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THE YOUNG FARMER’S PRACTICAL LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST INGERSOLL
ANIMAL COMPETITORS
BY
ERNEST INGERSOLL
The Young Farmer’s Practical
Library
EDITED BY ERNEST INGERSOLL
Cloth i6mo Illustrated each 75 cents zed.
From Kitchen to Garret. By VzurGinia
TERHUNE VAN DE WATER.
Neighborhood Entertainments. By RENEE
B. STERN, of the Congressional Library.
Home Waterworks. By Carieron J.
LynpE, Professor of Physics in Mac-
donald College, Quebec.
Animal Competitors. By Ernest INGERSOLL.
The Farm Mechanic. By L. W. CHASE,
Professor of Farm Mechanics in the
University of Nebraska.
The Satisfactions of Country Life. By
Dr. JAMES W. RoseErtson, Principal of
Macdonald College, Quebec.
Roads, Paths and Bridges. By L. W.
PAGE, Chief of the Office of Public
Roads, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Health on the Farm. By Dr. L. F.
Harris, Secretary Georgia State Board
of Health.
Electricity on the Farm. By Frepericx
M. Contes.
Co-operation Among Farmers. By Joun
LEE. CouLTErR.
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ANIMAL COMPETITORS
PROFIT AND LOSS FROM THE WILD
FOUR-FOOTED TENANTS
OF THE FARM
BY
ERNEST INGERSOLL
EDITOR OF THE YOUNG FARMER’S PRACTICAL LIBRARY, AND AUTHOR
or “THE LIFE OF MAMMALS,” “‘ WIT OF THE WILD,”
‘“ WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
Tew Work
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1911
All rights reserved
Copyright 1911
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911
aaa Bs
Gc.az2s9699
INTRODUCTION
BY THE GENERAL EDITOR
This is the day of the small book. There is
much to be done. Time is short. Information
is earnestly desired, but it is wanted in compact
form, confined directly to the subject in view,
authenticated by real knowledge, and, withal,
gracefully delivered. It is to fulfill these con-
ditions that the present series has been pro-
jected—to lend real assistance to those who are
looking about for new tools and fresh ideas.
It is addressed especially to the man and
woman at a distance from the libraries, exhibi-
tions, and daily notes of progress, which are
the main advantage, to a studious mind, of liv-
ing in or near a large city. The editor has had
in view, especially, the farmer and villager
who is striving to make the life of himself and
his family broader and brighter, as well as to
increase his bank account; and it is therefore
in the humane, rather than in a commercial di-
rection, that the Library has been planned.
Vv
vi INTRODUCTION
The average American little needs advice on
the conduct of his farm or business; or, if he
thinks he does, a large supply of such help in
farming and trading as books and periodicals
can give, is available to him. But many a man
who is well to do and knows how to continue
to make money, is ignorant how to spend it in
a way to bring to himself, and confer upon his
wife and children, those conveniences, comforts
and niceties which alone make money worth
acquiring and life worth living. He hardly
realizes that they are within his reach.
For suggestion and guidance in this direction
there is a real call, to which this series is an
answer. It proposes to tell its readers how
they can make work easier, health more secure,
and the home more enjoyable and tenacious
of the whole family. No evil in American rural
life is so great as the tendency of the young
people to leave the farm and the village. The
only way to overcome this evil is to make rural
life less hard and sordid; more comfortable and
attractive. It is to the solving of that problem
that these books are addressed. Their central
idea is to show how country life may be made
INTRODUCTION Vil
richer in interest, broader in its activities and
its outlook, and sweeter to the taste.
To this end men and women who have given
each a lifetime of study and thought to his or
her speciality, will contribute to the Library,
and it is safe to promise that each volume will
join with its eminently practical information a
still more valuable stimulation of thought.
ERnest INGERSOLL.
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PREFATORY NOTE
The writer could hardly claim much original-
ity for this book, were he so disposed. His
aim has not been a literary one, but rather to
compose a useful handbook of the mammals—
the wild four-footed tenants—of our American
farm-lands, from the point of view of the
agriculturist, orchardist and ranchman. The
United States Department of Agriculture,
through its various departments and publica-
tions, has from time to time issued information
—vast in its sum—in respect to economic
zoology; and most of the Agricultural Colleges
and Experiment Stations in the several States
have repeated and supplemented this exten-
sively. The bulk of this proffered matter, how-
ever, relates to the ravages of injurious insects,
or to the beauty and usefulness of birds—sub-
jects which may receive attention in future
volumes in this Library.
The economic importance of the mammals—
1X
x PREFATORY NOTE
the rats, field-mice, rabbits, gophers, ground-
squirrels, muskrats, etc.; the fox, the wolves
and the fur-bearers; the deer and their kin—
have been appreciated by very few; yet the
harm done annually by one unchecked class of
them entails a vast waste, while the benefit
which might be obtained from another class is
lost because their lives are little cared for and
their capabilities for profitable exploitation al-
most wholly neglected.
It is hoped that this book will lead to a re-
versal of this wasteful and negligent state of
affairs; and that by its help the farmer’s
friends among the wild animals about him may
be encouraged and his foes subdued. Thus the
account of the agriculturist with his four-
footed competitors may be changed from a need-
lessly heavy balance on the loss side, to one of
profit, reckoned partly in savings and partly in
‘‘new business.’’ |
My sources of statistical information, espe-
cially for the West, have been largely reports
of investigations conducted by the Biological
Survey. These reports, it is true, have been
widely distributed during the past ten years,
PRM WAMORY INOUE oc) x.)
but they have gone out as chapters in forbid-
ding public documents, or else separately in
loose pamphlets which in most cases have been
speedily lost. It is impracticable for the or-
dinary man to get copies of them now if he
tries, and their usefulness has therefore come
to an untimely end. Among them are original
and valuable essays by Dr. C. Hart Merriam,
Chief of the Biological Survey until his resig-
nation in 1910, when H. W. Henshaw succeeded
to his office; Vernon Bailey, the assistant in
charge of field investigations; David EK. Lantz,
Wilfred H. Osgood, E. W. Palmer, Stanley I.
Piper, EH. W. Nelson, Edward A. Goldman, and
others attached to the Department.
Knowing the accuracy and importance of this
half-lost material, and also aware that nothing
better could be furnished in its stead, I have
not hesitated to make liberal use of it, often
in its own well-chosen language. It was writ-
ten for the benefit of the public; and I am con-
fident the gentlemen above mentioned will
gladly see it renew its usefulness in the per-
manent form a bound book affords, and rejoice
in the greater force their facts and recommen-
Xil PREFATORY NOTH
dations will obtain by being associated in an
orderly array. To them belongs credit for
the larger part of the facts presented in the
pages that follow. I have simply arranged and
enforced the material anew in the most suitable
form I could devise.
Attention may be called, further, to one novel
feature in the book, namely, the detailed in-
structions as to the cultivation of certain wild
animals in captivity as an industry. Among
those recommended for this purpose are the
deer, for sale alive to parks, and to furnish
venison to market; the muskrat for food and
skins; the silver fox for its costly pelt, and
— such other fur-bearers as the mink and skunk.
All over the country young men are so situated
as to be able to add one or more of these enter-
prises to their year’s work, and to derive from
them an attractive addition to the annual in-
come, while contributing in no small degree to
the general wealth and welfare of the country.
New York, Jan. 1, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE PEST oF RATS
Varieties of rats—Cost of their board—Destructiveness—
Carriers of disease—Breeders of bubonic plague—Pre-
cautions and suppression—Need of coéperation
CHAPTER II
THE PANTRY MOUSE
Dancing mice—Rapid increase—Carrying diseases—Musi-
cal mice .
CHAPTER HI
THE MEADOW-MOUSE AND ITS MISCHIEF
American voles—Prairie-mice and Pine-mice—Multiplica-
tion into plagues—Prevention of plagues—Damage to
crops considered—Protection of young trees
CHAPTER IV
PROFIT FROM THE MUSKRAT
Damage by muskrats—Excellence of muskrat flesh—Fur
in demand—Methods of trapping—Cultivation of
muskrats . :
CHAPTER V
CAN THE BEAVER BE SAVED?
Possibilities and difficulties of rearing captive beavers
xiii
PAGE
37
48
76
94
XIV CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
WooD-RATS, PACK-RATS, COTTON-RATS, ETC.
Habits and architecture of wood-rats—Pilfering extraor-
dinary—Destruction by the cotton-rat—Jumping-mice
—Kangaroo-rats, etc.
CHAPTER VII
THE GRAY GOPHERS
Characteristics—Burrowing powers—Injury to crops and
young trees—Boring in ditch-banks—Gophers as soil-
makers
CHAPTER VIII
SQUIRRELS, Goop AND BAD
Habits-.and food of red squirrels—Winter storage of
food—Larger squirrels—The flying-squirrel
CHAPTER IX
GROUND-SQUIRRELS AND PRAIRIE-DOGS
Chipmunks and their homes—Striped gophers and spermo-
philes—Ground-squirrels as carriers of disease—
Prairie-dogs .
CHAPTER X
RABBITS, USEFUL AND INJURIOUS
Rabbit-flesh good food—Breeding habits—Damage to gar-
dens and orechards—Protection of trees—Pet stock
CHAPTER XI
SUPPRESSION OF RODENTS AS PESTS
Unwise destruction of natural enemies—Poisoning and
Fumigation—Difficulties to be overcome
PAGE
98
- 112
. 144
. 164
. 184
CONTENTS XV
CHAPTER XII
Motes, SHREWS AND BATS
} PAGE
Moles misunderstood—Trapping moles and shrews—Bats
andy their cuano: Geposits io ew Wel SNA hs Om:
CHAPTER XIII
Foxes AND FOX-FARMING
American foxes—Varieties of fox-fur—Arrangement of a
fox-rearing establishment—Care of captive foxes—Im-
PROVAN SNEWS STOCK (kM Ca See aim ela N oe OG
CHAPTER XIV
GRAY WOLVES AND COYOTES
Wolf traits—Good and bad food-habits—The coyote a pest
to sheep-ranches—Directions for fencing . . . . 232
CHAPTER XV
THE FUR-BEARERS AND THEIR CULTURE
North American fur-bearers—Ermine weasels—The weasel
as a mouser—Value of the mink—Rearing minks in
captivity—The otter, badger and skunk—Skunk-farm-
SDE 3b SN LESLIE DR RST Na USE a a
CHAPTER XVI
RAISING DEER FOR PROFIT
Native deer—Domestication and breeding—Venison and
buckskin—Wild horses, bighorn, antelopes, ete. . . 273
CHAPTER XVII
DIRECTIONS FOR POISONING AND TRAPPING
Waste of effort and money—Formulas for preparing ani-
mal poisons—Trapping in yarious ways and places . 288
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CHAPTER I
THE PEST OF RATS
We have in the United States three foreign
rats, all injurious to health and property.
1. The brown house-rat (Mus norvegicus),
ealled also gray rat, house-rat, barn-rat,
wharf-rat and Norway rat, and, in England,
Hanoverian rat. Its average total length is
about 16.4 inches, of which 7 inches belongs to
the tail, and it usually weighs less than a pound,
though specimens have been known so much
larger as to weigh 24 to 28 ounces. The gen-
eral color is grayish-brown above and whitish
below, the long overhairs of the back having
black tips. The head is shorter, the muzzle
more blunt, the ears smaller and the tail rela-
tively shorter than in the other species. It is
3
4 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
spread all over the continent, except the Utah
basin.
2. The black rat (Mus rattus), smaller than
the brown rat, and sooty or slaty black, paler
on the under parts. Like the brown rat, it
is of Oriental origin and seems to have pre-
ceded the former in its immigration into
western Hurope and thence to this continent.
It was carried from Europe to Spanish Amer-
ica about three and a half centuries ago, and
thence spread northward to the English col-
onies. Upon the arrival of the brown rat in
North America toward the end of the 18th.
century it began to decrease, and is now rare,
surviving only in scattered colonies, but re-
main numerous in many parts of the West
Indies, Middle and South America, Hawaii,
ete.
- 3. The roof-rat (Mus alexandrinus), simi-
lar to the brown rat in form and habits, but
grayer above, and yellowish white on the feet
and abdomen. Its history is much like that of
the black rat, but it has held its own better
against the dominance of the brown rat, in-
habits sea-going ships, and has established
THE PEST OF RATS 9)
itself in all the warmer parts of the world. It
is Still prevalent in our South Atlantic States,
in the West Indies and in South America. The
tame white rats sold as pets are mostly of this
and the black species.
In habits these three rats are similar, with
the important exception that the black rat and
the roof-rat (which some zoodlogists consider
merely varieties of one species), do not bur-
row under foundations, etc., as does the brown
rat. On the other hand they are far more
agile and addicted to climbing,—a decided ad-
vantage in the tropics where a large part of
their food is obtained from trees, in whose
branches they frequently lodge their nests; and
are less able to withstand cold than the brown
rat, which survives arctic winters in whaling
ships, apparently without distress. They are
also less prolific, having only ten mamme to
the brown rat’s twelve, and bearing on the
average only about five young at a birth to the
other’s eight. This difference in prolificacy
alone would account for the great dominance
of the brown rat, at least in North America;
and it is to that species—the rat, par excellence
6 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
—that we devote our attention in considering —
the relation it bears to human welfare, espe- .
cially on the farm. 3
‘The rat; says Lantz, succinctly, ‘is the”
worst mammalian pest known to man. Its
depredations throughout the world result in
losses amounting to hundreds of millions of —
dollars annually. But these losses, great as
they are, are of less importance than the fact
that rats carry from house to house and from
seaport to seaport the germs of the dreaded
plague.”’
This enormous evil can be cured only by be-
ing prevented; and it is not only to the personal
interest of every man, but a part of his public
duty, to do all in his power to stamp out a pest
which is not only costing the country many
millions of dollars in damages annually, but is
constantly threatening each of us with horrid
diseases.
History. In order to destroy the rats we
have, and to guard against their increase
on our own premises, at least, we must become —
acquainted with the haunts and habits of the
animal.
THE PEST OF RATS i
The early history of the brown rat is prac-
tically unknown. Various modern writers have
asserted that it came originally from Persia
or India; but W. T. Blanford, a leading zoolo-
gist of British India, states that it is at pres-
ent unknown in Persia, and that, as concerns
India, the black rat is the generally distributed
species, while the brown rat is found only
along the coast and the navigable rivers. This
seems to imply that the latter is a compara-
tively recent immigrant into India; and other
evidence seems to show that its original home
was northward of the Himalayan ranges. Its
resistance to cold supports this hypothesis.
It seems to have entered Europe first by cross-
ing the Volga into Russia in hunger-driven
hordes in 1727, but it reached England from
some eastern port a year or two later, coinci-
dent with the accession of George I to the
British throne. The general, but erroneous, be-
lief in Great Britain that it was introduced
from Norwegian timber-ships gives it the name
‘‘Norway’’ rat there, as I explained in my Life
of Mammals. ‘‘It reached our eastern ports in
1775 and was popularly credited to the hated
8 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
Hessian soldiers,—a queer echo of the London
idea that it came there with the Hanoverian
train of the present reigning house. By 1830
it had reached the Mississippi, and by 1857,
at least, was numerous in California.’? Now
no part of the country save the western deserts
is free from these pests; and competent judges
estimate their numbers as at least five times
that of the human population, with which they
more than keep pace as widening civilization
more and more favors their support and in-
crease.
Fecundity of the rat. A consequence is that
from time to time there is an overflow of rats
from one locality or region to another which
gives us a glimpse of the unseen crowd in the
midst of which we live. ‘‘In 1903, a multi-
tude of migrating rats spread over several
counties of western Illinois. They were no-
ticed especially in Mercer and Rock Island
counties. For several years prior to this in-
vasion no abnormal numbers were seen, and
their coming was remarkably sudden. An eye-
witness to the phenomenon informed the writer
THE PEST OF RATS y
that as he was returning to his home by moon-
light he heard a general rustling in the field
near by, and soon a vast army of rats crossed
the road in front of him, all going in one direc-
tion. The mass stretched away as far as could
be seen in the dim light. These animals re-
mained on the farms and in the villages of
the surrounding country, and during the winter
and summer of 1904 were a veritable plague.
A local newspaper stated that between March 20
and April 20, 1904, Mr. F. U. Montgomery of
Preémption, Mercer county, killed 3,485 rats
on his farm.”’
This enormous multiplication is due to the
animal’s adaptability to climate, its omnivo-
rousness, its habit of burrowing, its strength
and cunning in withstanding and outwitting
enemies, and, most of all, to its astonishing
fecundity, especially where food is abundant.
This rat breeds in the temperate parts of this
country from three to five times a year, the
female bringing forth each time from 6 to 20
young. Mr. Lantz concludes from such data
as are available that in the vicinity of Wash-
10 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
ington the average litter is 10. A pair and
their progeny breeding three times a year
would, thus, if all remained alive, produce a
population of more than 20,000,000. ‘‘Of
course, such results never occur in nature.
Apparently not nearly half the rats born are
females; at least, among mature rats the males
greatly predominate. Then, too, the life of
young rats, as well as that of the old, 1s a con- —
tinuous struggle for existence. Disease, the
elements, natural enemies, the devices and cun-
ning of man, and even cannibalism are contin-
ually at work to reduce their numbers.’’
The young are born, after a gestation period
of 21 days, in a burrow dug in the ground under
buildings, piles of lumber or wood, beneath
strawstacks, ete., or simply bored into a stream-
bank. They are naked and blind at birth, but
develop with great rapidity.
What it costs to board our rats. The dam-
age done by rats over so great an area as
the United States or Canada, is incalculable.
David E. Lantz, in the document from which
I am quoting freely, summarizes their destruc-
tion thus: |
THE PEST OF RATS 11
‘“The brown rat is practically omnivorous. The
statement applies as well to the black rat and the
roof rat. Their bill of fare includes seeds and grains
of all kinds, flour, meal, and food products made
from them; fruits and garden vegetables; mush-
rooms; bark of growing trees; bulbs, roots, stems,
leaves, and flowers of herbaceous plants; eggs, chicks,
ducklings, young pigeons, and young rabbits; milk,
butter, and cheese; fresh meat and carrion; mice,
rats, fish, frogs, and mussels. This great variety of
food explains the ease with which rats adapt them-
selves to almost every environment.
“‘Experiments show that the average quantity of
grain consumed by a full-grown rat is fully 2 ounces
daily. A half-grown rat eats about as much as an
adult. Fed on grain, a rat eats 45 to 50 pounds a
year, worth about 60 cents if wheat, or $1.80 if oat-
meal. Fed on beefsteaks worth 25 cents a pound,
or on young chicks or squabs with a much higher
prospective value, the cost of maintaining a rat is
proportionately increased. Granted that more than
half the food of our rats is waste, the average cost
of keeping one rat is still upward of 25 cents a
year.
‘Tf an accurate census of the rats of the United
States were possible, a reasonably correct calculation
of the minimum cost of feeding them could be made
from the above data. If the number of rats sup-
ported by the people throughout the United States
were equal to the number of domestic animals on the
farms—horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs—the minimum
12 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
cost of feeding them on grain would be upward of
$100,000,000 a year. To some such enormous total
every farmer, and indeed every householder who has
rats upon his premises, contributes a share.
‘‘But the actual depredations of rats are by no
means confined to what they eat. They destroy fully
as much grain as they consume, and they pollute and
render unfit for human consumption a much larger
proportion of all other food materials that they at-
tack. In addition, the damage they do to property
of other kinds is often as great as that done to food
supplies. ”’
Destructiveness of rats im the fields. The
rat in America is usually thought of as vermin
in the house and barn, so that little notice is
taken of its destructiveness in the fields which
Europeans understand very well. Cultivated
grains may be regarded as the favorite food.
The animals dig the seed from the ground as
soon as sown, eat the tender sprouts when they
appear, and later feast upon the maturing crop.
After harvest they attack grain in shock, stack,
and mow, and when thrashing is over, in crib,
granary, elevator, mill, and warehouse. In-
dian corn seems especially to suffer from their
depredations. They climb the stalks and strip
the cobs of the milky kernels; and if cut corn
THE PEST OF RATS 13
is left in shocks, especially near drains or other
rat-harbors, it is likely to be ruined.
Shortly after the settlement of the Bermudas by
the British, the colony was infested with rats, which,
in the space of two years, had increased so alarm-
ingly that none of the islands were free from them,
and even fish were taken with rats in their bellies.
A writer in the Academy recalls some of the horrors
of this plague of rats. The rats, we are told, had
nests in almost every tree, and burrowed in most
places in the ground lke rabbits. They devoured
everything that came in the way—fruits, plants, and
even trees. Where corn was sown they would come by
troops in the night and scratch it out of the ground;
‘nay,’ writes a contemporary chronicler, ‘they so de-
voured the fruits of the earth that the people were des-
titute of bread for a year or two.’ Every expedient
was tried to destroy them. Dogs were trained to hunt
them, who would kill a score or more in an hour.
Cats, both wild and tame, were employed in large
numbers for the same purpose; poisons and traps—
every man having to set twelve traps—were brought
into requisition; and even woods were set on fire, to
help to exterminate them. Every letter written at
this period by the plague-stricken colonists contains
some account of the dreadful scourge. ‘Our great
enemies the rats threaten the subversion of the plan-
tation,’ writes one colonist in July, 1616. ‘Rats are a
ereat judgment of God upon us,’ wrote another a
year later. ‘At last it pleased God, but by what
14 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
means is not well known, to take them away, inso-
much that the wild cats and many dogs that lived
on them were famished.’ There was universal joy at
the sudden removal of such destructive vermin; and
the all but despairing planters were enabled once
more to resume their neglected occupations with spirit
and energy.
Much more recently, rats became such a plague
in the sugar-plantations of the West Indies, and
especially in Jamaica, that the East Indian mungoos—
a fierce, weasel-like civet—was introduced. This ani-
mal cleared out the rats, but speedily became in other
directions such a nuisance that its destruction had
to be effected in order to save the poultry and birds
of the Island.
Rats often damage corn in cribs. Too fre-
quently these receptacles for grain are built
close to the ground, and rats live under the
floor, and soon get access to the grain. They
shell the corn, eating the softer part of the
kernel and wasting much more than they con-
sume. They carry the grain to subterranean
burrows and bring up into the crib moist soil,
which induces mold. Similarly they eat the
small grains in the field and take toll of the
granary and feed-box,—often 5 to 10 per cent,
THE PEST OF RATS 15
of feedstuffs, malt and the like; while no pest
of the sugar-cane is much more to be feared.
The damage done by rats to fruits and vege-
tables while stored in cellars and pits is well
known. They attack ripe tomatoes, melons,
eantaloupes, squashes, pumpkins, sweet corn,
and many other vegetables in the field, and the
depredations are often attributed to rabbits.
Rats are fond of nearly all small fruits, even
climbing grape-vines, blackberry-canes, and
ecurrant-bushes to obtain the ripe fruit; and
often feed upon ripe apples, pears, cherries,
and so forth.
Rats are recognized pests of the greenhouse
and the plant-propagating pit, where they at-
tack seeds, bulbs, leaves, stems and flowers.
Of flowering bulbs the tulip suffers most and
hyacinths also are eaten, while narcissus bulbs
are apparently immune to attack. Carnations
seem especially able to destruction.
Destructiveness to poultry and game. Very
serious is the loss due to rats entering badly
constructed hen and pigeon houses,—probably
greater, in Mr, Lantz’s opinion, than that in-
16 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
flicted by foxes, minks, weasels, skunks, hawks
and owls combined; but mostly one or all of
these are made to take the blame.
‘‘Not long since, in a published account of depre-
dations on poultry, the damage was attributed to a
skunk. The statement was made that both eggs and
young chicks were taken from under a sitting hen
without disturbing her. This is a trick peculiar to
the rat, and it is evident that a mistake was made
as to the identity of the thief.
‘“Where rats are numerous in springtime, they
often prey upon young chicks, capturing them in the
nest and in and around the coops. I have known
them to take nearly all the chicks on a large poultry
ranch, and, in the same neighborhood and over a
large territory, to destroy nearly 50 per cent. of the
season’s hatching. Young ducks, turkeys, and pi-
geons are equally liable to attack, and where rats are
numerous are safe only in rat-proof coops.
‘‘A writer in a western agricultural paper states
that in 1904 rats robbed him of an entire summer’s
hatching of three or four hundred chicks. A cor-
respondent of another journal says, ‘Rats destroyed
enough grain and poultry on this place in one season
to pay our taxes for three years.’ When it is re-
membered that the poultry and eggs produced each
year from the farms of the United States have a
value of over $600,000,000, it will be seen that even
a small percentage of loss aggregates a large sum.’’
THE PEST OF RATS Li
In Europe the rat is the bane of gamekeepers
who try to preserve broods of pheasants and
other game. Our wild game-birds are less
molested and perhaps better able to protect
themselves; yet our grouse and quail must
suffer, for rats eat the eggs of ground-nesting
song-birds, but the real offender is seldom even
suspected.
Rats often gnaw the hoofs of horses until
the feet bleed. Brushing the hoofs with dilute
earbolic acid is a preventive. They have been
known to kill young lambs and pigs, and to at-
tack very fat hogs and eat holes in their bodies,
causing death. Farrowing sows have been
killed by rats gnawing their teats until blood
- poisoning resulted. }
Rats damage buildings and stored goods.
Interest in the damage done to stored goods
and merchandise belongs more to the city ware-
houseman than to the countryman, but the
latter is well aware that old harness and gear
of all sorts with leather about it, any grain-
bags and similar articles must be protected
from rats. Damage to houses and barns 1s,
18 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
however, a matter of grave interest to inhabit-
ants of the village as well as of the city. Quot-
ing Lantz again,—
‘“The damage to houses and furniture by rats con-
stitutes a large item. They burrow under founda-
tions or through the plaster in a stone wall and
admit streams of water that eventually weaken or
undermine the structure itself. They seem to be
able to penetrate almost everything except stone,
brick, cement, glass, and iron. They gnaw into a
grain bin, or through a wainscoting, a floor, or a door
ina single night In the same way they enter chests,
wardrobes, bookeases, closets, barrels, and boxes for
the stores within. Almost every old dwelling in the
country bears abundant evidence of its former or
present occupancy by rats. Rats gnaw through lead
pipes or wooden tanks to obtain water, and sometimes
before the leak is discovered, ceilings, wall decora-—
tions, and floor coverings are flooded and practically
ruined. All this is waste of a tangible kind and a
constant drain on the prosperity of the people.’’
Then there is the ever-menacing devastation
from fires due to rats carrying matches into
their nests and there igniting them by chewing
them, or simply by overheating; or due to their
enawing the insulation from electric wires—a
surprisingly frequent origin of fires of late
years.
THE PEST OF RATS 19
Rats as carriers of disease. Yinally, rats are.
always a menace to health, and may become
the agents of the dissemination of the most
dreadful and virulent of diseases—the Asiatic
plague, which has more than once decimated
the civilized world. It has been calculated that
25,000,000 of persons perished in an epidemic
of this character which swept over the world
in the 14th century; and it did not require the
literary genius of a De Foe to perpetuate the
memory of the awful visitation which almost
depopulated London and set all Europe in
mourning toward the end of the 16th century.
Even then, in the cloud of mystery, supersti-
tion and horror of fear which made most men
blind and helpless, the truth was dimly recog-
nized by a few,—namely that it was not the
wrath of God nor the malignancy of some evil
spirit nor a miasm from earth or sea that
struck men down, but the communication of
disease from the sick to the well. This, it was
observed, could be effected not only by contact
with human victims, but that the contagion was
caught and passed on by all the small animals
about a house. Hence orders were issued that
20 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
not only rats, mice, and small vermin of all
sorts should be killed, but also dogs and eats.
An ordinance by the authorities at Winchester,
England, in 1583, is typical of many others
issued in British towns, viz.:
‘‘That if any house within this cytie shall happen
to be infected with the Plague, that thene every per-
sone to keepe within his or her house every his or
her dogg, and not to suffer them to goo at large.
And if any dogge be then founde at large, it shall
be lawful for the Beadle or any other person to kill
ihe same dogg, and that any owner of such dogg
going at large shall lose six shillings.’’
Among the records of King’s Lynn, under
May, 1585, appears this:
‘‘Mor as muche as it hath pleased Allmightie God
to begynn to send us his visitacion with sickness
amongst us, and that dogges and cattes are thought
verie unfitt to be suffered in this tyme. Therefore
Mr. Maior, aldermen, and common councell have or-
dered and decreed that every inhabitant within the
same Towne shall forthwith take all their dogges and
yappes and hange them or kill them and carrye them
to some out-place and burye them for breadings of a
great annoyance. And likewise for cattes, if there be
any nigh unto any house or houses visited with sick-
ness. . . . It is ordered that the cattes shall furth-
with be killed in ail such places.’’ An exception was
THE PEST OF RATS 21
made in favor of any ‘‘dogge of accompte.’’ Such
a one was allowed to be kept if “‘kenelled or tied
up or led in a lease.’’
As often happens, a fact was clearly per-
ceived and acted upon beneficially long before
the philosophy of it was comprehended.
Rats responsible for the plague. It was
not until the very end of the last century—
scarcely a dozen years ago, that the suspected
truth of the real nature of the plague was dis-
covered through scientific studies of the disease
which then appeared in a most threatening
form in India. It was determined that of the
several phases of plague the most common is
that which produces swellings or ‘‘buboes’’
on the body of the victim, and hence is called
bubonie plague. This is rarely communicated
direct from man to man, but through the me-
dium of insects which suck the patient’s blood
and then, filled with the diseased blood in which
are floating the deadly bacilli (Bacillus pestis)
which produce the disturbance, pierce the skin
of some other creature and leave more or less
of these plague-germs in the puncture.
Any blood-sucking bug, as, for example, the
22 ANIMAL COMPETITORS |
bed-bug, may do this; but the most common
agent is the flea. |
Another fact is that the rat seems especially
susceptible to the disease; arid, indeed, it is be-
MOUTH-PARTS OF A RAT-FLEA, SHOWING WHERE BACILLI MAY
CLING AND BE CARRIED INTO THE NEXT WOUND.
From Doane’s ‘‘Insects and Disease.’? By Permission of Henry
Holt & Co.
heved that it was originally a disease of this
rodent. Rats abound in fleas, and, as is the
ease with most furry or feathered animals,
have a species peculiar to their race. This
Pi Pst OF hails 23
rat-flea will bite and communicate the disease
from rat to rat, and an outbreak of plague
among men is usually preceded by an epidemic
among the rats. The rat-flea does not bite
man; but those which live on human beings
will thrive on rats and may return from an 1n-
fected rat to a human host if opportunity offers.
The fleas of dogs and cats will temporarily live
on the skin of both rodents and human beings,
and may thus take a part in the transmission
of plague. The fleas usually leave a rat or
other animal as soon as it dies, and, with their
stomachs full of plague-bacilli, with others
clinging to their proboscis and sucking lips,
they seek new hosts. The new host, whether
rat, or some other animal, or perchance a
human being, is soon bitten with these infected
mouths, and thus receives the germs of the
malady. |
Those who wish to pursue the study of this
matter in further detail will find a very full
exposition of it, and of the general relations of
insects to common diseases, in R. W. Doane’s
Insects and Disease (New York, Holt, 1910).
24 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
It is now understood that the first thing to
do when a case of plague is brought to some
port in a ship sailing from the Orient is to
exterminate the rats of the locality; and the
best preventive against this and other afflictions
getting a foothold anywhere, is to keep the rats
down. The Japanese were quick to take ad-
vantage of the new knowledge, and by the fierce
crusade they waged against the wharf-rats in
their ports prevented a spread of bubonic
plague, always threatening them, in the armies
they sent into Manchuria. In this way, too, by
a vigorous crusade against the animal in Cali-
fornia, in which many hundreds of thousands
were trapped or poisoned, the plague was re-
cently eradicated in San Francisco before it
had reached alarming proportions.
Rats and trichine. But rats disseminate
diseases other than bubonic plague. Trich-
inosis among swine is probably perpetuated
entirely by rats, since trichine in the hog can
result only from its eating the flesh of animals
infested with the parasite. The only two an-
imals of the farm known to be subject to this
THE PEST OF RATS 29
parasite are the rat and the hog itself. Pork
becomes trichinous, then, only when swine eat
the flesh of infected rats or hogs. Country
slaughter-houses, where rats are abundant and
swine are fed on offal, are the chief sources of
trichinous pork. That the danger from this
source has not been confined to the rural
slaughtering-places alone, is shown by the in-
vestigation conducted by the Biological Survey
in 1909 into the ‘‘rat-nuisanece,’’ said to exist
about the great packing-houses in Chicago and
St. Louis. The older establishments were
found to be infested with rats, causing a se-
rious aggregate loss, and endangering both the
health of the workmen and the wholesomeness
of the product; but this state of things has
been greatly improved, and new buildings are
designed to be rat-proof.
Rats creep through drains and step about
in all sorts of filth; and to their feet and fur
clings slime which may be loaded with germs
of typhoid, diptheria and any other of the
malignant list of diseases due to bacilli that
develop in darkness and filth. Consequently —
26 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
no household is safe into which rats may wan-
der and leave the seeds of disease brought from
the gutter.
In view of these facts it would seem impor-
tant that every man should attempt to free his
property of these undesirable tenants, which,
so far as we can see, make no return whatever
for the damage and depredation of which they
are guilty.
Methods of suppression. It is perhaps too
late to get rid of the rat altogether, but it is
not too late to subdue him and prevent a great
part of the evils that follow his presence.
How shall it be done?
Wirst, try to destroy or drive away those rats
you have. Seek out their holes, runways and
lodging-places, clean them out and stop them
up so far as you are able. The cunning of
the rascals is great and they will shift their
quarters or invent new means of access and
ways of attack with discouraging ingenuity
and persistence, which you must endeavor to
match. Untiring watchfulness and work will
win. |
Trapping, if intelligently pursued, will cap-
THE PEST OF RATS 27
ture a great many. The old-fashioned figure-4
trap, dropping a box, or better, a deadfall, is
often highly effective. Several sorts of steel
traps may be used to advantage; and in the
last chapter of this book will be found deserip-
tions of various forms and directions for bait-
ing and setting them.
Poisoning will clear out the creatures more
rapidly and effectively but can hardly be used
except about barns and out-buildings, and even
there should be done intelligently and with cer-
tain precautions. Therefore instructions as to
the best means and methods of poisoning will
also be found in the last chapter.
While endeavoring to kill off the rats by
these various methods, precautions should be
taken against their return. Their runways
and harboring places must be sought out and
made untenable. The wisdom of stopping up
all holes by which they enter houses, barns or
cellars, need hardly be mentioned to common-
sense readers. Freshly slaked lime placed in
their dry burrows and runs is effective; or
fresh thin whitewash to be poured into them.
A strong solution of copperas is good, and gas-
28 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
tar daubed about their holes, as also is caustic
potash. Where burrows are discovered in
banks or fields the inmates may be suffocated
by pushing into the holes wads of rags satu-
rated with bisulphide of carbon, as is practiced
against gophers; but this is of little use in
buildings, for it escapes too easily.
Rat-proof construction. All new or recon-
structed buildings should be made rat-proof.
This is best done by the use of cement. Even
then, when foundations and walls are made of
tight concrete, care must be taken lest drains
and other openings admit them. Outer doors,
especially those that give upon alleys, should
not be left open. Basement and cellar win-
dows of barns, stables, chicken-houses, etc.,
should be screened with wire, so that they may
be left ajar for ventilation without danger.
Inner doors to vestibules are of great assist-
ance. Even old cellars may be made rat-proof
by the use of cement at small expense.
When wooden walls are built upon proper
foundations, the building may be made proof
against these and other noxious visitors by
PE iS OF hails 29
filling the space between the sheathing and the
lath for about a foot with concrete.
Rats frequently enter houses from sewers by
way of soil-pipes leading into water-closets, but
this can be guarded against by care in construc-
tion and the use of water-traps.
‘* Almost everywhere, in country, village, and city,
the wooden floors of sidewalks, areas, and porches
are commonly laid upon timbers resting upon the
eround. Under these floors rats are safe from most
of their enemies. Only municipal action can com-
pletely remedy these conditions, but all such rat-har-
bors should be destroyed and replaced by cement
floors. Considering durability, healthfulness, and
other advantages, this material is the cheapest that
ean be used. The floors of wooden porches should
always be well above the ground. Rats often under-
mine brick walks or areas.
‘*Granaries, corneribs, and poultry-houses may be
made rat-proof by a liberal use of concrete in the
foundations and floors; or the floors may be of wood
resting upon concrete. Objection has been urged
against the use of concrete floors for horses, cattle,
and poultry, because the material is too good a con-
ductor of heat, and the health of the animals suffers
from contact with floors of this kind. In poultry-
houses, dry soil or sand may be used as a covering
for the cement floor; and in stables, a wooden floor
30 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
resting on the concrete is just as satisfactory so far
as the exclusion of rats is concerned.’’
Keeping food from rats. The general rat-
proofing of buildings is the most important step
in limiting the food supply of rats. The effect
of an abundance of food on the breeding of
rodents has already been mentioned. Well-fed
rats mature quickly, breed often, and have large
litters of young. Besides limiting reproduc-
tion, scarcity of food will make the measures
to destroy the animals by traps, poisons, or
bacterial cultures far more effective. But
since much of the animals’ food consists of
garbage and other waste materials, offal of any
kind must be so disposed of that rats can not
obtain it. The best method is by burning it.
The management of slaughter-houses in the
country, in particular, needs reform. It is a
common practice to leave offal of slaughtered
animals to be eaten by both rats and swine.
Such places are not only centers of rat-propaga-
tion, but are the chief means of perpetuating
trichine in pork. All this should be changed in
fact and by law. The offal should be promptly
cremated or otherwise disposed of. There is
TE eS Ors RATS ol
no reason why country slaughter-houses should
not be as cleanly as are the abattoirs of a
modern city. |
Disposal of dead rats. Finally, the bodies
of dead rats should never be handled with the
bare fingers, or thrown out to be eaten by dogs
or pigs or other animals; for they may con-
tain, as has been shown, the germs of dreadful
diseases. They should be burned, or else
turned to account by being buried at the foot
of grape-vines or young trees, for which they
will make an excellent fertilizer.
Four-footed enemies of the rat. A word as
to the assistance animals may give in killing
off and keeping down the rats. How greatly
the increase of all rodents is due to the destruc-
tion of the various wild mammals, birds and
reptiles, that prey upon them, will be shown
hereafter. Hawks, owls, weasels and skunks
dispose of a great number of rats in rural dis-
tricts, and might take many more if they were
permitted. Skunks in particular are a most
valuable help in this direction—both the large
northern skunks and the small spotted species
of the South and West—and will, if allowed,
32 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
speedily clear a place of its rats and mice. Un-
fortunately they are seldom allowed to tenant
the premises without being molested by either
dogs or men. When thus disturbed, the skunks
emit the characteristic secretion, which is al-
most their only defense against enemies. Un-
disturbed, they are quite inoffensive and will
stay about the farm-buildings until rats and
mice are no longer to be had. Skunks usually
hunt by night, and hence poultry properly
housed is safe from them. It is the loose, un-
cared-for hens that suffer. |
The same may be said of weasels, which will
follow a rat into its burrow, and seem to take
such delight in slaughtering it that no rats
ean be found shortly after a weasel or two have
taken up their quarters in the place. The
drawback to their good work is, that they are
fond of poultry and clever in getting it. The
same may be said of minks; but a rat-proof
hen-house is also weasel-proof.
Farm ferrets, like weasels (of which they are
a larger cousin) are inveterate foes of rats,
but their value under ordinary circumstances is
- overestimated.
THE PEST OF RATS 33
‘“HWor effective work,’’ says one who knows,
‘they require experienced handling and the ad-
ditional services of a dog or two. Dogs and
ferrets must be thoroughly accustomed to each
other, and the former must be quiet and steady
instead of noisy and excitable. The ferret is
used only to bolt the rats, which are killed by
the dogs. If unmuzzled ferrets are sent into
rat retreats, they are apt to make a kill and
then lie up after sucking the blood of their vic-
tim. Sometimes they remain for hours in the
burrows or escape by other exits and are lost.
There is danger that these lost ferrets may
adapt themselves to wild conditions and become
a pest by preying upon poultry and birds.”’
Cats, as a rule, are not of much use. Most
of them are too well-fed, and will be afraid of,
or not take the trouble to pursue rats, although
they may be excellent mousers.
A couple of good terriers, however, will work
wonders in freeing one’s premises if trained
to rat-catching. The ordinary farmer’s big
cur is of no use for this purpose—and little for
any other; but a Scotch, Irish or fox terrier,
properly taught, will take pride in the work,
o4 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
and catch a surprising number of victims until
all are frightened away. |
Cooperation necessary to subdue the pest.
Little that is really effective can be done, how-
ever, without codperation in each district.'
To destroy the animals on the premises of a
single farmer in a community has little perma-
nent value, since they are soon replaced from
near-by farms. If, however, the farmers of
an entire township or county unite in efforts to
get rid of rats, much more lasting results may
be attained. Such organized efforts repeated
with reasonable frequency are very effective.
Cooperative efforts to destroy rats have
taken various forms in different localities. In
cities municipal employés have occasionally
been set at work hunting rats from their re-
treats with at least temporary benefit to the
community. Thus, in 1904, at Folkestone, Eng-
land, a town of about 25,000 inhabitants, the
corporation employés, helped by dogs, in three
days killed 1,645 rats. A better example is re-
ported from India, where cooperative work
1See Coéperation among Farmers, by Prof. John Lee Coul-
ter. In this Library, 1911, 75 cents.
THE PEST OF RATS 315)
has prevailed over large districts. Thus in
the Punjab more than 625 centers of popula-
tion, including large towns, were systematically
eleared of rats in 1908, the actual number
known to have been destroyed reaching 4,116,-
334, while large numbers were poisoned and
escaped to die. The result in diminution of
the endemic plague and other diseases was
most marked.
Side-hunts in which rats are the only animals
that count in the contest have sometimes been
organized and successfully carried out. At
New Burlington, Ohio, a rat-hunt took place
November 26, 1866, in which each of the two
sides killed over 8,000 rats, the beaten party
serving a Thanksgiving banquet to the winners.
At about the same period county agricultural
societies sometimes offered prizes to the family
presenting the largest number of rats’ tails as
evidence that the animals had been destroyed.
Even as late as May 2, 1907, in one of the coun-
ties of Kentucky, by general consent, the day
was set apart for killing rats, and, according to
newspaper report, was quite generally observed.
There is danger that organized rat-hunts will
36 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
be followed by long intervals of indifference
and inaction. This may be prevented by offer-
ing prizes covering a definite period of effort.
Such prizes accomplish more than municipal
bounties, because they secure a friendly rivalry
which stimulates the contestants to do their
utmost to win.
In England and some of its colonies contests
for prizes have been organized to promote the
destruction of the European house-sparrow, but
many of the so-called ‘‘sparrow clubs’’ are
really sparrow and rat clubs, for the destruc-
tion of both pests are avowed objects of the or-
ganization. ety & atte . . sacra Ve
AW NDS Pr ESRENY) ey SS, CLO es. PANU Ps SACO US NS Yep
DIAGRAM OF A GOPHER’S BURROWING.
packed so full of dirt that no trace of the tunnel
is visible except the little mound.
The gopher goes on digging in winter as
well as in summer; but if the frost prevents him
from coming to the surface, he uses a cross
section of his tunnel into which to pack the
earth which he has dug for his new excavations.
These tightly packed cylinders of earth are
often turned up by the plow.
Pocket-gophers apparently breed only once a
THE GRAY GOPHERS LNG
year, in the spring, when two to six young are
produced in a litter in some roomy central
chamber made comfortable with dry grass.
Destructive to crops. ‘‘Throughout their
range pocket-gophers are very destructive to
crops. They eat the roots of fruit trees and
in this way sometimes ruin whole orchards.
They eat both roots and tops of clover, alfalfa,
grasses, grains, and vegetables, and are espe-
cially harmful to potatoes and other tuberous
crops. Besides this, they throw up innumer-
able mounds of earth in meadows, pastures, and
grain fields, which cover and destroy far more
of the crop than is eaten by the animals or
killed by having the roots cut off. These
mounds also prevent close mowing, so that
much of the hay crop is lost, and the pebbles
they contain often break or injure farm ma-
chinery. The loss due to gopher mounds in the
clover and alfalfa fields in some of the Western
States has been conservatively estimated at
one-tenth of the entire crop. In many of the
fertile valleys where they abound the animals
are by far the most formidable of the farmer’s
mammalian enemies. In addition to all this,
118 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
in the far West they burrow in the banks of
irrigation ditches and thus cause extensive
breaks, the repair of which results in the ex-
penditure of much time and money.’’ (Lantz.)
An enemy to orchard and forest. Re-
cently, attention has been especially called to
the injury done to orchards and nursery stock,
often before the owner becomes aware of the
presence of the animal, and it is evident that
great watchfulness should be maintained by
tree planters in gopher-infested country. This
watchfulness should be especially alert where
the orchardist, in order to prepare the soil, first
raises and turns down crops of alfalfa, clover
or cowpeas, sweet potatoes or sugar-beets.
Any of these attract the rodents, and make
their attacks more than likely upon the newly
planted saplings.
A gopher which in tunneling comes te a tree
root attacks and eats through it. If the root
is relished, it is followed and eaten close up to
the tree trunk. Then another root is destroyed,
and so on until the entire root system is gnawed
away, wood and bark alike, leaving the trunk
loose in the ground.
THE GRAY GOPHERS 119
The rapidity with which the animal works
isamazing. In his rare monograph on the fam-
ily Merriam assures us that a pocket-gopher
can make two hundred complete strokes with
his teeth ina minute. Its Jaws are so arranged
that thirty-eight distinct single cuts are made
SOUTHERN POCKET GOPHER (GEOMYS BURSARIUS).
From a Painting by E. T. Seton.
by the forward stroke of the jaw and twenty-
eight by the backward stroke. Thus, the little
creature’s jaws may make a grand total of
13,200 cut a minute when in active opera-
tion !
Large trees are sometimes entirely girdled
120 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
just below the ground, the gopher cutting deep
into the wood, causing immediate death. The
eirding of large roots is also common. In
California the fig seems to suffer most, but
orange, lemon, apricot and all other fruit-trees
are attacked.
Complaints from western nurserymen of
injury to their stock by pocket-gophers are
frequent. The trees in nursery-rows are set
small and close together. Consequently a go-
pher by following the rows can in a short time
kill many trees. Such injury is usually done
in late fall or winter, and the nurseryman is
often unaware of it until spring. The gopher
takes the entire root, not merely the bark, cuts
it into short pieces, packs them into its enor-
mous cheek-pouches, and carries them away to
its food-caches, which sometimes contain half
a bushel of such provender. Plantations of
young trees for wind-breaks or ornament, or
to afforest a district, are equally hurt; in fact
the gophers are worse than rabbits, because
they work unseen and almost invariably kill in-
stead of merely injuring the trees. Wherever
they abound orchards are almost an impossi-
bility.
THE GRAY GOPHERS 121
Tapping wrigation-ditches. Another most
serious mischief, in regions depending on irri-
gation, is the destruction of ditch-banks. Some-
times the animals are forced out of irrigated
land and take up new quarters in the dry ditch-
banks, or in course of the regular extension of
their tunnels a ditch is encountered and the
bank is followed in search of a crossing-place.
In either case the burrow is almost sure sooner
or later to penetrate below the water-line and
start a leak that cuts out the bank and empties
the ditch. Altogether, it has been estimated by
the Biological Survey that the loss due to go-
phers in the western United States is not less
than a million dollars a month.
‘‘No animals,’’ the Survey declares, at the
same time, ‘‘are more easily controlled on a
small farm or along ditches than gophers.
They are readily trapped or poisoned, and once
cleared out of a field others do not come in at
once. Their mode of travel, which is princi-
pally by extending their burrows, is of ne-
eessity slow; and if occasionally caught or
poisoned around the edge of fields or along
ditches, they can be effectually controlled.’
122 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
This imphles that the damage done is largely
the result of neglect on the farmer’s part.
The gopher as a soil-maker. In view of
this record of harmfulness (due, of course,
simply to mankind trying to modify nature for
his own ends in the path of the animal’s natural
way of living, so that from nature’s point of
view the cultivator is the aggressor and the
gopher merely defending himself and living off
the enemy), it is only fair to point out how the
animal, throughout the history of the species,
has been laying the present farmer and ranch-
man under his debt.
‘Hor unknown ages,’’ declares Dr. C. Hart
Merriam, in the monograph already referred
to, ‘‘the gophers have been steadily at work
plowing the ground, covering deeper and
deeper the vegetable matter, loosening the soul,
draining the land, and slowly but surely cul-
tivating and enriching it.’’
Ernest Thompson Seton illustrates this
statement very forcibly by the example of
Manitoba,—one of the richest soil-areas in the
world—where, as elsewhere in northwestern
THE GRAY GOPHERS 123
Canada, there are no earthworms to act as pre-
historic cultivators. The black loam there is
from one to two feet thick, and is a thoroughly
mixed soil of both mineral and vegetable par-
ticles. There is no doubt that, in the absence
of earth worms, this mixing is done by burrow-
ing animals, by far the most important of which
is our subject. In his great work, Life His-
tories of the Northern Animals, Seton shows by
text and drawings what an astonishing number
of active gophers there are (or were) over
every squaré mile of that and other regions;
and the still more astonishing bulk of soil
brought to the surface from deep layers day
by day. He cites a district in California with
an estimated average of 6,000 hills to the acre,
and enough soil heaved out each summer to
eover the whole with an inch of new earth; and
other similar cases elsewhere. ‘‘If the fertility
of tens of millions of acres of land in the North-
west, and consequently their value, has been
mainly the work of moles [pocket-gophers],’’
declares Dr. Robert Bell, the Canadian geol-
ogist, after giving proof for his thesis, ‘‘these
124 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
apparently insignificant little creatures may
be regarded as the most important of the native
animals of the country.’’
If Mr. Gopher could speak he would probably
remind the agriculturist of this, and ask
whether the delayed fees he was now exacting
were too large for the service.
CHAPTER VIII
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD
A view of our tree-squirrels. The badge
of the true squirrel is his plume-like tail, which,
though it seems to our eyes only an elegant
ornament, is to him a balancing-pole assist-
ing his agile bounds from branch to. branch,
an umbrella by day, and a blanket when he
withdraws to his hole for the night. No better
type of this delightful group can be found than
the red squirrel,—the genius of the American
woods. He is exceedingly common, not at all
shy, and recognized by almost everybody, yet
few persons know really much about him.
There is practically only one species on the
continent, but local varieties differ much in
size and colors. Those in the South are larger
and redder, for example than those of Canada;
and on the Pacific coast, where they are called
pine-squirrels, their coats are almost brown.
Their colors vary also with the seasons, the
125
126 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
winter coat being paler and lacking the black
side-stripe which so handsomely borders in
summer the rufous mantle of the back.
Red squirrels at home. The red squirrel’s
home is properly in some hollow of a tree or
A NORTHWESTERN RED SQUIRREL.
From a Photograph by James A. Donaghy, Elphinstone, Manitoba.
stump, sometimes low down and hence danger-
ously exposed to foxes, weasels and snakes.
Frequently he chooses to live in a hole beneath
tree-roots or some old stone wall, adapting to
his purpose an abandoned chipmunk burrow
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD = 127
or the hollow left by a rotting root, and extend-
ing it into various connecting chambers. In
the evergreen forests of northern New Eng-
land and Canada, however, he often constructs
a winter nest among the dense foliage of a
spruce or cedar, which is a marvel of work-
manship. ‘‘When convenient,’’ to quote
Cram’s account of those familiar to him, ‘‘he |
chooses the nest of some large bird for a foun-
dation, and in this builds a structure of moss,
bark, pine-needles, and dead leaves, with walls
several inches in thickness, and a soft nest of
dry grass and feathers inside. The bark used
is of two sorts, the rough outer bark of dif-—
ferent trees broken into small pieces, and what
appears to be the inner bark of the red cedar,
torn into narrow strips or ribbons to bind the
whole together. It is put together with re-
markable solidity, and usually freezes hard
early in the winter, furnishing a thorough de-
fense against the cold or any other enemy from
without. The narrow opening at one side is
provided with a hanging curtain.”’
These tree-houses are, however, abandoned
in the spring, when they become soaked with
128 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
rain, and a hollow tree is sought and furnished
with clean bedding of moss, lichens, etc. Here
the young are born rather early in the season,
—five or six of them,—and there they remain
together until fully grown.
‘‘The young squirrels,’’ to quote again Mr. Cram’s
delightful history, ‘‘are most absurd looking little
beasts at first, like miniature pug-dogs, blind and
naked, with enormous heads. In a few days their
fur begins to show like the down on a peach, and as a
fringe of short hair along each side of the tail, which
at length assumes something of the flattened aspect
of that worn by their elders, but without displaying
much of the fluffy, shadowy quality of the ideal squir-
‘ rel tail until late in the following autumn.
Although they do not remain long in the nest, they
are seldom seen abroad until fully grown, or very
nearly so, at least, which is rather remarkable when
you come to consider the number that are brought
up each summer in every pine grove or thicket where
these squirrels are abundant. oe
How a red squirrel fares. The red squir-
rel eats almost anything he can lay his teeth
to, but his chief diet, of course, consists of
berries, nuts, acorns and similar hard fruits,
especially the seeds found in the cones of ever-
green trees—the mainstay of those living in
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD — 129
the far northern woods. In the early spring
he must often content himself with buds, pre-
ferring those of the maple and elm; and it is a
pretty sight to see him and his friends dangling
from the tips of the swaying branches, peril-
ously high, reaching for the bursting buds. In
. March he taps the maples for sap, cutting out
little cups in the bark, in which the sugary
liquid gathers and is lapped up, for he drinks
like a cat. He climbs rotten stubs and, like
the woodpecker, listens for noise made by in-
sect larve, which are quickly dug out. He
searches for haws of the rose and thorn-trees,
and hunts through the orchard for old apples
now thawed soft.
A little later, I am sorry to say, he is on the
lookout for birds’ eggs and young, of which
he destroys far more than any other squirrel.
No nest is safe from his inquisitive eye and
eager appetite, even the Baltimore oriole’s, but
he is often driven away by the owners. Nest-
lings are more to his taste than eggs, even; and
now and then he is able to catch small birds,
or even mice and little snakes, while grass-
hoppers and fat larve are a regular part of
130 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
his bill of fare. Few animals, remarks Manly
Hardy, are more fond of meat:
‘‘They will eat any kind of meat or fish as quickly
as a cat and will live on it days when a chance offers.
I have often had them eat each other when one was
ina trap. Around camps where provisions are stored
they are great pests. Their sense of smell must be
very acute, as I have seen where one gnawed a large
hole through a new overcoat to get at a bottle of
coffee which one of my men had rolled up inside to
keep it warm. The squirrel must have smelled it
through all the folds of the thick cloth. Where not
troubled they soon become very tame, often coming
into a camp and stealing biscuit or gingerbread from
the table. I have seen those which certainly could
tell one person from another, as they would let one
who had never molested them come very near, while,
when a person who had stoned them appeared, they
would instantly dodge into a hole.’’
As summer advances the red squirrel finds
ripe berries and fruit to his taste, and in July
begins, in the northern coniferous woods, to
attack the green cones, especially of the white
pine, cutting them off ‘‘and burying them, half
a dozen in a place, under the pine needles, to
be dug up in the winter and spring, and opened
for the seeds they contain.’’ At this season,
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD 131
too, he bites into many mushrooms, especially
those which grow upon old wood; and certain
of these he stows away in dry places for future
reference.
Preparing for the winter. This squirrel is
a hard worker at all times,—the merriest
sprite of the woods, yet always industrious and
thrifty; but his busiest time is in autumn when
the ripening nuts must be harvested. In the
forests of the southerly portions of his range,
butternuts, hickorynuts, and those of the
chestnut, pecan, hazel and beech, with acorns
and chinkapins, are most important. Their
substance is not very nourishing, but they
supply in abundance the fat which is so neces-
sary for animals to accumulate in the autumn
as a fuel to keep the fires of life burning dur-
ing the winter. In the Southern States the
winters are so mild that there is not the need
to lay up the large food-supply required in the
North, and methods vary, too.
Instead of having a single storehouse, as do
most other provident rodents, the red squirrels
bury a part of their gains, one or a few nuts in
a place, and hide the rest in a variety of nooks
132 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
and crannies. It is thus difficult to judge what
this scattered accumulation amounts to in the
aggregate, but it is probably a good deal more
than one animal wants. The little rascals seem
to recognize no property rights in these sav-
ings, but during the winter seize anything they
can find, so that fierce fights are always happen-
ing, in which the thievish grays take a full
share. With a short account by Mr. Hardy of
the cone-saving squirrels of the northern woods
I will conclude this part of the subject: ?
Storing pine-cones. ‘‘With us [in Maine] he lays
up large stores of the cones of pine and spruce and
knows the exact season when they are fit to cut for
his use. If cut too early they will be sealed closely
with pitch; if cut too late the winged seeds will have
escaped. The red squirrel cuts them by the hundreds
the last of September, just when the sticky covering
has hardened into drops of stiff pitch and just before
the cones have opened. One who is in the pine woods
then will hear the dull, heavy thud as they fall, and
if he gets a close view of the squirrel, will see that
his paws and face are smeared with pitch.
1A full discussion of the meaning of this custom of storing
food against a coming time of scarcity; and of its probable
origin and development through the influence of natural selec-
tion, will be found in the chapter entitled “ A Squirrel’s
Thrift,” in my Wit of the Wild, 2d edition, Dodd, Mead & Co.,
New York, 1911.
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD = 133
‘The squirrel knows exactly how to get the seed
with the least labor. A squirrel wishing to eat a
cone, sits up on his hind feet, standing the cone up
before him on its small end. Then he cuts off the
upper scale at the butt of the cone. These scales do
not run in straight lines, but are arranged spirally,
with a seed under each scale. The seeds in a white
pine-cone are about the size and shape of a small
apple-seed; those of a spruce, about as large as seeds
of turnip or mustard. Both kinds have a wing which
serves to carry the seed often to long distances, when
it falls naturally from the cone. The squirrel eats
the first seed, then gives the cone a slight turn and
cuts the next scale, and so keeps turning and eating
until the central pith is in his way, when he cuts it
off and continues eating until near the end of the
cone, which he always leaves, as he knows that the
seeds there are too small and poor to be of use to
him.’’
Gray squirrels and fox-squirrels. The red
squirrel has been given so much space because
his life is typical of that of the tribe, and be-
cause he is not accurately known although so
widespread and numerous.
More familiar to most readers are the large
‘‘oray’’ and ‘‘fox’’ squirrels, both of which are
very variable. Thus the northern gray squir-
rels are at their best a clear silvery tint, while
154 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
southward they become yellowish or rusty, and
in some localities a black variety is prevalent.
Well-grown specimens of this species are about
18 inches long, including the splendid feather
of the tail. West of the Alleghenies, to the
border of the Plains, and as far north as South
Dakota, lives the northern fox- or cat-squir-
rel, which is larger (23.5 to 25.5 in.), and in
general tint foxy red; but the species is ex-
tremely variable, one large southern variety
being wholly black save the white nose and ears,
and a good deal of black and orange are likely
to appear on any specimen, north or south.
It may be mentioned here that Mexico has
among its many species and races of squirrels
perhaps the most beautiful of any in America,
—the red-bellied. ‘‘Its upper surface is pale
grizzled gray, and its under parts bright rusty
red; it inhabits the forests of eastern Mexico,
ascending the high mountains to an elevation
of 8,000 feet.”’
It is only in the Appalachian region that the
gray and the fox-squirrels meet. They are
much alike in habits, and both have become
bold acquaintances of civilized man, and are
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD 135
public pets in a thousand villages and urban
parks. In some places, indeed, they are so
numerous and bold as to injure gardens, and
to work ruin in roofs and cornices by digging
through them to make their nests inside. As
pets in captivity they, like the reds, are not
very desirable, since they grow cross with age,
and if more than one is kept in a cage the
strongest will probably kill or injure the others.
If allowed the freedom of a room they will work
havoc, and prove practically untamable.
It is as easy and much better, however, to
domiciliate them in the trees about the house,
by placing high among the branches eabins
(short sections of hollow logs are best), and
protecting and feeding their tenants. They
will come to a window-sill where you place
regularly cracked nuts, grains of corn or bits
of cracker, and you will enjoy their society
much more in their free shy activity than if they
were immured in a small wire jail. A good
plan, if you like their visits to your window-
sill, is to provide them with a pole-bridge from
the nearest tree, as they are shy of going upon
the ground where dogs and cats may be.
136 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
Peculiarities of these larger squirrels. In
one or two respects the gray and the fox-squir-
rels differ decidedly from their smaller rela-
tives. Instead of retiring to holes under-
ground, they dwell in winter in holes in trees,
coming out nearly every day to hunt and gambol
about. They make great summer nests of leafy
twigs in which the mother and young reside
while the male squirrels lead a bachelor ex-
istence, often with far wanderings. Their
food is substantially the same as that of the
reds, but they rarely rob the nests of birds,
or are thievish of meat; and their only method
of storing food is by burying it, one nut or
acorn in a place. That months later, when
wind-blown leaves and perhaps deep snow cover
the ground, they can recover these treasures
is truly remarkable; but they seem:to know pre-
cisely where each nut is buried, and go directly
to it, then dive down through the snow and
presently reappear with the morsel in their
teeth. It would seem improbable that this is
an effort of memory, and more likely that a cer-
tain amount of memory is aided by the faculty
of smell. Often after finding one buried nut
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD 137
they bore their way beneath the snow here and
there in search of others, and so get a whole
meal.
These squirrels are so large and toothsome
that they have always been reckoned among
our game animals, and years ago were to be
seen in every market in the land. Now this is
less common, because they have become scarce
in many parts of the country. No longer, then,
are they accused by farmers of being a pest;
but a century ago they certainly were so all
along the frontier. That was the time when
occasionally vast migrations descended upon
the fields of corn in the milk, ruining the crop;
and for years great sums in bounties were paid
for their destruction in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
A very full account of this matter, and of the
gray squirrel generally, may be found in the
first chapter of my Wild Neighbors.
The gray squirrel of California is a separate
species, larger and brighter than the eastern
gray. Along the Mexican border occur several
allied species, more or less marked with yellow
and reddish, of which the handsomest is
Abert’s, which has a band of chestnut along the
138 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
Spine, side-stripes of black, white underparts
and feet, and tufted ears. It is also found in
the mountains of Colorado.
The squirrel that flies. All squirrels are
clever at falling. They often slip at great
heights, and when they can not clutch a lower
branch will turn in the air, spread out their
legs and usually alight without harm. The
skin 1s loose, and is pulled far out when the
legs are widely stretched; and in one sort the
side fold is so ample as to form a regular para-
chute, enabling the animal to make long slides
through the air; it becomes, in fact, a living
aeroplane. This is the flying-squirrel, the
prettiest fourfoot in the American woods.
There are two species. One dwells in north-
ern Canada, measuring 14 inches in length,
and is cinnamon-brown above (sooty in winter),
with a black ring around the eye, and the fur
of the whitish underparts gray near the roots.
A smaller variety occurs in the St. Lawrence
Valley. The other species is the common one
of the eastern and southern half of the Union,
which is only about 9.5 inches in length. Its
fur is dense and exquisitely soft, with the tail
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD — 139
almost as flat as a feather; the color is drab
above, irregularly tinged with russet, while the
hair of the underparts is pure white to the
roots. Cram notes the ‘‘protective’’ similarity
of their clouded cream-buff colors, to the lichens
on the trees to whose bark they often cling
motionless for long periods. They are not
much exposed to any but nocturnal enemies,
such as owls and the weasel tribe, however, so
that this similitude cannot have much practical
importance. They are forest folk, haunting
the hardwood groves, and few farmers suspect
how many of these tenants profit by the old
stubs left along the edges of their clearings.
Really they are tenants of the woodpeckers, who
are good enough not to occupy one of their care-
fully dug nesting-holes twice, but to leave it to
the occupancy, rent-free, of squirrels, chick-
adees, little owls and other feebler neighbors.
The squirrels are capable, however, of carving
out a deep hole for themselves, or will take
possession of some natural cavity, and in it
arrange a luxurious bed of shredded bark, ete.,
mingled with the fur they shed plentifully in
the fall. Sometimes many will room together
140 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
in a large cavity. Now and then a pair will
form an outdoor ball-like home in some old
bird’s-nest; or will even invade the garret of
the farmhouse.
Charm of the flying-squirrel. Strike one of
these tall stubs a smart blow with an ax or stone
and the squirrels will come pouring out of their
hole and go sailing away to neighboring trees
like birds. They alight near the bases of the
trunks and scamper upward to prepare for an-
other glide, but unless sharply pursued will
quickly turn to have a curious look at their dis-
turber. Their ‘‘flights’’ are made upon the
parachute of loose skin which extends in a furry
fold down to the feet, and is further supported
by a slender curved bone hinged to the back of
the wrist, while the flat tail acts as both balancer
and rudder as in a bird. When starting from —
a high perch, and going down hill, they may
sail 200 or 300 yards; but have little or no
power of deviating from the straight line of the
intended leap, yet make a quick upward curve
as they alight. Audubon and Bachman have
given a delightful account of their gambols on
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD 141
summer evenings near Philadelphia, about
1840:
‘*During the half-hour before sunset nature seemed
to be in a state of silence and repose. The birds had
retired to the shelter of the forest. The night-hawk
had already commenced its low evening flight, and
here and there the common red bat was on the wing;
still for some time not a flying-squirrel made its
appearance. Suddenly, however, one emerged from
its hole and ran up to the top of a tree; another soon
followed, and ere long dozens came forth and com-
menced their graceful flights from some upper branch
to a lower bough. . . . Crowds of these little
creatures joined in these sportive gambols; there
could not have been less than 200. Scores- of them
would leave each tree at the same moment, and cross
each other, gliding like spirits through the air, seem-
ing to have no other object in view than to indulge a
playful propensity.”’ :
Family life of the flying-squirrel. Not very
much is known of the winter life of the
ordinary or southern flying-squirrels, but they
seem to retire to their warm nests as soon as
cold weather comes, and to stay there until
spring. This would mean hibernation, or else
the storing of food in their holes; and that
the latter is their habit would seem indicated
142 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
by the actions of captives to be mentioned
presently; but if so it presents a curious
anomaly to the rule, for it is certain that the
large northern species, although dwelling in
much colder regions, where proper food is ap-
parently scarcer, does neither, but goes abroad
every evening, no matter how severe may be
the cold, to get its subsistence, and fares well.
The young are born in early spring, and when
about six weeks old begin to appear at the door
of their house, playing about like kittens under
the watchful care of their mother.
‘‘And what a lovely little mother she is! She
takes the greatest care of them from the time they
are born. She tucks them under her, pulls the cedar
bark over them and blocks up the entrance on cold
days to keep them warm. If you put your finger
into the hole she will rake all the babies out of harm’s
way with her front paws, and then with her nose she
will make a determined effort to push your finger
out of the hole again. Failing in that, she will not
bite you, as a red squirrel would have done at the
beginning, but she will probably take your finger
gently in her teeth, as though to ask you please to
be a gentleman and refrain from causing her any
further annoyance.
‘*Even if you remove the young ones from the nest
she will not bite you, but she will come out after
SQUIRRELS, GOOD AND BAD 148
them at once in evident distress. If they are near
the mouth of the hole, so that she can reach them
without leaving the nest entirely, she puts out her
head, seizes the youngsters by the neck or back with
her teeth and pulls them in after her, one by one.
But if she has to leave the nest altogether she picks
the children up, turns around and pushes them into
the hole before her. A flying-squirrel once disturbed
in this way is not likely to allow the matter to pass
unheeded. She is almost sure to remove her family
to a new home at the first opportunity.’’
Taken young, and fed on milk and vegetables
until they get their growth, they form delight-
ful pets, though mischievous ones, unless
their activity 1s curbed. It is from captive
specimens, indeed, that we have learned most
that we know as to the habits, tastes and dispo-
sitions of these secretive little creatures.
CHAPTER IX
GROUND-SQUIRRELS AND PRAIRIE-
DOGS
We come now to the ground-squirrels, which
are of small size, have flat and comparatively
short tails, and keep near the earth, living be-
neath it and deriving their food from weeds
and low bushes for the most part. There are
scores of species which fall into two groups,—
the striped chipmunks of the eastern and north-
ern woods, and the unstriped spermophiles of
the western plains.
The chipmunks. Our familiar chipmunk is
the only eastern representative of this large
group, and is seen everywhere. In size and
manners he is much like the saucy red squirrel,
but the five black stripes alternating with two
whitish ones on his chestnut coat (fading
through yellowish on the sides into a white
vest), distinguish him in an instant. His race
extends clear across the continent and _ to
Alaska. wherever timber grows, but the western
144
GROUND-SQUIRRELS 145
varieties differ so much in size and tint that
the early naturalists made several species.
“This squirrel,’? to quote the pleasant
phrases of Dr. Godman, ‘‘is most generally
seen scudding along the lower rails of the com-
mon zigzag or ‘Virginia’ fences, which afford
him at once a pleasant and secure path, as, in
a few turns, he finds a safe hiding place be-
hind the projecting angles, or enters his burrow
undiscovered. When .. . his retreat is
Cuiimome her. 2 cums up the nearest tree,
uttering a very shrill ery or whistle, indicative
of his distress, and it is in this situation that
he is most frequently made captive by his per-
secuting enemies, the mischievous schoolboys.”’
No animal is better prepared than the chip-
munk to withstand the cold and hunger of a
northern winter, for he has learned how to con-
struct a model home and to provision it well.
The burrow and its furniture. This 1s a
burrow which usually begins beside a stone or
among the roots of a tree where it will not at-
tract notice, moreover all the earth that is taken
from the hole is seattered at a distance in order
not to betray the excavation. It is first carried
146 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
straight down in a narrow shaft below the frost
line, then turns and winds away horizontally,
and as the tunnels are used year after year,
with continual enlargements, old ones may
reach to a great length, with branches and
chambers accommodating several pairs, and
secret exits. In the autumn one of the under-
ground chambers 1s furnished with soft bedding
and becomes the living-room of a family, while
other chambers are stored with provender or
set apart as receptacles for refuse. Now the
chipmunk becomes exceedingly busy, fattening
himself upon the ripening nuts and seeds, not
only, but upon many tuberous roots, mushrooms
and green corn. On each side of his mouth,
separated from it by thin partitions of muscu-
lar skin, are large cavities or pouches, opening
behind the teeth, which are as useful to him as
are our baskets and wheelbarrows to us. He
brings to the surface in them the material ex-
eavated from the distant ends of his burrow,
and after packing them full of seeds or nuts he
returns to empty their loads—perhaps half a
pint at a time—in one of his storehouses. All
the ground-squirrels have such cheek-pouches ;
GROUND-SQUIRRELS 147
and so they can speedily eather, while they are
plenty, the large stores they need to preserve
life during the long season of famine ahead;
and snug in their warm nests deep under the
sod, they doze away the winter, now and then
emerging when the February sun tempts them
out, but for the most part lying close, yet not
in complete dormancy.
Taking the freedom of the camp, These
cheerful little fellows, and especially the four-
striped Rocky Mountain kind, are extremely
numerous in the rougher parts of the West, and
are amusing visitors at every camp and cabin
until they wear out their weleome by misbe-
havior. In some of the national forests they
have proved a great nuisance by digging up
newly planted tree-seeds.
‘“In camp,’’ writes an explorer of Mt. Shasta, ‘‘they
made frequent visits to the mess-box, which they
clearly regarded as public property, approaching it
boldly and without suspicion, and showing no concern
at our presence—in marked contrast to the. golden-
mantled squirrels, which approached silently, stealth-
ily, and by a circuitous route, in constant fear of
detection. If disturbed while stuffing their cheek-
pouches with bits of bread, pancake, or other eatables,
148 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
each chipmunk usually seized a large piece in its
mouth and scampered off, returning as soon as we
withdrew. In fact they made themselves perfectly
at home in camp.’’
The striped gopher and spermophile. A
variety of this species, the sage-chipmunk of
TWO SPECIES OF ROCKY-MOUNTAIN CHIPMUNKS.
From Warren’s ‘‘Mammals of Colorado.”’ By Permission of G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. Photo by H. W. Nash.
the Great Basin, is the smallest and sprightliest
of the race. It lives mainly in the sage-brush,
scrambling about these diminutive bushes or
scampering from one to the other, and often
sitting on the top of a sage-bush eating the
little seeds from its hands; but, like other
GROUND-SQUIRRELS 149
squirrels they vary their seed-diet with insects.
It is a relative of these chipmunks, marked by
thirteen stripes, dark brown on rusty yellow,
which is known throughout the Northwest, from
Lake Michigan to Alberta, as the ‘‘striped
gopher,’’ and as a pest to farmers on account
of the grain it steals and the runways for water
its burrows make. Still worse are several
other northwestern ground-squirrels which
have plain yellowish-gray coats and are known
as ‘‘geray gophers,’’ though the term ‘‘gopher’’
should be restricted to the Geomys; the most
familar is Franklin’s spermophile.
This graceful animal was originally abundant
as far south as central Missouri and Illinois,
but long ago disappeared before the civilizing
of its prairie home, and now remains numerous
only in the wilder districts of the Dakotas and
northward. It is pretty and interesting, but
too much of an impediment to good agriculture
to permit the farmer to tolerate it; yet the an-
imal increases so rapidly under the protective
and food-supplying conditions which the hu-
man settlement of the country brings it, that
its extermination will be a matter of great diffi-
150 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
culty. Referring to this matter Dr. Merriam
made the following appealing remarks in a re-
cent paper on these pests in California:
Striped spermophiles exist along the grassy
eastern border of the plains right down to the
Gulf of Mexico; and Texas has, besides, a
beautiful little ‘‘sand-squirrel,’’ spotted with
white on a yellowish ground, relieved by black
markings. It is a shy, inconspicuous little
creature, rarely noticed until it attracts atten-
tion by a fine trilling bird-lhke whistle. These
and other spermophiles are most numerous
where the mesquit grows, for its seeds afford
them good food. They are fond, too, of the
fruit of the small prickly pear, the sand-bur,
and other shrubs and weeds, and eat many
grasshoppers and other insects. The graceful
antelope-squirrel, taking its name from its col-
ors, is another species conspicuous for its
beauty, carrying its short, wide, white-lined tail
curled over its back like a plume. All these
burrow at the edge of thickets and cactus
clumps and apparently hibernate. Sometimes
they do much damage by boring through the
banks of irrigating ditches. Another south-
NOILOAIN] ANOVIG OL AIAVIT ‘STANNINOG-GNNAOU) VINIOAITV
GROUND-SQUIRRELS “abs
western group includes the _ rock-squirrels,
which are never seen far from cliffs or broken
ledges. Bailey tells us that they climb the trees
for acorns and berries, but when surprised al-
ways rush to the ground and scamper away to
the nearest rock-pile. They are extremely
wary. ‘‘Like most of the smaller ground-
squirrels of the arid regions they usually bur-
row under a cactus or some low thorny bush,
where they obtain shade and the protection of
thorny cover. They apparently do not hiber-
nate, but during the cold weather have the un-
squirrel-like habit of closing their burrows and
remaining inside, as a protection against en-
emies, and especially snakes. . . . Like
other members of the genus, these ground-
squirrels feed on seeds, grain, fruit, green
folage, lizards, and numerous insects, and
often gather around gardens and green fields,
where they do considerable damage in spring
by digging up corn, melons, beans and various
sprouting seeds, and, in summer and fall, by
feeding on the ripening grain.”’
Squirrels and bubonic plague. One of these
ground-squirrels, that most common in central
152 ANIMAL COMPETITORS ©
and southern California (Clitellus beecheyi)
has special prominence in our list because it
shares with the rat the bad distinction of being
a dangerous carrier of plague-germs. It was
observed as early as 1903, as we learn from Pro-
fessor Doane’s book previously alluded to, that
an epidemic was killing these ground-squirrels
in the neighborhood of San Francisco bay.
The matter was at once investigated by Dr. Ru-
pert Blue, of the U. S. Public Health and
Marine Hospital Service, who speedily ascer-
tained that the disease was bubonic plague,
which had probably been caught from the town
rats which at harvest time wander into the
country in large numbers and make free use of
the holes and runways of the field-squirrels.
A single infected rat might sow the seeds, for
its fleas, escaping, from its dead body, would
readily attach themselves to a squirrel and
multiply and spread among them. Among the
tens of thousands killed and examined a con-
siderable number of infected ones have been
found; and several instances are recorded in
which human cases of plague in California
resulted from handling infected squirrels.
PRAIRIE-DOGS 15
we)
Whether the disease has been exterminated
among these wild rodents, remains to be seen.
The fact that the Beechey ground-squirrels
have shown themselves receptive to the fleas
which are peculiar to brown rats, and to the
disease, led to observations and experiments as
to other rodents. It is found that rock-squir-
rels are quite readily infeeted, mice and
pouched gophers less so, but wood-rats and
prairie-dogs succumbed at once. There seems
no reason to suppose that any rodent may not
carry the fleas about in its fur a short time, if
not permanently; or that any rodent is immune
against the plague if punctured by an infected
flea. A ray of light is shed upon this dark as-
pect of the case by the announcement that along
with the fleas goes a small staphylinid beetle
which exists as a parasite on both rats and
squirrels, and feeds ravenously on the fleas.
Importance of the prairie-dog. But of all
the ground-squirrels none equals the prairie-
dog in interest or importance.
It is a denizen of the dry plains east of
the Rockies, while two or three other species
inhabit the mountains, the Utah basin, and
154 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
southward into Mexico. This animal is some-
times confused towards the north with the
A. Mound
B. Funnel -shaped enlrance lo burrow |:
CG. Maury, ry passoage th wc uvdeanceter
15 feet ue length
Duce Cjrassaged pfeetur length.
E. Unused nestsfilled with cartherefuase.
F tinused earl af kareena passe
filedwioh earth ele (F feel lo
6.Wiche large cough far one me dag
H. West. Gees (naucem eczat cles by 27
ches utheght)
J. Absorbent Saialler aie brswlrhvole
of carbor.
K Posvtt splion of Ba of Proar J logs as found after
Dejith se passage, (thet
Tenches
DIAGRAM OF A PRAIRIE-DOG’S BURROW.
larger gray gophers, especially the Columbian
and Franklin’s, so that we wrongly hear of
PRAIRIE-DOGS _ 155
‘‘prairie-dogs’’ on the Canadian plains; it is to
be distinguished by its slightly larger size, dis-
tinetly brownish color, and very short tail
(two inches), which is flat and black toward the
end. :
The prairie-dog is about a foot long, and
robust, with strong limbs and claws. It dwells
in colonies, whose permanent ‘‘towns’’ of bur-
rows, each marked by a hillock of earth about
the entrance, spread densely over many acres
under the natural prehistoric conditions, but
now sometimes cover hundreds of square miles.
The burrows are deep and extensive, and at
first go down at a very steep slope to a depth
of twelve to fifteen feet, when they turn hori-
zontally, and here and there branch into cham-
bers, some of which are family rooms, while in
others fodder is stored, or refuse and dung are
deposited. The mound about the hole is
packed hard, not only by the tramping of the
animals, but by crowding it down with their
noses; this hillock prevents water from running
into the burrows when the plain is flooded by
heavy rains. and also serves as a tower of ob-
servation.
156 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
‘““The prairie dogs feed upon grass and herbage,
which is soon exhausted near the burrows, compelling
the animals to go farther and farther away for food.
This they dishke to do, as it exposes them to attack
from enemies; and after a time they prefer to dig a
new burrow nearer a supply of food. Thus a ‘town’ —
is always spreading and contains many empty bur-
rows. Like other animals habituated to desert re-
gions, they do not drink at all. . . . The animals
are diurnal and most active morning and evening.
They come out daily during the winter, except when
it is very stormy; but this practice varies with the
latitude and climate.
‘‘They are prolific, especially in the southern half
of their territory, and would multiply with excessive
rapidity were it not for numerous enemies, especially
rattlesnakes and other serpents. These are coura-
geously resisted by the prairie dogs, who sound the
alarm the moment a snake enters a hole, gather, and
proceed to fill the entrance with earth, packing it
down, thereby sometimes entombing the snake for-
ever. Probably few snakes go down the passages,
which are so steep they could with difficulty climb
out, but depend upon lying hidden in the grass and
striking down the young squirrels when out at play
or in search of food. This is the method of the
coyote, kit-fox, wildcat, hawks, and owls, who find
the dog-towns a profitable hunting-ground. Badgers,
however, ean, if they will, easily dig up a burrow
and devour the helpless family. The worst enemy is
the black-footed ferret, a weasel of the plains, which
PRAIRIE-DOGS 157
easily penetrates the burrows, and against whose
ferocity and skill the squirrels can make little defense.
‘* All these conditions together served in the natural
state of things to hold the prairie-dogs in check, but
the changes brought about by civilization have been so
favorable to these little animals, by the reduction of
their enemies on the one hand, and the augmentation
on the other hand of their food supplies by the farm-
ers’ plantations of meadow grass, alfalfa, and grain,
that they have increased into a very serious pest.”’
A serious pest-problem. Wow serious this
pest has become in the grazing regions of
western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, may be
inferred from the information furnished by
Vernon Bailey in his report upon the condi-
tions in Texas in 1905.
‘‘Usually,’’ he states, ‘‘they are found in seattered
colonies, or ‘dog-towns,’ varying in extent from a
few acres to a few square miles, but over an extensive
area lying just east of the Staked Plains they cover
the country in an almost continuous and thickly in-
habited dog-town, extending from San Angelo north
to Clarendon in a strip approximately 100 miles wide
by 250 miles long. Adding to this area of about 25,-
000 square miles the other areas covered by them,
they cover approximately 90,000 square miles of the
State, wholly within the grazing district. It has been
roughly estimated that the 25,000-square-miles colony
contains 400,000,000 prairie-dogs. If the remaining
158 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
SCENES IN PRAIRIE-DOG LIFE,
PRAIRIE-DOGS 159
65,000 square miles of their scattered range in the
State contains, as seems probable, an equal number,
the State of Texas supports 800,000,000 prairie-dogs.
According to the formula for determining the relative
amount of food consumed by animals of different
sizes, this number of prairie-dogs would require as
much grass as 3,125,000 cattle.
‘‘In many places the prairie-dogs are increasing
and spreading over new territory, but on most of the
ranches they are kept down by the use of poison, or
bisulphid of carbon, or, better, by a combination of
the two. Asa Texas cattle ranch usually covers from
10,000 to 100,000 acres, the expense of destroying the
prairie-dogs in the most. economical manner often
means an outlay of several thousand dollars to begin
with and a considerable sum each year to keep them
down. The increase of prairie-dogs is clearly due to
the destruction of their natural enemies.
‘‘In autumn the prairie-dogs become fat, bee in
Texas they do not hibernate as they do to some extent
in the North. If their fur should become fashionable,
or roast prairie-dog an epicurean dish, the problem
of keeping them in check would be settled, and there
is no reason, save their name, for not counting them,
properly prepared and cooked, a delicacy. While
owing their name to a chirping or ‘barking’ note of
warning, they are in reality a big, plump, burrow-
ing squirrel of irreproachable habits as regards food
and cleanliness. An old stage driver expressed the
idea in graphic words one day: ‘If them things was
ealled by their right name, there would not be one
160 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
left in this country. They are just as good as squir-
rel, and I don’t believe they are any relation to
dogsine?
Since the citation above was written the pub-
lic suppressive measures taken in Kansas have
reduced the pest to negligible proportions ex-
cept in the remote northwestern counties.
The woodchucks. These large ground-squir-
rels bridge the gap between the true squirrels
and the marmots, as they are called in the Old
World, known to us ‘‘ woodchucks’’ or ‘‘ ground-
hogs.’’ They are stout, short-legged, inactive
animals, with short tails and closely appressed
ears, whose dense fur is grizzled gray, in-
clined to chestnut or blackish, and whose habits
are distinctly terrestrial. Our eastern wood-
chuck is found everywhere east of the Plains
in all open woodlands, prairies or cultivated
regions, for he thrives in the midst of civil-
ization, whose cleared fields are to his lking,
while he is furnished an abundance of food
by the raising of field and garden crops.
Few animals are so familiar to the country
boy, who early becomes acquainted with its
burrows in the hillsides, but rarely has the
PRAIRIE-DOGS 161
courage to dig the owner out of their tortuous
depth. In the West are other similar species;
and all the high mountains from the Rockies
westward, and far to the North, have a larger
one which dwells near timber-line, and is known
as the siffleur (whistler) on account of its clear
sharp call. The food of all these marmots con-
sists of herbage and succulent roots, and they
do great damage in gardens where not re-
strained. They do not store any of this food,
however, but in the early autumn retire to their
burrows, very fat, and pass the winter in a
state of complete torpor, during the continu-
ance of which their fatness decreases, being ab-
sorbed to sustain the trifling exertion of life
eaused by the continued slow beating of the
heart. When, therefore, they emerge early in
the spring, they are lean and very weak, but
soon recuperate on the fresh grass and herbage.
Their fur is of little value, and their flesh poor,
so that as game they are attractive only to the
boy and his dog, or, in the West, to hungry In-
dians.
Food-value of the porcupine. Were, if any-
where, should be said a few words about the
162 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
sluggish, stupid northern porcupine, whose re-
lation to man is far more to the good than to
the bad. It is true that he strips a few forest
trees of their foliage, and occasionally inad-
vertently girdles one; but his flesh is excellent
eating and large in quantity. His nature and
habits make it possible to approach him with-
out difficulty and to kill him with a club.
Hence he has always been a reliance of the
forest-dwelling Indians and white fur-hunters
for winter food, and now it is of so much impor-
tance in the great forested regions of the
Northern States, and in Canada, that timber-
eruisers and others whose business takes them
into the wilderness should be able to find a
porcupine in such emergencies as are always
likely to arise in their adventurous lives, espe-
cially in winter, that the animal is protected
by law; and this law is well lived up to by the
frontier folks for they appreciate its impor-
tance.
At the same time it must be confessed that
poreupines make themselves very troublesome
in camps or about houses in the woods which
are left alone for a time, as often happens
PRAIRIE-DOGS 163
among loggers and miners amid the western
mountains. The porcupines at once make
themselves at home, and if they can get inside
will demolish nearly every wooden thing in their
search for food, and their enjoyment of nib-
bling anything salty. As salt pork and bacon
enter largely into the provisions of these
people, their tables, cupboards and utensils are
likely to be more or less spotted if not satu-
rated with salty grease; and the porcupine
knows no reason why he should not get to the
last taste. |
CHAPTER X
RABBITS, USEFUL AND INJURIOUS
Razssits hold a prominent place among the
obstacles to success met with by both the
farmer and the orchardist. They number many
species, and one or more is present in any
habitable part of the continent td which you
may refer. The Hast has in its middle and
southern part the familiar and widely distrib-
uted gray rabbit or Molly Cottontail, which ex-
tends westward to the plains; and the smaller,
and redder swamp-rabbit of the South; while
in our northeastern States and in eastern
Canada the larger American or varying-hare,
which turns white in winter, is present, and con-
stitutes the principal winter fare of such
worthy animals as the lynx, wolf, fox and vari-
ous martens, and of some hawks and owls. In
the West the great jack-rabbits abound, and in
the far North the arctic white hares.
Excellence of rabbit-flesh. To the native
164
RABBITS 165
people of our forests and plains rabbits were |
of the utmost importance as food, especially in
winter. The early pioneers everywhere re-
lied largely on them. ‘Their thick fur too, was,
and is, a precious resource to the Indians, es-
pecially those of the Northwest, who make from
it artistic as well as substantial garments and
coverings. |
The smaller American rabbits have long been
esteemed as game. While their flesh is less
tender than that of the domesticated species
it is of much finer flavor, and when properly
prepared for the table is much more desirable
as food. With-the same care in dressing and
handling bestowed upon the rabbit in English
markets, our cottontail rabbit would stand
much higher in popular flavor. The jack-rab-
bits are not so good, yet many reach the
market.
A strong prejudice against eating jack-rab-
bits often exists because occasional individuals
are infested by warbles and the tapeworm
larva. Unless badly affected, however, the flesh
is not injured by these parasites, and there is
no good reason why the animals should not be
166 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
extensively used as food. The half-grown or
nearly full-grown young of the year are usually
healthy and very good eating when properly
cooked. Those not needed for the table may
be fed to dogs and poultry, but should be
cooked. The principal natural enemies of
jack-rabbits are coyotes, foxes, bobeats, hawks,
owls, and eagles. When rabbits become abun-
dant these enemies gather to feast on them, and
then at least should be afforded protection.
Rabbit fur is not in demand in this country
except for trimmings, since it is brittle, has no
underfur, and does not wear well; but from one
and a half to two million skins are bought an-
nually to be made into felt for hats and similar
purposes, and it might be well for farm-boys to
enquire whether they could not profitably trap
or shoot in their neighborhood for this and the
flesh market.
General breeding-habits. Our American rab-
bits are not so prolific as the common EHuro-
pean species. Some of them produce three or
four litters of young in a season, while others
seem to breed but twice. The period of gesta-
tion is about thirty days, and the breeding sea-
RABBITS 167
son is from April to September or even later.
The young are produced in natural depressions
under rocks, stumps, or weeds, or in shallow
burrows made by other animals. When these
are lacking, the female scratches a shallow hole
under a bunch of grass or weeds, makes a nest
of leaves or grasses and lines it with fur from
her own body. Here the young, averaging in
most of our species about four, are produced;
they are fully furred and have their eyes open
when born.
The female, while caring for her young, re-
mains in the vicinity of the nest. If enemies
approach, she runs away for a short distance;
but when the young are attacked and cry out,
she has been known to fight desperately in their
defense, and even to vanquish such a formidable
foe as a cat or a snake. When attacking, she
jumps and strikes the enemy with her hind
feet—members capable of a powerful blow, as
many a boy who has captured a live rabbit can
_ testify.
Young rabbits are attended and suckled in
the nest for about three weeks, after which they
are left to shift for themselves. Since suc-
168 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
culent food is usually abundant, this is not a
difficult task, and they soon adapt themselves
to an independent life. Apparently the mother
takes no further interest in the career of her
offspring. The male parent is probably never
concerned in the care of the young.
Injury to gardens and orchards. The cot-
tontail is fond of frequenting farms and planta-
tions, and having taken up its residence in some
chosen fence-corner or thicket remains near it,
feeding upon the succulent vegetables in the
farmer’s garden, or the clover, turnips, or corn
in his fields. In the fall it feasts upon apples,
cabbages, turnips, and the like left exposed in
garden and orchard, and in winter, when all
else is frozen hard or covered with snow, it
turns its attention to twigs and bark of woody
plants. The other rabbits have similar habits,
varying with the environment. In the West
some of the smaller kinds live largely in the
abandoned burrows of prairie-dogs, badgers,
and other animals.
Rabbits feed upon nearly all growing crops,
but the damage to small grains is usually so
slight as to pass unnoticed. Clover and al-
RABBITS 169
falfa are favorites. In the Southwest they are
quick to seize upon garden-patches, and in
parts of Texas cantaloupes cannot be grown
unless well fenced. :
Rabbits, however, are most feared by tree-
planters. They injure trees and shrubs in two
ways—by cutting off the ends of branches
and twigs, and by tearing away the bark, often
until the tree is entirely girdled. The differ-
ence between the work of rabbits and that of
field-mice may easily be detected by the large
tooth-marks of the former, and by the height
(16 to 18 inches above the ground) of the
wound.
Newly planted orchards are especially lable
to injury from rabbits, and few are now set out
without provisions for winter protection from
these animals. The losses of orchard and nur-
sery stock in one neighborhood in Arkansas
during the mild winter of 1905-6 were reported
at $50,000.
Laws protecting the rabbit. In New Eng-
land and the Middle Atlantic States the rabbit
is protected, while throughout most of the West
and South no restrictions are placed on hunt-
170 ANIMAL COMPETITORS
ing the animals. In some Western States they
are regarded with such disfavor that bounties
have been paid for their destruction.’ In States
where they are most abundant, protection is.
rarely afforded. In sections of the country
where a close season on rabbits is accompanied
by a strict enforcement of laws against tres-
pass by hunters, rabbits have often become a
nuisance. |
On the whole, in America shooting has been
the most effective means for keeping down the
number of rabbits.
Ferreting usually is impracticable, since few
of our native rabbits take refuge in burrows.
Moreover, the use of ferrets is forbidden by
1The bounty on rabbit ears paid by Gray County, recalls
the bounty paid on gophers in Wallace and Greeley counties
[Kansas] in 1894. The former county paid the bounty on
scalps, while Greeley County paid it on gopher tails. The
boys along the county line traded gopher tails for scalps, and
realized 10 cents on each gopher.