. Animal snapshots and how made . ime the gardenwas being plundered by the muskrats, the greatestdestruction occurred on cloudy nights, while on themorning following a clear night nothing would bemissed. I was unable to determine why the muskrats were£0 destructive this particular autumn, and it seemedstrange that they had never troubled the gardenbefore. The number of muskrats trapped during thefall did not show an increase over previous years. The finding of the vegetables in the burrows natu-rally leads to the question, Do muskrats store foodfor winter use ? I believe it is the exception wh
. Animal snapshots and how made . ime the gardenwas being plundered by the muskrats, the greatestdestruction occurred on cloudy nights, while on themorning following a clear night nothing would bemissed. I was unable to determine why the muskrats were£0 destructive this particular autumn, and it seemedstrange that they had never troubled the gardenbefore. The number of muskrats trapped during thefall did not show an increase over previous years. The finding of the vegetables in the burrows natu-rally leads to the question, Do muskrats store foodfor winter use ? I believe it is the exception when theydo. I wish to relate an incident, although it is aseeming contradiction to the above statement. Notfar from the garden and within two hundred feetof the creek stood a large apple tree. The apples 84 The Muskrat ripened about September first. Judging from the nu-merous and well defined paths leading to the old tree,the muskrats must have visited it almost nightly fromthe time of the earliest windfalls until the apples were. A Burrow Exposed Showing a Few Apples Stored for Winter gathered. One of these paths was so well worn andthere were so many remains of apples along its coursethat I decided to open the burrow from which it was half a bushel of apples in that burrow! The Muskrat 85 Two years later another burrow in the sarae vicinityyielded a like amount. When he can obtain it, the principal animal foodof the muskrat is the fresh water mussel. I havefound large heaps of these empty shells near theentrance of a muskrat home. The muskrat is alsosaid to feed to some extent upon fish, especially uponthose fish which half conceal themselves in the mud,as the carp, sucker, and catfish. It is also probablethat during severe winters, when food is scarce, theydevour one another. I am certain that if a muskratis caught in a trap and remains there for some time,its companions will often turn upon it and devour cannibalism is not peculiar to the muskrat family,fo
Size: 1611px × 1550px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectani, booksubjectbirds
