Four-footed Americans and their kin . rrowing and mud-pie-makingbrother, the Beaver. He is a heavy animal, with shortneck and long, sharp hind claws for digging, and forepaws like hands, with four fingers and a thumb. Hesecretes a muslcy odor that gives him his name. The Muskrat is certainly the aristocrat of his family,for he wears a most beautiful soft fur coat that neithermud nor water can destroy. (Your father, you remem-ber, has a cap made of it.) He finds places suitable forhis home in the greater part of North America, andthere are few ponds and sluggish streams that do nottell tales of
Four-footed Americans and their kin . rrowing and mud-pie-makingbrother, the Beaver. He is a heavy animal, with shortneck and long, sharp hind claws for digging, and forepaws like hands, with four fingers and a thumb. Hesecretes a muslcy odor that gives him his name. The Muskrat is certainly the aristocrat of his family,for he wears a most beautiful soft fur coat that neithermud nor water can destroy. (Your father, you remem-ber, has a cap made of it.) He finds places suitable forhis home in the greater part of North America, andthere are few ponds and sluggish streams that do nottell tales of him. He lives and finds his food in the RATS AND MICE 337 water, and seems out of his element when on land. Heprefers to attend to his affairs at night, when the suncannot spy upon him, and he is sociable as well as shy,preferring village life to solitude, so that many of thedomed winter houses, built of reeds, sticks, and mud, areusually found near together. These homes are builtin shallow water and are entered from below; there is. MUSKRAT. a comfortable living-room inside, just above the waterlevel, with many passages from it where the family canhide in times of danger. The doorway being underwater, allows the Muskrat to go out in ? winter, whenthe surface is frozen, and secure marsh roots and theother vegetable food that he needs. So he does notsleep the winter sleep, nor yet store up food like theBeaver. 338 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS The objection which classes the Muskrat among nui-sance animals, is not because they eat valuable things,but because of their burrowing habits ; they cause riverand pond banks to cave in, and undermine mill-dams. Iknow of a large and valuable tract of marsh, the drain-ing of which has been twice abandoned because myriadsof Muskrats kept burrowing through the dikes. TheMuskrats summer home is in a bank burrow, atthis season he varies his vegetable food with fresh-water mussels. He is a great fighter, and has beenknown to attack people on slig
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecta, booksubjectmammals
