Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/854

832 bread was left in the pan, but it was filled with old scraps of leather, chips, bones, moldy beans, rags, etc. Searching, they found, high up on a partly broken shelf, in an old tin can, their bread packed away with old bacon-rinds, bones, rags, and other trash.

In the house of one of my neighbors these mischiefs carried away a lot of Indian or corn meal, and in the meal-box deposited a quantity of bird-shot, which, mixed with the remaining meal, caused the housekeeper great dissatisfaction. In the same house a trunk was accidentally left open one night; in the morning a quantity of rice, bits of dried fruit, and some oats, were found mixed with loose coral beads and other small trinkets; it was an exercise of patience to separate the articles, as may be readily imagined.

With these traders exchange is no robbery, and distance small hindrance; they travel from their homes and go from barn to house, from loft to cellar, and through living-rooms (noiseless when acting as porters), with great speed and impartiality. A sheep-herder, returning to his camp from a town thirty miles away, brought home a fine new hat; placing the box on his table, he went away for the night. Returning, he found the box had been entered, the crown of the hat eaten entirely round, and the box then filled with wool, flannel rags, remains of food, wheat, and dried fruits. There was a sudden forced abandonment of that unsurveyed "squatter's claim."

Some ranchmen were gone haying for several days, camping away from home. After their return they soon learned that their quarters had not been unoccupied during their absence. A nest composed of wool and rags filled the flour-sieve left upon a shelf; next beside the sieve stood the coffee-box, in it had been left about a pound of good coffee; now the box was filled to the top, mixed with the coffee, moldy crusts, bones, and rinds, that had been scattered about the place. "When I threw it all out," said the man, who was telling me, "provoked as I was, I could not help noticing how prettily the nest was made up of gnawings of an old blue army-overcoat, red flannel shirt, and many white rags, put together so nicely and made so soft within."

This morning, going to the store-house for a lamp-chimney, I found an ordinary glass chimney packed close with straw, grains of rice, oats, wheat, a few beans, and chips.

The mischief these rats can do in a single night is almost incredible. One, getting into a lady's room, stripped her house-plants of every leaf and blossom, and hid himself behind the wardrobe, where he was found next day, with a most singular accumulation of goods, among them many bits of paper, a quantity of raisins, a box of matches, some candle-ends, gnawed postage-stamps, and a lot of odds and ends. Nothing seems to come amiss, and they are particularly fascinated by anything that glitters; often carrying off knives, spoons, watches, and silver, and hiding them effectually.

They are "good providers," and in the fall build their nests, and