We hunted muskrats whenever we had time to run down to the lake. They
are brown bunchy animals about twenty-three inches long, the tail
being about nine inches in length, black in color and flattened
vertically for sculling, and the hind feet are half-webbed. They look
like little beavers, usually have from ten to a dozen young, are
easily tamed and make interesting pets. We liked to watch them at
their work and at their meals. In the spring when the snow vanishes
and the lake ice begins to melt, the first open spot is always used as
a feeding-place, where they dive from the edge of the ice and in a
minute or less reappear with a mussel or a mouthful of pontederia or
water-lily leaves, climb back on to the ice and sit up to nibble their
food, handling it very much like squirrels or marmots. It is then that
they are most easily shot, a solitary hunter oftentimes shooting
thirty or forty in a single day. Their nests on the rushy margins of
lakes and streams, far from being hidden like those of most birds, are
conspicuously large, and conical in shape like Indian wigwams.
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