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Show " TRAPPING MUGKRATS."""""'" How the Fur Hnnters In the Maryland Marshes Secure Their Prey. A visit to a mnskratting village, as the scattering cabins of the trappers along the bordora of Fishing bay, Maryland, Mary-land, are called, will be a revelation to tho stranger. The cabins are rude and have barely a habitable appearance. The occupants are squatters, and the materials mate-rials of which their cabins are built have been appropriated from the nearest tract of timber land. The trappers and their families are a wild and tattered race of beings, but hardy and good natursd. One peculiarity of a muskratting village is the large number of children that belong be-long to each cabin. Another feature of the community is a species of razor back hog that swells tho population with its presence. This nondescript member of the porcine family fam-ily has an important mission to perform in these settlements, and he performs it with a will. It is the making away with the hundreds of surplus muskrat carcasses car-casses that accumulate, althougn the flesh of the muslirat forms an important article of food with the trapper and his family. As for that, however, eaters of nniskrat meat are not confined to the trapping villages of Fishing bay, for it is considered a great delicacy by many an epicure in that land of terrapin and canvas backs. A remarkable thing about the razor back hogs of the muskrat region is that, though tliey devour untold pounds of muskrat meat every day, they never show t he richness of their keeping 'by adding a single pound of flesh to their carnivorous bodies. The muskrat builds its house so that, while it has a couple of stories high and dry on the ground, the entrance to it is always under water. This entrance is a long tunnel running from a point a foot or more below the water at low tide line to tho ground floor of the house, which is always flooded. The mtiskrat's reason for having this subterranean entrance to his dwelling place is that thereby he has an exit or an entrance in time of danger that will not betray him to his enemies, either in his flight from home or in seeking seek-ing refuge within its walls. But his instinct in-stinct does not warn him against the trap his most cunning and persistent enemy places at this hidden entrance to his house, changing it from a way to safe'y into an avenue of certain death. This trap is a wooden box, three feet long and six inches in width and depth. In each end is a wire door, hung on hinges at the top. These doors rise at the slightest push on the outside, but will not open from the inside. The trap is sunk in tho water to the mouth of the musk-rat's tunnel and anchored there, and whether the muskrat is going ont of his house or returning to it he is sure to walk into the trap. If he had time the captive rodent could gnaw his way out of the box, but before he can free himself he will drown. A whole family of musk-rats musk-rats may be taken in a single night in one of these traps, and, as every trapper has ont as many traps as he can attend to, tho rat harvest which thev reap every night is a rich one. There aro other ways by which tho muskrat is pursncd. In the daytime the hunters steal over tho marshes and jab long handled spears with sharp, barbed tines down through the roofs of tho muskrat houses. Sometimes a spear will impale half a dozen rats as they lie cuddled together in their cozy nests. Hnnters with gntis skirt tho marshes at night looking for muskrats with the aid of jack lamps, but that method of hunting hunt-ing is followed more toindulpe the sporting sport-ing inclination of the hnnter than to reap profit. Times of extraordinary tides on the marshes are times always welcomed by tho muskratter, for the rats are then forced from their houses, in spito of tho infallible instinct they are alleged to possess in foreseeing such calamitous ca-lamitous happenings, and guarding against them by building their houses higher, They are compelled to flee to the open country and seek places of safety, safe-ty, which they rarely find, for the trappers trap-pers and hnutcrs have no difficulty in locating lo-cating them, and so they are given over to a wholesale slaughter. Clothier and Furnisher. |