tunnel into the 
banks after the manner of beavers, 
enlarging the tunnel into a living 
room to suit their requirements and 
lining it with grass to make a nest. 
[ieee watch the muskrats along 
in early fall or shortly after the 
first ice forms, claiming they can fore- 
tell the weather by reading the signs. 
If the muskrats are slow in building 
it is a sign of moderate weather for 
some time. If the walls are thin there 
won’t be much frost during the com- 
ing winter, but if the houses are large, 
thick-walled and fairly high, you can 
be sure of a severe winter. At least, 
so the Indians say. 
Although more or less nocturnal in 
habits, the muskrat is often abroad 
during the day. Late one fall pard 
and I made quite a little stake, shoot- 
ing muskrats from a raft on a far 
north lake. As soon as the ice is firm 
enough the trapper can get out from 
the shores of lakes and make sets 
where the animals raise their feeding 
houses. 
1h ay feeding houses should not be 
confused with the living houses; 
they are built of trash brought up 
from the bottom of the pond and 
pushed through a hole in the ice. 
They are small mounds when complet- 
ed, hollowed out barely large enough 
to accommodate a muskrat while he 
is feeding. These rude shelters serve 
doubly as a protection from weather 
and the natural enemies of the ’rat. 
Coyotes, foxes, lynx, etc., are always 
on the lookout for an unwary muskrat. 
Once, while traveling along a frozen 
stream during a snowstorm, I came 
suddenly upon a lynx, squatting on 
the ice and intently watching some- 
thing unknown to me. The wind was 
(Continued on page 620) 

An ideal “rat” stream, slow current and marshy shores, 
589 
