Читать книгу Harper's Outdoor Book for Boys - Joseph H. Adams - Страница 22

For squirrels, chipmunks, and white rats very good cages can be made from wire cloth, tin boxes, and wood, and in the illustration of a squirrel cage (Fig. 22) a simple house is shown.

To make it, a base-board is cut twenty-eight inches long, fifteen inches wide, and one inch and a quarter thick. Ten inches from one end the edges of the board are sawed off so that the end will be six inches wide. Eleven inches from the small end a square piece of wood is mounted on the base-board to form the back to the square compartment. This is covered with tin on the inside, so that the rodents cannot gnaw the wood away at the edges or about the hole that leads into the cylinder.

A wedge-shaped piece of wood, six inches broad at the bottom and two inches at the top, is attached to the small end of the base-board, and from the top of this piece to the top of the back-board a connection strip is nailed fast. From thick wire or quarter-inch iron rod a wicket is made and driven into holes at the wide end of the board. It should be the same size as the back-board, and is placed there to support the wire cloth of which the cage is made.

Small holes are made in the base-board with an awl, so that the ends of the wire cloth will slip into them. When the edges of the cloth are tacked to the back-board and wired to the wicket, the ends in the holes will remain in place.

A wire door made from the cloth can be hung on hinges, which should be soldered to the galvanized cloth. With straight wires or wire cloth an exercising cylinder can be made with wooden or tin ends. It is supported between the back of the cage and the wedge-shaped upright. Tacks driven around the hole that leads into the cylinder will prevent the occupants from gnawing away the edges of the wood-work.

The squirrel house (Fig. 23) is constructed in the same manner as the cage, but it has the advantage of a covered shelter at one end of the base-board. This is made from a tin cracker-box with the lid removed, and inverted so the bottom acts as the roof. In one side an oval opening is cut and a wire screen is fastened to it at the inside.

The wire cylinder is seven inches in diameter and twelve inches long, quite large enough for two squirrels to run a great race at the same time. A piece of hair felt, an old woollen cloth, or some curled hair will be comfortable for the squirrels to lie on in the enclosed cage.