Читать книгу New Ideas for American Boys; The Jack of All Trades - Daniel Carter Beard - Страница 40

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have very strong teeth, and can use them on wood effectively, so it is wise to protect all corners and cracks in your wooden traps with pieces of tin or sheet-iron. They have good noses, and can smell an apple a long distance off. Place your traps in the shallow water at the edge of the mill-pond or stream inhabited by these rats, and they will doubtless find it without difficulty.

Young musk-rats are very gentle and playful, and may be handled without fear; they do not grow fierce with age if reared in captivity and accustomed to gentle treatment.

Fig. 20.—The Tin Box-Trap.

When kept in confinement give them a roomy cage, with a tank of water to swim in. Build the tank after the manner of the one described in the “Back-yard Fish-Pond.”

There is one other little animal, familiar to most boys, and which they are too apt to value only for its skin. In truth, this creature generally has a very bad name, and, personally, I owe it a grudge for stealing all my live bait, on more than one occasion.

Nevertheless, when domesticated and supplied with plenty of food, like many a poor two-legged wretch, it will turn honest, and give up its bad habit of robbing hen-roosts. This long-bodied little animal is the mink, which, like those animals already described, is not difficult to capture in almost any sort of a trap.

When caught young it becomes very gentle, and even affectionate. It is passionately fond of frogs, and these batrachians make a good bait for mink-traps. Minks will eat fish and when domesticated will not hurt your chickens, but will wage a relentless war upon rats and mice.

You need not confine your mink, for it will make chums of your dog and cat, and is fond of a cosey spot in the chimney corner.

Fig. 21.—Turtle-Trap.—This is simply a box with a door, like Fig. 10. The trap is set in shallow water, and baited with meat. It is very effective.

While I was sketching on the coast of Maine I spent a whole day at my easel, between two great rocks. I soon discovered that I was watched by some creatures, and it was not long before my neighbors made up their minds that the two-legged thing was a harmless sort of animal, and, before I finished my sketch, they amused themselves by jumping back and forth over my feet. At first I was more afraid of them than they were of me, but soon discovered that they meant no harm: so I painted away, with a pair of wild mink playing about my feet like tame kittens.