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Full Title
How to make and set traps : Including hints on how to trap moles, weasels, otter, rats, squirrels and birds. Also how to cure skins / by J. Harrington Keene.
Author
Keene, J. Harrington.
Date Added
9 January 2014
Format
Journal
Language
English
Publish Date
1902
Publisher
New York : Frank Tousey
Series
Ten cent handbooks > no. 40
Source
Dime Novel and Popular Literature
Alternate Title
Ten cent handbooks -- no. 40
Topic
Trapping > Handbooks, manuals, etc. Hunting > Handbooks, manuals, etc. Hides and skins > Handbooks, manuals, etc.
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Disclaimers
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OCR
. en vee CTT
90. HOW TO MAKE AND SET RAPS.
and the steadfast glare in her greenish eyes was full of a deadly
purpese, which gathered. strut igth as she progressed. Pres-
ently, when within three feet of the still gourmandizing rat,
_her fell purpose culminated in a terrific but unerring spring,
which tumbled rat and cat out of the tree to the eround.
Habet! alas! he had it, and after-a few terrific crunches of
her juws Tabby rose from the body proudly, with swinging
tail and a victorious air, which ag plainly as language con-
veyed infinite self-complacency at the death- dealing deed.
These rats ure more clever in boring their tunnels than the
brown species, resembling, in fact, the ingenuity of the mole
rather than the rat. They are ‘much more cleanly also.
Should you get an apple or pear or melon which has been ©
bitten by a brown rat you will instantly detect it by its pecu-
liar musty odor and taste. The water-rat is, on the con-
trary, a much more cleanly animal, and its flesh is not un...
commonly eaten by the French peasants on maigre days.
It breeds in the spring, and again in-autumn if the spring
litter be very early, bringing forth five or six ata time. The
‘nest is usually by.the side of a river or.stream. In the roots”
of an old willow tree just opposite my house [I found six nests
this year. Not that these rats will not at times build away
from the water. I know of several instances, as a neigh-
bor was plowing in a dry, chalky field, far removed from any
water, he turned out a water rat that. was curiously laid up
in an hybernaculum artiticially formed of grass and leaves,
-At one end lay about a gallon of potatoes, regular ly stowed,
on which it was to have supported itself for the winter,
When a rat is canght in a gin always be careful to keep
your hand at a distance on releasing it. - In fact, do not let
it go at-all, but kill it atonce. I do not like the idea of let-
ting a suffering animal be further tormented by dogs, or even
cats. - There can be no true “sport in it. except, perhaps, to
the savage instincts of the dog, and why a human being
~ should find. cruel sport for a dog I cannot tell you.
The other species, the black Tat (Mus rattus), is perhaps
& more ancient importation even than the brown. It is,
however, scarcer than either of the others. Its colors are
grayish black above and ash-colored, and beneath it 1g about
geven and a half inches long when full grown,
Ferrets are often employ ed to aid in exterminating the
brown rat. The ferret is of no use whatever for the water-rat,
though it is certainly extremely useful when barns, wood-
heaps, and such like erections are infested. The gun is the
thing, in the hands of an experienced sportsman, to kill them
as the ferrets force them to leave their homes, but a few sharp
dogs and a half dozen sharp school-fellows with.aticks wiil
produce very certain destruction. Be careful not to mis-