Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/855

Rh fill them with stores of eatables, the result of persevering foraging expeditions for their families before winter is on them. Under a large cotton wood-tree on a side-hill, partly underneath a fallen trunk, a party of us found a mountain-rat's nest. It was built up nearly two feet in height, the top or roof covering it sloped on all sides to shed rain or snow; tearing it to pieces, we found it was built closely of grass, moss, chips, bones, and many leaves of the cactus (which grows plentifully among the rocks); how they could cut off and convey this thorny stuff, working it up with the other material, in the close covering, is hard to understand. Away down, running in almost under the log so well built around, out of the reach of any possible moisture or cold, a clever little bed of wool was found, made for the young rats; this wool, of which there was a quantity, must have been collected bit by bit from the weeds through which the sheep passed, and from their corrals.

To reach this nest in the rat's house, there was quite a long, circuitous passage, entrance close to the ground, on the south side a little den or hole to crawl through. In a little heap outside, not yet carried in among their provisions, but lying close by, we found more than a quart of fine, fresh-looking potatoes, brought from our own garden, and it is an unsolved mystery how the potatoes were taken there; with not a scratch or mar upon them, or the skin bruised or broken. The garden was a hundred feet away, considerably lower down, and a stream of water, an irrigating ditch, to be crossed to reach it. One person suggested that the rats might have rolled them all the way, and across some poles thrown over the stream.

Destroying this nest, a couple of rats darted up the standing tree, and there we were surprised to find another nest had been commenced in the forks of the tree. We destroyed this nest also; but here comes in another mystery, a puzzling question: How could the rats climb that tree and carry up stores for the winter? This nest was probably twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground.

I asked a ranchman a few days ago, who was talking about them, if he was afraid of them (I meant of their bite). "No," said he, "and they are not afraid of me; they have waked me many a time, sitting up on the floor of my cabin and rapping their tails like a dog!"

A description in Appletons' "Cyclopædia" seems in some respects to tally pretty well, under the name of "The Florida Rat." It describes these rats as "very abundant in the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, and occasionally found in the West. The habits vary much in different localities, living in some places in the woods, in others under stones, or in the ruins of buildings; in swampy districts they heap up mounds, two or three feet high, of grasses, leaves, and sticks, cemented by mud; sometimes the nest is made in the fork or hollow of a tree; are very active, and excellent climbers; their food consists of corn, nuts, cacti, and crustaceous food, various roots, and fruits; disposition