Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/230

Rh Another animal with which the bush swarms is the kangaroo rat, or, I should perhaps rather say the "boody," though there is but a very slight difference between the two creatures, except that the "boody" is a burrower and makes its habitation underground, while the kangaroo rat usually forms its nest in an old hollow tree. There is also a distinction between them in the colour of the tail.

These rats or "boodies" are of much the same size as their English cousins, and resemble them in the shape of the head and ears, though the body is rather larger than that of the old black rat, being fully as big as that of a well grown Hanoverian. The long hind legs, however, which are quite of the kangaroo type, diminish this resemblance to the rat which is given by the shape of the head and ears, so that I have often thought that "Australian Jerboa" would be the more fitting name for the animal; but the likeness between it and the English rat was strong enough to mislead Binnahan, who, on finding a picture in 'Punch' of rats dressed in coats and trousers, exclaimed, "Look at the boodies, missis! they have all got on comfortable clothes."

Should a number of these creatures be established in the vicinity nothing is safe,—flour, sugar, pork, candles, and soap, all seem to suit their tastes, and they burrow with as much ease and rapidity as the rats with which we are familiar at home. A servant once employed by us, who had been a bush sawyer for some years, used to complain bitterly of the trouble that a colony of boodies had caused him before he could succeed in frightening them away from his hut. Bishop Salvado also, in his account of the Benedictine settlement at New Norcia, mentions