Becker County, Minnesota - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 1 of those read), 1907 (part 3 of 16)

The marten is ordinarily captured in wooden traps of very simple construction, made on the spot. The traps are a little enclosure of stakes or brush in which the bait is placed upon a trigger, with a short upright stick supporting a log of wood; the animal is shut off from the bait in any but the desired direction, and the log falls upon its victim with the slightest disturbance. A line of such traps, several to the mile, often extends many miles. The bait is any kind of meat, a mouse, squirrel, piece of fish, or bird's head. One of the greatest obstacles that the marten hunter has to contend with in many localities is the persistent destruction of his traps by the wolverine and fisher, both of which display great cunning and perseverance in following up his line to eat the bait, and even the martens themselves which may be captured. The exploits of these animals in this respect may be seen from the accounts elsewhere given. I have accounts from Hudson's Bay trappers of a marten road fifty miles long, containing one hundred and fifty traps, every one of which was destroyed throughout the whole line twice - once by a wolf, once by the wolverine. When thirty miles of this same road was given up, the remaining forty traps were broken five or six times in succession by the latter animal.

Notwithstanding the persistent and uninterrupted destruction to which the marten is subjected, it does not appear to diminish materially in numbers in unsettled parts of the country. It holds its own partly in consequence of its shyness, which keeps it away from the abodes of men, and partly because it is so prolific; it brings forth six or eight young at a litter. Its home is sometimes a den under ground or beneath rocks, but oftener the hollow of a tree; it is said to frequently take forcible possession of a squirrel's nest, driving off or devouring the rightful proprietor. Though frequently called pine marten, like its European relative, it does not appear to be particularly attached to coniferous woods, though these are its abode in perhaps most cases simply because such forests prevail to a great extent in the geographical areas inhabited by the marten.

The marten is no partner in guilt with the mink and weasel in the invasion of the farmyard, nor will it, indeed, designedly take up its abode in the clearing of a settler, preferring always to take its chances of food supply in the recesses of the forest.

The otter inhabited Becker County 100 years ago in considerable numbers, and their skins were an article of traffic of no small magnitude. They have, however, been getting gradually less, year by year ever since, until but very few are left in the county at the present time.

Few animals vary more in size than the otter. Some individuals are twice as large and heavy as others equally as mature. The average length of a full grown otter is from four to four and a half feet, from tip to tip ; some specimens, however, touching five feet while others are not more than half as long.

The otteir has a peculiar habit of sliding dat on its belly, whether for amusement or convenience, I am unable to say. In the winter of 1870 and 71, there was an otter slide on the west bank of the Otter Tail River, nearly in front of where George Herrick now lives in the Town of Erie. Although I have seen otter slides in dilTerent parts of the country, 1 must give information at second hand, and will quote from Audubon, in the following language :

The otters ascend the bank at a place suitable for their diversion, and sometimes where it is very steep, so that they are obliged to make quite an effort to gain the top: they slide down in rapid succession where there are many at a sliding place. On one occasion we were resting ourselves on the bank of Canoe Creek, a small stream near Henderson, which empties into the Ohio, when a pair of otters made their appearance, and not observing our proximity, began to enjoy their sliding pastime. They glided down the soap-like muddy surface of the slide with the rapidity of an arrow from a bow. and we counted each one making twenty-two slides before we disturbed their sportive occupation.

This habit of the otter of sliding down from elevated places to the borders of streams, is not confined to cold countries, or to slides on the snow or ice, but is pursued in the Southern States, where the earth i.= seldom covered with snow, or the waters frozen over. Along the reserve dams of the rice fields of Carolina and Georgia, these slides are verv common.

The otter is a very expert swimmer, and can overtake ahnost any fish, and as it is a voracious animal, it doubtless destroys a great number of fresh water fish annually. We are not aware of it having a preference for any particular species, although it is highly probable that it has. About twenty-five years ago we went early one autumnal morning to study the habits of the otter at Gordon and Spring's Ferry, on the Cooper River, six miles from Charleston, S. C. where they were represented as being quite abundant. They came down with the receding tide in groups or families of five or six together. In the space of two hours we counted forty-six. They soon separated, ascended the different creeks in the salt marshes, and engaged in capturing mullets (Mugil). In most cases they came to the bank with fish in their mouths, despatching it in a minute, and then hastened back again after more prey. They returned up the river to their more secure retreats with the rising tide. In the small lakes and ponds of the interior of Carolina, there is found a favorite fish with the otter, called the fresh water trout.

One morning we observed that some of these animals resorted to the neighborhood of the roots of a large tree which stood on the side of the pond opposite to us', and with its overhanging branches shaded the water. After a fatiguing walk through the tangled cane-brake and thick underwood which bordered the sides of this lonely place, we reached the opposite side of the pond near the large tree, and moved cautiously through the mud and water to its roots; but the hearing or sight of the otters was attracted to us, and we saw several of them hastily make otY at our approach. On sounding the tree with the butt of our gun. we discovered that it was hollow, and then having placed a large stick in a slanting position against the trunk, we succeeded in reaching the lowest bough, and thence climbed up a broken branch from which an aperture into the upper part of the hollow enabled us to examine the interior. At the bottom there was c^uite a large space or chamber to which the otters retired, but whether for security or to sleep we could not decide. Next morning we returned to the spot, accompanied by one of our neighbors, and having approached and stopped up the entrance under water as noiselessly as possible, we cut a hole in the side of the tree four or five feet from the ground, and as soon as it was large enough to admit our heads, we peeped in and discovered three otters on a sort of bed composed of the inner bark of trees and other soft substances, such as water grasses. We continued cutting the hole we had made, larger, and when sufficiently widened, took some green saplings, split them at the butt end, and managed to fix the head of each animal firmly to the ground by passing one of these split pieces over his neck, and then pressing the

The last otters catight in I'.ecker County of wliicli J lune any knowledge were taken in Lake Eunice Township in 1887, an account of which is here given by James Xunn, of T\)nsfor(l. who was living in Lake Eiuiice at the time.

In the fall of 1887, Harry Britt, a neighbor, and I were out hunting small game north of Lake Maud, when we came to a peculiar looking trail on the frozen inlet close to the lake. It looked as if something had been dragged along until the snow had become packed quite hard, and ended at the lake when the open water was reached. When we returned home, we reported the finding of this strange sign to Uncle George Britt, as Harry's father was called, and I well remember how anxious he became about some old traps that were hard to find. A few days afterwards he brought home three fine otter skins, for which he realized something like thirty dollars.

S. F. Sivertson, of Toad Lake Township, while walking over the thin, transparent ice near the outlet of Toad Lake in the fall of 1902. discovered a large otter swimming in the water under the ice directly beneath his feet. He followed him for some distance thinking he might catch him, but he finally disappeared all at once, probably having entered his l)urrow, the entrance to which is always under the water, the same as that of a beaver. Otters never climb trees.

The badger was quite common in Becker County when it was first settled, and a few still remain, but they are not found in any such numbers as they were thirty or forty years ago. The badger is a stout, thick set animal of great strength, but is not especially noted for agility. The body is broad, flattened and low ; the legs being very short and stout, with broad, flat feet and enormous claws.

The color is a grizzly gray which gives rise to the expression "as gray as a badger." The length of the animal from tip to tip is about thirty inches, six inches of which is included in the length of the tail. Some of the fore claws are an inch and a half in length.

The badger is one of the most secretive animals in the country, living exclusively in holes in the ground, for the digging of which its whole make-up is admirably adapted, and it is seldom seen in the daytime. You might travel for days and weeks in a country where their holes were abundant, and where numerous badgers lived, and not see a single animal. There are still a good many badger holes in our county, and undoubtedly a few badgers, but I have not seen a badger for twenty years. Every badger hole, however, is not the home of a badger, as many of these holes were originally the home of a gopher or a chipmunk, and have been enlarged by the badger in order to get at the little animal itself, for its supper or breakfast.

In the spring of 1871, when we were living on the northwest quarter of section 6 of Detroit Township, where Nels Lofstrum now resides, we discovered a badger's den near our house, and on two or three occasions Mrs. Wilcox encountered the old badger himself digging wild artichokes in a patch of hazel-brush about half way l)etween the house and his den. The first time she saw him he was only a few feet away and the badger immediately set his jaws to clattering like a threshing machine; but in a very short time he started on a run in one direction, and Mrs. Wilcox started in the other direction, and it was only a question of speed as to which should reach their den first. The next time she saw him, however, he did not appear to be so reaehly frightened, neither did she, and by the time we moved from there down to another claim at Oak Lake, a Httle later on, the badger had become comparatively tame.

I once came across a large badger on the prairie, when engaged in examining land for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, some disance from its hole. I was alone and had no wea]:)- on but my Jacob's-staff. The badger started to run but i soon overtook him, when he turned to fight. Anyone who has been in close quarters with a badger knows what a frightful noise they make by clattering their jaws together, when brought to bay. The bear makes a similar noise under the same circumstances, only much louder. \\'oodchucks or ground-hogs make the same kind of noise. It is neither a growl, nor a snarl, nor a howl, nor a hiss, but rather a mingling of all.

When the badger saw that he could not get away he turned and came at me with a rush, with his jaws clattering loud enough to be heard twenty rods away. I struck at him with my Jacob'sstafif, but he proved to be an artful dodger. I backed away a few steps, when he charged at me again, this time raising on his hind legs as he came up trying to claw and bite my hands and legs. I kept him off with my Jacob's-staff and finally managed to hit him a welt across the back that stunned him for a few seconds, but before I could repeat the blow he rose up and was ready to renew the fight. I then knocked him over, and hit him when he was down. He, however, made another charge, but my blows finally began to tell, and after hitting him at least a dozen times, I finally cracked his head, which finished him.

My right arm and shoulder were so lame after that fight that I could not get my coat on, and was obleged to carry my arm in a sling for a whole week.

On another occasion, when out on a survey in North Dakota in 1876, we were camped on the banks of the Sheyenne River near where Lisbon now stands. One morning we were going to move our camp, so I left all the men to help load u]) tlie camp outfit and started off alone for the place where we were to begin our day's work, expecting the men to follow as soon as the wagon was loaded, 1 had gone nearly a mile, I saw two badgers digging roots in a patch of wild artichokes, but when they saw me they ran for their home and both rushed in. The foremost badger immediately l)egan digging and throwing dirt in the wav of the hindmost which obstructed his progress, so I reached the hole just in time to catch liold of his tail. The badger pulled with all his might, and the badger is a very powerful animal. Vie immediately commenced digging also, excavating with his fore paws and throwing out the dirt with his hind feet, and turn mv head whatever way I would, a good part of it came square into my face. The weather was dry, and the day hot, and the light soil as it came from that hole was nothing more or less than a continuous stream of dust. The badger in the meantime was digging himself slightly farther and farther in, and the strain on his tail was becoming harder and harder all the time. My arms were pulled their whole length into the hole, and nothing but the size of the hole prevented me from being pulled in altogether. When I first caught hold of the badger I expected somie of the other men along in a very short time and intended to have them help dig out the badger. So I held on to him for at least half an hour. Finally my hands and arms began to grow dreadfully tired, the sweat was running in little streams down through the dust and dirt on my face, the badger was still heaving the dry earth into my neck, face and eyes until I finally decided that I could "hold the fort" no longer and was obliged to let go. I then went back to the camp and found that after they had loaded up the wagon they started to drive across the river and had tipped over, dumping the whole load int(_^ the water and had only just then finished reloading the wagon.

In August, 1878, I was camped for a week all alone by a little spring, six miles west of where the village of Steele, in Kidder County, N. D., now stands. I was living in a tent and as I had to do my own cooking, I had taken along quite an assortment of canned stuff, particularly canned beef. I was very careful of my provisions as there was no place to buy any nearer than fifty miles. As my work of appraising land took me away the whole of each day, I always took great care to fasten the front of my tent in the morning, and even banked it up next to the ground with sods to keep the "varmints" out. After a day or two, I found that some kind of an animal was making regular visits, both by night and by day. It finally got inside by digging a hole underneath and helped himself to half a can of canned beef that I had left open and tried to open a new can, as T could tell by the marks of his teeth. He tried to get in at night and I could easily have shot him, but I supposed it was a skunk, and was not inclined to pick a quarrel with him as he was liable to be well armed himself. Finally one evening, as I sat in front of my tent eating supper, I made a new discovery. There was a steep bank about twenty feet from my tent, six or eight feet high, and I found that there had been a big hole dug in the bank that same day. My visitor had evidently taken a liking to the locality, and to me, and had decided to become mjy permanent neighbor. Before I had finished eating, I fancied I could see a shadow or a motion of some kind, well back in the hole, and a moment later the object became a shade plainer and continued to advance almost imperceptibly until the outline of a badger's head came into plain view. I happened to have a single barreled pistol with an eight inch barrel, at hand, and I shot he badger through the head, without leaving mv seat.

The skunk is so common in Becker County that it is not necessary to say much about his everyday affairs, but there are some traits of character and habit peculiar to the animal that are both curious and interesting, and in which humanity in general is largely interested, to which I wish to call attention, and there is no way in which I can do it so briefly and clearly as to quote again from Professor Coues. He says :

Of The Secretion Of The Skunk

Tlie almost insuperable repugnance, which the skunk naturally excites', has always been an obstacle to the investigation of its peculiar defensive organs.

The first, and for a long time the only accurate, record, was that given by Dr. Jefifries Wyman in the first volume of the Boston Natural History Society's Proceedings, 1844, p. no. This indicated, though briefly, the general structure of the parts which obtains throughout the family, as far as known. The organ is a true anal gland, without connection with the genito-urinary system. The organ is paired with a fellow on the opposite side. These glands are situated on either side of the intestine, at the root of the tail, just within the anus, and are about an inch in diameter. When the animal is pursued, the lower part of the intestine is prolapsed through the anus, the tail is elevated over the back, and by the contraction of the muscles of the anus the acrid fluid is eiected in two streams to the dis- tance of six or eight feet. The fluid is a peculiar secretion Hke that of the civet, and not the urine, as is commonly thought. The common opinion, that the animal scatters it with its tail, is erroneous. The fluid is limited in quantity; and, having been discharged, the animal is harmless until the sacs are again filled by gradual secretion.

To the eye, the peculiar and odoriferous secretion of this animal is a pale bright or glistening yellow, with specks floating in it. By the microscope it looks like a clear fluid, as water, with masses of gold in it, and the specks like bubbles of air, covered with gold, or rather bags of air in golden sacks. The air I take to be the gas from the golden fluid The fluid is altogether peculiar and indescribable in odor, pungent, penetrating, and persistent to a degree, perhaps, without parallel, outside of this sub-family, in the animal kingdom. It has been called "garlicky," but this is a mild term. The distance to which the substance, in liquid form, can be ejected, is, in the nature of the case, difficult to ascertain with precision, and doubtless varies with the vigor of the animal and amount of accumulation in the reservoir. But there is no doubt that the spurt reaches several (authors say from four to fourteen) feet, while the aura is readih" perceptible at distances to be best expressed in fractions of the mile. The discharge is ordinarily invisible in the daytime, but several observers attest a certain phosphorescence, which renders the fluid luminous by night This is doubtless true, though I have not verified it by actual observation Emission does not take place when the animal is captured in a deadfall, in such way that the small of the back is broken by the falling weight. I found that instantaneous death is' not always a sure preventive of escape of effluvium. A skunk which I shot with my pistol, held within a foot of its head, the bullet traversing the whole body from the forehead to the groin, was too ofYensive to be skinned, though it died without a perceptible struggle, and had certainly not opened its reservoir up to the moment when shot.

It seems, however, that the disgusting qualities of the substance have been given undue prominence, to neglect of a much more important and serious matter. The danger to the eyesight, should the acrid and pungent fluid actually fall upon the eyes, should not be forgotten. Dogs are some times permanently blinded by the discharge, and there are authentic cases in which human beings have lost their sight in the same way. Sir John Richardson alludes, on the authority of Mr. Graham, to the cases of "several" Indians who had lost their eyesight in consequence of inflammation resulting from this cause.

The effect upon dogs is described by Audubon and Bachman: "The instant," they say, "a dog has received a discharge of this kind on his nose and eyes he appears half distracted, plunging his nose into the earth, rubbing the sides of his face on the leaves and grass, and rolling in every direction. We have known several dogs, from the eyes' of which the swelling and inflammation caused by it did not disappear for a week.

The fluid has been put to medicinal use in the treatment of asthma. One invalid is said to have been greatly benefited by the use of a drop three times a day; but he was soon obliged to discontinue the use of the remedy, owing to the intolerably offensive character which all his secretions ac- quired. A story is told* of an asthmatic clergyman who procured the glands of a skunk, which he kept tightly corked in a smelling-bottle, to be applied to his nose when his symptoms appeared. He be'.ieved he had discovered a specific for his distressing malady, and rejoiced thereat; but on one occasion he uncorked his bottle in the pulpit, and drove his congregation out of church. In both these cases, like many others, it is a question of individual preference as between the remedy and the disease.

It is cruel to add aught to the odium already attached to the common skunk. But. clearly, he is as dangerous as he is disagreeable. In a wild state he is by no means the weak, timid, harmless creature commonly described by naturalists; although it is said that, if disarmed of his weapons of ofYence while young, he may be safely domesticated.

An adventure, while on a summer tour amid the Rocky ^Mountains, first called my attention to the novel class of facts about to be presented. Our camp was invaded by a nocturnal prowler, which proved to be a large coal-black skunk. Anxious to secure his fine silky fur uninjured, I attempted to kill him with small shot, and failed. He made characteristic retaliation; and then rushing at me with ferocity, he seized the muzzle of my gun between his teeth! Of course the penalty was instant death. An experienced hunter then startled us by saying that the bite of this animal is invariably fatal, and that when in perfect apparent health it is always rabid. He resented our incredulity and confirmed his statement by several instances of dogs and men dying in convulsions shortly after being thus bitten.

On mentioning this adventure to H. R. Payne, M. D.. who had been camping with miners near Canon City, Col., he said that at night skunks would, come into their tent, making a peculiar crying noise, and threatening to attack them. His companions, from Texas and elsewhere, had accounts to give of fatal results following the bite of this animal.

Since returning to Kansas City, I have had extensive correspondence with hunters, taxidermists, surgeons and others, by which means the particulars have been obtained of forty-one cases of rabies mcphitica, occurring in Virginia, ^Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado and Texas. All were fatal except one; that was the case of a farmer, named Fletcher, living near Gainesville, Texas, who was twice bitten by M. macroura [of Aud. & Bach.r^M. mcphitica var. - E. C], yet recovered and is living still. On further inquiry it was found that he was aware of his danger, and used prompt preventive treatment. Another case was alleged to be an exception; that of a dog which was severely bitten in a long fight with a skunk, but whose wounds healed readily and without subsequent disease. It seems, however, that this dog afterward died with mysterious symptoms like those of hydrophobia in some of its less aggravated forms.

Instead of burdening this article with a mass of circumstantial details, a few cases only will be given best fitted to show the peculiarities of the malady; and those are preferred that are located on the almost unin-

A veteran hunter, Nathaniel Douglas, was hunting buffalo, in June, 1872, fourteen miles north of Park's Fort. While asleep he was bitten on the thumb by a skunk. Fourteen days afterwards singular sensations caused him to seek medical advice. But it was too late, and after convulsions lasting for ten hours he died. This case is reported by an eyewitness, Mr. E. S. Love, of Wyandotte, Kansas, who also gives several similar accounts.

One of the men employed by H. P. Wilson, Esq., of Hayes City, Kansas, was bitten by a skunk at night, while herding cattle on the plains. About ten days afterwards he was seized with dilirium and fearful convulsions, which followed each other until death brought relief. Mr. Wilson also reports other cases, one of which is very recent. In the summer of 1873, a Swedish girl was bitten by a skunk while going to a neighbor's house. As the wound was slight and readily cured, the affair was hardly thought worthy of remembrance. But on Jan. 24th, 1874, the virus, which had been latent for five months, asserted its power. She was seized with terrible paroxysms. Large doses of morphine were administered, which ended both her agony and her life.

In its movements, and in the facility with which it uses its fore i)aws. the raccoon comes the nearest to a htiman being of any animal, in Minnesota. The track of the fore foot is hke that of a cliild's hand. It was formerly very common in I5eckei County, and there are still a good many left, but they are no where near as mmierotis as formerly.

I have never seen but two raccoons in the County during my thirty-five years' residence here. In Xovember. 1883, I saw one in a small creek which is the inlet to Shell Lake at the bridge <»n the north shore. It soon went ashore and waddled off into the woods as soon as it saw me move. I found another u]) in a tree, about a foot in diameter, and there was a black squirrel u]) in the same tree with the .raccoon. I chopped the tree down, and when it fell the s(|uirrel gave a long leap when the tree was about three-fourths of the way to the ground, and struck the earth as lightly as a feather and escaped. The raccoon howevei clung to the tree until it struck the ground which threshed the life out of him.

helping themselves to roasting- ears, or after being" tracked by dogs and treed in the adjoining forest, where they are easily killed by being shot, or by cutting down the tree in which they have taken refuge.

Racoons are easily tamed and make interesting pets. I have had them reach their paw through a small hole in the wire netting of their cage, and insert it into the bottom of my vest pocket, and take out a peanut or a piece of candy as handilv as a monkey could do it.

Nov. 2ist, 1800. My men take no more raccoons in traps. These animals are now lodged in hollow trees, where they will remain, like bears, until spring, without sustenance. The men take plenty of foxes and wolves, a few fishers, and a chance marten.

Nov. 30th, 1800. Some of my men went raccoon hunting, the weather being warm. They returned in the evening with seven, which they had t'onnd in one hollow tree. Raccoon hunting is common here in the winter season. The hunter examines every hollow tree, and when he sees the fresh marks of their claws, he makes a hole with an ax, and thus opens the hollow space, in which he lights a fire to find out if there be any raccoons within, as they often climb trees in the autumn, and not finding them proper for the purpose, leave them and seek others. But if they be within, the smoke compels them to ascend and put their heads out of the hole they entered. On observing this, the ax is applied to the tree and with the assistance of the fire, it is soon down, and the hunter stands ready to despatch the animals as they are stunned by the fall. But sometimes they are so obstinate as to remain in the tree until they are suffocated and roasted to death.

I did not suppose that any opossum would ever have the courage to come to Becker County, and did not intend to say anything about him, but in the Detroit Record of December 9th, 1904, the following appeared under the head of Height of Land items: "Mr. Herrick caught a possum in his trap last week."

When I was a boy, sixteen years of age, which carries us back to the winter of 1849-50, I was living in western New York, a country nearly as cold as this, and up to that time the opossum had never been heard of so far as any of us knew in that part of the country. I was trapping for foxes that winter with a steel trap, and was not very successful, as I only caught one, but caught several skunks, which I did not want, as they were of no value in those days. One morning in February, I visited my trap, already thoroughly disgusted with the skunks for being so careless in getting into my trap, when I found I had caught what I took to be another skunk. I had a club in my hands, but as I did not care to get at too close range, I threw my club at the animal at a distance of about a rod, and held my breath and shut my eyes to await the consequences. The clul) hit the ground and the trap, and just barely touched the animal, but not hard enough to hurt a baby.

To my astonishment the animal keeled over, gave a few quivers and stretched itself out for dead. I had caught an animal that was new and strange ; its tail w^as considerably more than a foot long, nearly an inch in diameter, round and entirely naked. I was somewhat surprised at the ease with which I had killed it, but never for a moment dreamed but that it was thoroughly dead.

I took it home and put it into a box until after breakfast, when I found it was not only alive but quite lively. By the time I had it out of the box, it was dead as ever, so I took it over to a neighbor, who was an old trapper, and he pronounced it a "possum," and asked me if he might have the hide. I told him "yes" and he immediately preceeded to skin the animal. The ease with which it had been killed on two occasions had slipped from my mind, so I said nothing about it. but from what I have since learned of their habit of ''playing opossum." I am positive that one allowed himself to be skinned alive without liinching.

When the young opossums are first born, they are not more than an inch long, and resemble young mice, but they are immediateh' placed in the pouch by the mother, where they are nourished and grow rapidly for six weeks, at the end of which

Mrs. \\'ilcox. who is a native of ( )lii() where opossums were plenty, has seen them carrying" their young' in the manner described. She once saw a litter of young" opossums ])laving" in the woods, a little larg"er than new-born kittens, 1)ut as soon as they saw her, they made a scamper for their mother, who was not far away. The old opossum stood erect on her hind feet, and the young ones, five in number, climbed into the pouch, the entrance to which was about half way between the fore legs and hind legs. She then wrapped her tail around her body just below the orifice of the pouch which served as a belt, and kept the youngsters from falling out, then dropped down on all four of her feet and scampered away to her little den in the rocks and was soon out of sight.

These animals are good climbers and are ex])erts at gathering fruit, especially peaches, and farther south they go for the persimmons. They use their tails as well as their paws, and frequently have been seen with their tails wound around a limb and their body hanging" below head downwards, perhaps asleep, or perhaps reaching" out with their paws for persimmons, or what is also very much to their liking, the eggs in some bird's nest.

After I caught my opossuni as first related, several others were caught that same winter. So. perhaps, others may follow up the brave fellow who has found his way to Becker County, and it is to be hoped they may be more fortunate, and keep out of the traps.

The mink it too common in iiecker County to need a very minute description. With the exception of the muskrat, there have been more mink skins taken than those of any other furbearing animal in Becker County since the country began to be settled. Being strictly aquatic in its habits, the large number of lakes and ponds and rivers in Becker County aft'ord a vasi field for their homes and an abundance of their fa\orite food. The mink is still quite plentiful in Becker County.

I have observed that the color of this animal, as well as of the otter and beaver, grows lighter as it advances in years, and that the white blotches or spots are of greater size and distinctness in the old than in the young. The fur of a young mink (under three years), when killed in season is very handsome; its color is often an almost pure black. The skin is thin and pliable, approaching nearly to the papery consistency of that of the marten. When aged, the hide is thick and the color more rusty. The summer pelage is short, but tolerably close, and is of a reddish brown color, and the tail, though still possessing black hairs, shows distinctly the under fur of a decidedly rusty hue.

The peculiar odor which the animals of this genus have in common, attains in this large and vigorous species a surpassing degree of fetor, though of the same quality. No animal of this country, except the skunk, possesses so powerful, penetrating, and lasting an effluvium. Its strength is fully perceived in taking the animal from a trap, or when the mink is otherwise irritated. Ordinarily the scent is not emitted to any noticable degree; it is under voluntary control, and the fact that the mink spends most of its time in the water is another reason why its proximity, even in numbers, is not commonly perceived by smell.

The tenacity of life of the mink is something remarkable. It lives for many hours - in cases I have known for more than a day and night - under the pressure of a heavy log, sufficient to hold it like a vice, and when the middle of the body was pressed perfectly flat. Nay, under one such circumstance, which I recall, the animal showed good fight on approach. When caught by a leg in a steel trap, the mink usually gnaws and tears the captive member, sometimes lacerating it in a manner painful to witness; but, singular to say, it bites the part beyond the jaws of the trap. This does not appear to be any intelligent attempt to free itself, but rather an act of the blind fury excited by consciousness of capture. Some have averred that it is an instinctive means of lessening pain, by permitting a flow of blood from a portion of the limb beyond the point of seizure; but this seems to me very problematical. The violence and persistence of the poor tortured animal's endeavors to escape are witnessed in the frequent breaking of its teeth against the iron - this is the rule rather than the exception. One who has not taken a mink in a steel trap can scarcely form an idea of the terrible expression the animal's face assumes as the captor approaches. It has always struck me as the most diabolical of anything in animal physiognomy. A sullen stare from the crouched, motionless form gives way to a new look of surprise and fear, accompanied with the most violent contortions of the body, with renewed champing of the iron, till breathless, with heaving flanks, and open mouth dribbling saliva, the animal settles again, and watches with a look of concentrated hatred, mingled with impotent rage and frightful despair. It is probably our only species which feeds habitually upon reptiles, fish, nioUusks and crustaceans - more particularly upon frogs, fresh water clams, crawfish and the like. Nevertheless, it is not confined to such diet, but shows its relationships with the terrestrial weasels in a wide range of the same articles of diet as the latter secure. It is said to prey upon muskrats - a statement I have no hesitation in believing, though I cannot personally attest it. It is also destructive to our native rats and mice and is known to capture rabbits, while its not infrequent visits to the poultry yard have gained for it the hearty ill-will of the farmer. Various marsh-inhabiting birds are enumerated in the list of its prey, among them the rails and several smaller species; and it does not spare their eggs. But most birds are removed from its attack; for the mink is not a climber, at least, not to any extent.

Minks are not burrowing aninials in a state of nature, but freely avail themselves of the holes of muskrats and other vermin. They cannot climb a smooth surface, but ascend readily where there is roughness enough for a nail hold. The grown male will weigh about two pounds; the female is heavier than she looks, averaging between one and a half and one and three-fourths pounds. April is for the most part the month of reproduction. Five or six young are ordinarily produced at a birth. Litters have been found in the hollow of a log, as well as in the customary burrows.

The mink has been frequently tamed, and is said to become, with due care, perfectly gentle and tractable, though liable to sudden fits of anger, when no one is safe from its teeth. Without showing special affection, it seems fond of being caressed, and may ordinarily be handled with perfect impunity.

S. F. Sivertson once dug a mink out of a hole in the ground on an island in Toad Lake. Just as he had unearthed the mink it gave an evasive jump and landed on the seat of Sivertson 's pants and scrambled up under his coat, where it fastened itself with its teeth and toe nails, which pricked through his shirt to the hide. Sivertson tried to pull it out by the tail, but the harder he pulled the worse it bit and scratched. He was finally obliged to lie down flat on his back, by which means he finally smothered the mink.

The ermine is still found in Becker County. It very much resembles the weasel, but is somewhat larger and invariably has a black tip to its tail, varying from one-fourth to one-third its total length. This is the distinguishing mark between the ermine and the weasel. The length of the ermine is about ten inches, exclusive of the tail, which is from four to five inches loni^. Its color in summer is a dull brown above, and a sulphury yellow beneath. In the winter, in this latitude, it is a pure white all over, except the end of its tail whch is black all the year around.

The ermine is provided with glands which emit a powerful odor like that of the skunk, only it is less rank and penetrating, and not so far reaching.

In the fall of 1872, while camped a few miles south of Detroit Lake, an ermine found its way into a sack that was about one-third full of dried venison. I was the first one to discover the intruder, so I closed up the sack, keeping him inside and finally caught him by the head while he was still in the sack, and killed him with my hands. The stench that he emitted was horribly ofl^ensive, and the venison was ruined ; we never used any of it afterwards.

The fur of the ermine, many years ago, was held in great value, being used for robes of royalty, worn by the crowned heads of China, Turkey and other nations of Europe. A thousand dollars was a low figure for a cloak of ermine. One hundred and fifty years ago, their skins formed a large part of the Canadian exports, but later they have so sunk in value as not to pay the expense of collecting them.

About the first of Nov., 1904, I saw a beautiful ermine near the Otter Tail River opposite the Commonwealth sawmill, in the slab-yard. He had just donned his winter's dress, which with the black tip to his tail presented an interesting and graceful appearance. A little shy at first, he soon became quite tame, allowing me to approach within a few feet of him, when suddenly he would retreat back in among the slabs, but soon returned, coming almost near enough for me to put my hand on him. After playing around in this way for five minutes, his curiosity was evidently gratified, and he scrambled away over the slabs in quest of a mouse or some other small game, to which they are very destructive.

They are great destroyers of all small animals, such as rabbits, hares, gophers and chipmunks ; also the domestic fowls of our poultry yards frequently fall a victim to their rapacity, as well as grouse and partridges, which, with their eggs and young, are in constant danger of being destroyed by the ermine.

The ermine indeed is neither so aquatic as its congener, the mink, nor so much at home on trees as the marten; but it has too frequently been observed in such situations to admit the doubt that it both swims and climbs with ease and without reluctance.

The always pleasing pen of Mr. Wm. Macgillivray has furnished us with the following general account of the habits of the ermine: It frequents stony places and thickets, among which it finds a secure retreat, as its agility enables it to outstrip even a dog in a short race, and the slimness of its body allows it to enter a very small aperture. Patches of furze, in particular, afiford it perfect security, and it sometimes takes possession of a rabbit's burrow. It preys on game and other birds, from the grouse downwards, sometimes attacks poultry or sucks their eggs, and is a determined enemy to rats and moles. Young rabbits and hares frequently become victims to its rapacity, and even full-grown individuals are sometimes destroyed by it. Although in general it does not appear to hunt by scent, yet it has been seen to trace its prey like a dog, following the track with certainty. Its motions are elegant, and its appearance extremely animated. It moves by leaping or bounding, and is capable of running with great speed, although it seldom trusts itself beyond the immediate vicinity of cover. Under the excitement of pursuit, however, its courage is surprising, for it will attack, seize by the throat and cling to a grouse, hare or other animal, strong enough to carry it off; and it does not hesitate on occasion to betake itself to the water. Sometimes, when met with in a thicket or stony place, it will stand and gaze upon the intruder, as if conscious of security; and, although its boldness has been exaggerated in the popular stories which have made their way into books of natural history, it cannot be denied that, in proportion to its size, it is at least as courageous as the tiger or the lion.

There are weasels in Becker County as well as ermine, although they bear so great a resemblance to each other that most people are inclined to regard them as one and the same animal. Both animals change their color semi-annually, and both are inveterate destroyers of smaller animals, such as mice and gophers, and frequently make sad work in the poultry yard.

The weasel is shy and wary, while the ermine will approach a person as if unconcious of danger, and will dodge back and forth, to and from its place of concealment, coming a little nearer until within three or four feet, if unmolested. The weasel is a good climber, while the ermine seldom undertakes to climb anything more than a wood pile or a low building. The ermine is about three inches longer than the weasel, and the tip of its tail is always black, although the remainder of its fur may be either brown or white, while the tail of the weasel is all of the same color.

I once saw a weasel, or rather a pair of weasels, which was an extraordinary freak of nature ; two of them grown together, after the manner of the Siamese twins. A ligament of skin and, probably, flesh, about an inch wide connected the two animals together, just back of the fore shoulders. I saw them on two different occasions as they dodged back and forth under my father's barn. I tried to catch them, but did not succeed- That was in 1850 more than half a century ago, but I still retain a very distinct impression of their appearance.

At one time a farmer in walking over his grounds, saw at a short distance from where he stood, a hawk pounce on some object on the ground, and rise with it in its claws. In a few minutes, however, the hawk began to show signs of great uneasiness, rising rapidl}' in the air. or as cpiickly falling, and wheeling irregularly around, while it was evidently endeavoring to force some obnoxious thing from itself with its feet. After a short but sharp contest, the hawk fell suddenly to the earth, not far from where the farmer stood intently watching the manoeuver. He instantly went to the spot, when a weasel ran away from the hawk, apparently unhurt, leaving the bird dead, with a hole eaten through the skin under the wing and the large blood vessels of that part torn through. Professor Coues says :

A glance at the phj'siognomy of the weasel would suffice to betray its character. The teeth are almost of the highest known raptorial character; the jaws are worked by enormous masses of muscles covering all the side of the skull. The forehead is low. and the nose is sharp; the eyes are small, penetrating, cunning, and glitter with an angry green light. There is something peculiar, moreover, in the way that this fierce face surmounts a body extraordinary wiry, lithe and muscular. It ends a remarkably long and slender neck in such a way that it may be held at right angle with the axis of the latter. When the creature is glancing around, with the neck stretched up, and flat triangular head bent forward, swaying from one side to the other, we catch the likeness in a moment - it is the image of a serpent.

Bats were never very common in Becker County. When living on our homestead, at Oak Lake, more than thirty years ago, we occasionally had a visit from a bat ; they always, of course, come at nightfall and disappear at the break of day.

I have not seen a bat for many 3'ears, and I am not sure that there are any in existence in the county at the present time, and there are, perhaps, young people in the county who never saw one, so I will give them a brief description.

The bat is an animal abundantly supplied with wings, but without feathers. Their color is nearly black. Their bodies are covered with a short, fine substance, something like velvet, but their wings are naked, especially the inner surface. The head and ears somewhat resemble those of a mouse, but their sharp, carnivorous teeth are more like those of a weasel or a monkey.

The length of the body is about two inches and the breadth of the extended wings five inches from tip to tip. The wings are made of a fine frame-work of bones and sinews covered with a fine, flexible membrane. I am not aware that they have any legs or feet, but they are provided with short claws instead.

At the elbow joints of their wings are short hooks with which they suspend themselves from the underside of a roof or any other smooth surface, with their heads downwards.

In the winter of 1897 and '98 I visited the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and when about half a mile underground we came to where the roof was literally covered with bats, in patches of twenty or thirty feet in extent. They were hanging suspended from the roof of the cave, heads downward by the hooks on their wings.

Bats appear to have a peculiar affinity for bed-bugs. In the spring of 1856 I cut down a large black walnut tree in Fairfield County, Ohio, in the top of which was a large hollow containing a nest of bats. There were about forty bats in the hole and with them about a peck of bed-bugs. Being nocturnal in their habits, thev were dazed and blinded and bewildered bv the lisfht of the sun

This animal was formerly confined to the prairie regions in the western part of the county, but later on it has worked its way in among the clearings and fields in the wooded districts, farther east.

The general color of the jack rabbit is a pale brown with black ear tips. It changes its color at the beginning of winter, and although the bleaching is extensive, it is never quite complete, like that of the timber rabbit. The change in color in this class of animals takes place as far south as latitude 41°, its range of latitude varying with the severity of the winter, while in the Allegheny and Rocky Mountain regions, it extends two or three degrees farther south.

The jack rabbit is a very interesting and rather amusing 'and comical animal, ^^'hen in seclusion and unconscious of being observed, and particularly when sitting erect on his hind legs, with one ear cocked back and the other forward, engaged in thinking of his family affairs, he is a very meek, serious and inoffensive looking animal ; but a jack rabbit engaged in a brown study and seriously reflecting on his misdeeds, and a jack rabbit engaged in destroying fruit trees and garden stuff are two different propositions. A jack rabbit under a full head of steam is another propositon.

With the approach of danger he will start off with a hop, skip and a jump, generally on three legs, as if partially disabled, and then stop and await developments, and right here is the critical period in the aff'airs of the jack rabbit, for if there is a shotgun in any way connected with the cause of alarm, he is now liable to fall a victim to its deadly aim. If he is not upset with a gun on the start, and he is satisfied after a moment's observation that the cause of alarm is a reality, he lets himself loose on all fours and starts oft' on a race that will outstrip the most swift-footed animal in the land. I have measured the jumps of a jack rabbit in the snow that were twenty-two feet between tracks. In the fall of 1881, while I was engaged in surveying the Fargo branch of the St. Paul and Milwaukee

Railroad, there was a young" man in my party by the name of Henry Hamilton, from Detroit, a brother of Georg-e D. Hamilton of the Detroit Record, then about eighteen years of age. Once, as we were returning from our work to our boarding place at Fort Abercrombie, Henry and I were riding in the tail end of the wagon with our feet hanging out behind, when a jack rabbit jumped up out of the grass and gave three or four bounds on three legs and then stopped. Says I to Henry "he has got a leg" broke and you can catch him." "That is so" says Henry, and off he started after the rabbit. The rabbit did not appear, however, to take him at all seriously at first, for he waited until Henry was within a short distance, when he gave a few more hops, still making believe that he was crippled and then stopped again. This gave Henry new courage, and he increased his speed with renewed energy. The rabbit now saw that Henry was in earnest and let himself out at full speed over the prairie, and was soon out of sight. When Henry came back he remarked that he didn't think that rabbit had any leg broken.

The first jack rabbit, I ever saw was being chased by two big timber wolves. As soon as the rabbit saw me he started in my direction and came within about four rods, stopped and stood up on his hind legs and looked as though he felt himself to be in a place of safety. The w^olves both came within easy rifle shot and then stopped. It was difficult to decide which to shoot, the rabbit or one of the w^olves. But I was in need of meat and concluded to try the rabbit, and brought him down with a bullet through the head. \\'\i\\ a repeating rifle I could have easily killed one or both of the wolves, but before I could reload they were out of reach. That rabbit was all I had to eat for the next four days.

In some of the states farther west, especially in the mountain valleys where irrigation is practiced, jack rabbits are a serious pest. They much prefer to gnaw the bark off the apple trees and to eat the young growing grain and alfalfa, than to live on their old diet of prickly pears and sage-bush, and as a consequence they thrive and multiply in some of those little valleys in the west to an extent almost beyond belief. In the summer of 1902, while traveling along the western borders of the Blue Mountains in central Oregon, on two different occasions and in two different places, I counted more than one hundred rabbits on eacli occasion along the roadside between sundown and dark. While I was at Prineville, the county seat of Cook County, two men in one day killed and brought in 137 jack rabbits and eave them to the hogs.

When I began to write an account of the wild animals of Becker County, I intended to write about those only that formerly lived here and have since disappeared altogether, or were liable to become exterminated, but when once started in, it is difficult to decide where to stop, so I am now getting among a class of animals that will smile at the idea of ever becoming exterminated, as, for instance, the muskrat, and still more so, the rabbit. "To breed like rabbits," is an old saying, and our rabbits are no exception to the rule , for there are five rabbits in the timber regions of the county now to where there was one thirty-five years ago. The woods were alive with foxes then, and they lived largely on rabbits, but the white settlers have long since thinned out the foxes with strychnine, and the rabbits have increased to correspond with the decrease of the foxes.

The northern rabbit or hare, as every one knows, changes its color twice a year. Audubon, the celebrated American naturalist, and the man that our village of Audubon was named for by his own niece, once kept an animal of this class in confinement for a whole month in the spring of the year while it was undergoing this change, and he ascertained that the change was made gradually by the white hairs falling out and new hairs of a brown color growing in their place. So he laid it down as a rule that all changes of color in animals at the beginning of the winter, as well as its close, came about in the same way.

Other naturalists have since discovered, however, that while Audubon was correct as to the change in the spring, that he was in error in regard to the change in the beginning of the winter, which came about by a gradual change in the color of the fur as cold weather came on, and that there was no falling out of the fur itself. The northern rabbit is probably no more plentiful anywhere in the county than in the vicinity of the Otter Tail River in the town of Erie.

In the l)e£;inning- of the long- cold \vinter of iSSj-'SS, a large family of people, and poor at that, moved into the house of Charles E. Molen, on Section 14, in Erie. The settlers in the vicinity were somewhat nervous over their poverty, and were fearful of being- obliged to help pull them through the winter. I was putting in logs at my mill by the bridge that winter, but I never heard of them' asking- for any help or going hungry, although I know they did not have $10 worth of provisions all winter besides rabbits. They kept two shotguns going, and killed several hundred rabbits that winter, all of which they devoured asking no favors of anyone. \A'hen spring came and the snow disappeared, the back yard and the front yard were both filled with the heads, pelts, running apparatus and general anatomy of those rabbits, and when the time came to clean up the yards and remove the rubbish, it made a whole wagon-load.

Two men, who had just imported themselves into the county, wintered in a little cabin half a mile south of my mill that same winter on Section 26. I furnished them with a little salt occasionally, but aside from that they, too, lived entirely on rabbits. They killed more than 100 during the month of February. After all this slaughter there were still rabbits left in the spring.

One day, after the snow had gone, I was looking around among my saw-logs at the mill, when I saw a ral)bit bounding down one of the roads leading through the log yard, comingstraight towards me on a fast run, with a mink close at its heels. I supposed the rabbit would be as badly scared at me as he was at the mink, but instead of that he ran right in between niy feet and stopped there, his heart beating like a trip-hammer. The mink then sneaked ofT towards the river, while the ral)bit turned around and gazed at the mink for several minutes. I did not offer to disturb him, but let him sit until he was ready to leave. Finally he hopped leisurely away, and the last I saw of him, he was mounted on a saw-log, standing erect on his hind feet, taking observations. Mrs. AVilcox had fed and petted some of the rabbits around the mill that winter, but they never became very tame. They were fond of bread crusts, but would not eat soft bread.

1 never was much of a rabbit hunter myself, but on one occasion when out hunting with a dog, he ran an animal, that I could see from its tracks was a rabbit, into a hollow tree about two feet in diameter. The tree was standino-, Ijtit the rabbit had gone up the hollow in the inside, out of reach. I then cut a pole about four feet long and nearly an inch thick, split the small end up for the distance of about a foot, and then ran the split end up the hollow tree. I could feel something alive up there, and placing the end of the pole against the rabbit, gave it a gentle twist which wound the split end of the pole into the rabbit's hide, so that it was glad to let go and come down, the stick still retaining its grip on the rabbit. Thinking there must be another, I ran the pole up the tree again, and twisted down another rabbit the same way. Trying my luck the third time, I soon tangled my split pole up in the fur of another rabbit. He held on long and hard, but the stick held its grip and I pulled him out also.

In the winter of 1905 and 1906. they were very numerous in the vicinity of Pine Point. William D. Aspinwall, who runs a store at that place says, that several times during that winter he and Peter Parker and Buddise went rabbit hunting, and they almost invariably killed and brought home two or three sacks full. Frequently, the three of them killed over 100 in a single dav.

There are not many cottontail rabbits in Becker County. I never saw or heard of any here, until five or six years ago, and have never seen but two or three in Becker County, although they are quite plentiful in some parts of Otter Tail County.

The cottontail is a true rabbit, as it never changes its color, whereas those animals of this family that turn white in the winter are nothing more or less than hares, although usually called rabbits.

The cottontail is a little smaller than our native hare, and they are very numerous in some of the states farther south, where they are a positive nuisance, being very destructive to fruit trees and gardens.

The cottontail lives almost exclusively in and around cultivated fields, while the native hare of our county makes its home in the seclusion of the forests.

The cottontail rabbits have been working slowly north, towards Becker County for several years, but I think they are making a great mistake in coming to this cold country, with nothing to wear but their summer clothing, for we have a breed of rabbits here, already acclimated, and abundantly supplied with clothing suitable for both winter and summer, and wdiich are a much superior breed to the cottontails, and far less destructive to gardens and orchards.

The beaver formerly inhabited Becker County in immense numbers, but by the time the first settlement was made in the county they had been almost exterminated. In the spring of 1872 I saw two beavers that had just been caught in the Bufifalo River, in the western part of the county, by a French half-breed, whose name was Antoine Cariljeau and an occasional beaver skin was picked up by fur buyers for several years afterwards. The timbered portions of Becker County were formerly favorite resorts for the beaver. On the smaller streams and ravines and natural drains, throughout the forests of the county, the remains of their old dams are still existing by the hundred. For several years I was lumbering in the vicinity of the Otter Tail River, and had occasion to open up at different times more than 100 miles of logging roads. These were generally located along the channels of the small water courses leading to the Otter Tail River, or to the lakes through which it flows. These water courses were invariably obstructed by beaver dams at distances varying from fifteen to fifty rods apart, according to the amount of fall in the channel. The dams were just far enough apart, so that when they were full of water it would reach from one dam to the other. On some of my roads the greatest part of the work to be done was grading through these dams. The best of material for the construction of such dams was everywhere abundant. The soft mud, and the soft wood trees, such as the balm of Gilead and the willow, the alder and the aspen were in great abundance in the very localities where most needed. A splendid specimen of an old beaver dam is located on the little creek which crosses the river road, one mile north of the residence of Samuel Pearce. This dam is a few rods below where the road crosses the creek in Section 36, Town of Erie.

The beaver, however, frequently manages to get along without any dam at all. On streams the size of the Otter Tail River, and larger, where the current is slow and the water deep, they frequently burrow in the banks of the stream. The entrance to their habitation is always under water, but as they dig their way into the bank, they always work upwards, establishing their place of abode about a foot above the level of the stream.

Wherever the nature of the ground will not admit of such a dwelling" place, they always build a dam, and in the pond above the dam they always build one or more houses or lodges, as it may more properly be called, the entrance to which is always under water. This is undoubtedly to afiford protection against wolves and other wild animals.

My own personal experience with the bea\er has been outside of Becker County, but they will illustrate the habits and peculiarities of the beaver better than I can give them otherwise.

In the winter of 1862-3, I cut into a beaver's house that stood in a pond, made by a beaver dam built across a stream about the size of the Buffalo River in the town of Cuba. The house was built in about four feet of water, and stood the same distance above the water. The pond was covered with ice, three or four inches thick, clear and transparent. As I began to chop into the wall of the house, three beavers plunged out and into the water under the ice and disappeared. It took almost an hour to chop through to the interior with a sharp ax, because the framework was a complete netting of willow saplings, half an inch in diameter, filled in with mud, and the whole mass was at that time frozen solid. It would have been impossible for a wolf or any other animal to dig through that structure at any season of the year. The walls of the house were at least one foot thick, the interior was four feet long and three feet wide, with a partition through the middle. There was a hole through the partition, just large enough for a beaver to pass through. The interior was lined with dried grass leaves, and was very comfortable, and clean enough for a person to live in. The floor under the grass was a foot above the water, smooth and hard, and although it was zero weather, the interior of the house was warm from the natural heat of their bodies. On one side of the partition was a storehouse filled with provisions, which consisted of willow sprouts about one-third of an inch in diameter and two feet long, the bark of which is their principal food. In the other room was a quantity of these sprouts with the bark already gnawed off, ready to be dumped into the water before bed-time.

Beaver dams are usually from four to five feet high, and are built of brush cut in the summer when in full leaf, interwoven with sticks from four to six feet longf and from one to six inches in diameter. All of these are filled in with mud as fast as they are laid. It is astonishing to see what these animals will accompHsh in the way of felling trees, some of which are two feet in diameter. The only use they make of trees of this size, however, is to cut off the branches to use in the construction of their dams.

In the summer of 1863, some beavers commenced to build a dam across a creek only a few rods below my cabin. I could hear them at work every night, and on several occasions, when there was a good moon, I crawled down through the brush and sat for an hour at a time watching them at work. There appeared to be four in the colony, and they always worked in pairs. One beaver was engaged altogether in cutting down trees. The trees were all small ; willow, alder and choke-cherry. He would once in a while commence on a choke-cherry, but after giving it two or three bites, would make a wry face and leave it and commence on a willow or alder. His mate floated the sticks and brush to the dam and laid them in their places. The other pair were engaged in filling in the brush and woodwork with mud. Their work was progressing slowly but surely, until the middle of July, when they were overtaken with a dreadful disaster. Twelve of us had been at work for ten weeks on a dam, a mile above, and when we had raised the water to a height of eighteen feet, the dam broke away, causing an immense flood, which tore out one end of the beaver dam, so that it was swung around and lodged against the bank of the creek, but it did not wash away. During the flood, these beavers swam around and around in the deep water, diving occasionally and slapping the water with their tails as they went down, as if trying to show their disgust with the fools who had made them so much trouble.

Slapping the water with the tail when they dive, is a peculiar trait of the beaver. In October, 1862, a man by the name of Howe and myself were camping on the banks of a river where there was not a white person living within fifty miles in either direction. The river was one hundred feet wide at this place, with four or five feet of water, a moderate current and alluvial banks, five or six feet high, which showed every indication of being honeycombed with beaver dens. After sitting around our campfire until nine o'clock, we took a final look at our horses and then went to bed. As soon as everything had become quiet, we heard a chug in the water, somethino- like the noise that a stone the size of a man's fist would make when thrown in. This was soon followed by another chug-, and then another, and another until it seemed as though a whole shower of rocks was being rained into the river. My companion was now thoroughly frightened, and declared his belief that a hundred Indians were on the opposite side of the river, throwing stones at us. We got up and went down to the river bank and the noise ceased instantly, but we had no sooner retired again than the noise was livelier than ever. Howe now seized his saddle and started for his horse, with the avowed intention of leaving the place. I told him I was sure the noise was made by beavers, but he was as sure the noise came from Indians. I told him I had three horses to lose to his one, and that, rather than leave in the dark, I would sit up and guard the horses, to which he finally agreed. I watched about an hour, h\ which time Howe was snoring" sound- 1\' and the moon had arisen, but the noise in the river had not abated one particle. I then crawded on my hands and knees through the tall grass to the river bank, where I had an excellent view of what was going on. The whole surface of the river was in a turmoil. The beavers were swimming around and diving almost evervwhere. I counted at one time thirteen above the water, and it is certain there were forty or fifty within two hundred feet of where I lay.

In the month of December, 1863, I was camped with four companions on the right bank of the Missouri River, close to where the village of Townsend in Montana is now located. Just before dark one night, I went to the river bank after a pail of water. During the day a small ice gorge had formed several feet high, but the water had mostly settled away through the ice. so that I was obliged to walk some distance over the icedrift to get the water.

When about a rod from the shore, I heard a peculiar sound, as if something was being smothered in the ice under my feet. I began to dig into the crushed ice and soon came to a live beaver, but before releasing him altogether, called to my companions, who came out and one of them brought a revolver. Betwixt my digging and that of the beaver, the ice gorge began to give way, but the men all joined hands with me and with each other, and the last man caught Ik Id of a tree on the shore. By the time the man came wdth a revolver, the ice began to move inider our feet, Init we shot the licaver and released him from the ice. By this time, the ice gorge was rapidly going, l^ut I hung" on to the beaver and the string of men that reached to the tree hung to me, and we were soon pulled safely on shore. We ate the beaver for supper that night. Beaver tails are very delicious to the taste, like pigs' feet, only there is much more of them. A beaver tail is about a foot long and some of them are four inches wide, while others are only about three inches wide. A beaver with a broad, flat tail always has dull inferior teeth, and vice versa, a beaver with strong, sharp teeth has a narrow tail, so you will see that some of them are made for wood cutters and others are made for handling mortar and mud.

The length of a beaver, head and body included, is about two feet. The beaver belongs to the family of rodents, their adzshaped teeth resembling those of the rat or the squirrel. The hind feet are very large and broad and are as completely webbed as those of a goose. A fair-sized beaver will weigh about thirty or thirty-five pounds, gross weight.

There is at this time, 1905, a colony of beavers in the northeastern part of Becker County, according to the following report, by James Nunn, of Ponsford :

Nov. 25th, 1905. A year ago last summer it was reported at Ponsford, that beavers were working on Indian Creek, in the town of Two Inlets, and out of curiosity, I visited the locality and found a small dam. recently built across the stream, just below the bridge on the Ponsford and Boot Lake road, which had raised the water about eighteen inches, which satisfied me that a colony of beavers had located there. Last summer they extended their operations and built another, and a larger dam, above the bridge, which raised the water about two feet at that point. The trees used in the construction of these dams were from one to six inches in diameter, being as large as any that grew just there.

Savannah

June 5th. 1906. The beavers are at work again on the Dinner Creek dam. It is becoming a serious problem as to whether the beaver had best be trapped, the (lam blown ont, or the game and fish commission pay for the flowage. They work in a very wary manner and the person who gets sight of them must be skillful and patient. This family is supposed to be a part of flie state park tribe and we are loth to destroy them. - Detroit Record.

There are but few farms, or but few quarter sections of land in the country, that have not within their borders one or more "rat" ponds or lakes, or are in close proximity to them, some localities in the Shell Prairie country, alone, excepted.

One of the dreams and hopes of the boy of ordinary ambition is to become a trapper and a hunter, and where is the boy born and reared in Becker County who has not had the opportunity to realize those dreams? As a general thing" they have had a chance to trap muskrats to their heart's content, provided, of course, that they could procure the traps, and many an honest dollar they have earned that way. On more than one occassion, also, the rats have been a godsend to a large part of the population, particularly in 1872-73-74-75 when the grasshoppers were devastating" the country, as I have related in another article.

Nearly everybody knows as much about these animals as I do, as to how they live both in the water and out, and how they build their houses, and obtain their food at the bottom of ponds and lakes. They always breed and rear their young on dry land. In the winter and spring of 1890, I had a lot of railroad ties piled u]) at dififerent places on the shores of Height of Land Lake. In the spring, when removing one of these piles of ties into the lake, preparatory to floating them down the river, we found a mtiskrat nest under the ties. There were five yoimg rats in the nest, al^out the size of chipmunks, and I gathered up a handful, four I think, and ptit them into the pocket of my rubber raincoat and buttoned them in. I then went up to the house of Mr. Simon ^^^aite, where I was boarding, and began to take the rats out of my pocket to show them to the old lady. By this time however, the youngsters were not so docile as thev were when 1 picked them up, for as soon as I put iii}' hand in my pocket, the young rascals grabbed me by the fingers with their teeth and hung on for dear life. I pulled ni}- hand out with rats lianging to three fingers and a thumb, and I could not shake them ofif, but they kept on biting. Finally with the assistance of Airs. AA^aite, I chocked the little villains, one at a time, until they let go. I then told her she might ha\'e the rats for ])ets, but she fired them out of the house and told me I ought to have known l)ettcr than to have had an}'thing to do with them. A\'ith the exception of shooting a few, this is all the experience I ever had with muskrats.

The porcupine is occasionally found in Becker County. It is a good, solid, plump animal, a little larger than a raccoon, and will measure about three feet long from tip to tip, of which the tail is about six inches. They do not belong to the same natural famil\- as the raccoon, skunk, badger, opossum and the bear, but, rather, are allied to the squirrel and the woodchuck, the muskrat and the beaver ; having teeth of the rodent or adz-shaped order for gnawing hard, tough substances. It is an easy matter in the woods to determine when you are in the vicinity of porcupines, especially in the winter, for they will take the bark slick and clean from the tops and upper limbs of trees down, half way to the ground. They generally select maple and poplar or tamarack, taking trees from fifteen to thirtv feet high. Most people know what the quills of the porcupine are like. About three inches in length with very sharp points, with barbs of a fine texture pointing backwards, that permit the quills to work inwards, but they are extremely difificult to extricate.

When 1 lived on my homestead at ( )ak Lake, in Detroit Township, my dog tackled a porcupine one day and got decidedly the worst of it. He came home with his mouth full of quills, some of them were run through his tongue, others were run through his nose and the ends were sticking out on each side, and some were stuck completely through his under jaw. He was a large, powerful Xewfoundland dog, and was decidedly opposed to allowing me to meddle with the quills. 1 finally got him down on his back and pinned him down by running a pitchfork into the ground with the tines astraddle his neck, in which position he w^as held while I extracted the quills with a pair of pincers.

I have had cattle that had taken a fancy to smell of a hedgehog, and would come home with six or eight quills sticking more than half their length in the pad of their nose. These too had to be pulled out with pincers.

The porcupine is clad, in addition to his quills, with a short, thin growth of hair, much shorter than the quills in the summer, but in winter the quills are outgrown with a luxuriant growth of long black hair, somewhat on the furry order, that completely hides the quills. It is a mistaken idea that porcupines can throw their quills, particularly those of the body. It is possible that by giving the proper shake to the tail, a few quills growing on that appendage might be thrown for a distance of a foot or two, at the season of the year when they are shedding heir quills.

They are expert climbers, and they invariably live in hollow trees. Many a time I have tracked them to a hollow tree when a boy, on a thawing day, in the winter, and would cut the tree down and drive them up some other tree that had no hole for them to get into, and then shoot them on i)urpose to see them fall and tumble to the ground.

In the summer of 1893, I was looking over Section i. Town of Grand Park, with a view to cutting off the pine timber the ensuing winter. I was traveling along the road cut out for hauling hay, when I came across a porcupine that was traveling along the road in the same way that I was going. He was quite tame, in fact a little too tame to suit my fancy, but I did not wish to kill him, as I felt interested in seeing all such harmless animals thrive in the country. At the same time, he was so tame and friendly that I was not inclined to go off and leave him. I drove him along the trail ahead of me for awhile guiding him with a pole. He finally got so that he wanted to keep close to me, but he went too slow, and I did not fancy his quills, so I went off and left him.

This animal is quite common in Becker County. In some parts of the United States it is called the ground-hog. It is a burrowing animal, digging its own hole and hibernating during the winter and coming out fat in the spring. This is a coarsehaired animal, having no fur in its covering to tempt the trapper, but is sometimes caught for its hide, of which whip lashes are made of a superior quality. A single hide will make a good lash six feet in length. Nearly everybody in Becker County has seen a woodchuck either here or in some other part of the United States. A full grown animal is twenty inches or more in length, of which the tail is four or five inches. They are usually of a brown color, but occasionally one is found of a jet black. In western New York, where they are much more numerous than here, about one in every twenty or thirty is black. I once found a woodchuck on Section 26, in Lake V^iew Township, as black as a coal. It ran into the hollow of a standing oak tree, and I fastened it in by blocking up the entrance with chunks of wood and limbs of trees, intending to take it home with me when I came back, but I did not come back that way. The woodchuck is a poor climber, and is never known to go far up a tree, but can easily climb a fence or a wood-pile.

For many years after Becker County began to settle up, we congratulated ourselves over the fact that we had, as we believed, made our everlasting escape from those pests of the barn and farm house, that had made life a burden during our younger days in some of the older states.

We were free to admit that our lot had been cast in a cold country, in a country where winter reigned supreme five months in the vear, more or less, but we felt that we had left behind us enough that was disagreeable and annoying, to offset the discomforts or our winter chmate to a great extent and in various ways. The ground was covered with snow in the winter which afforded us good sleighing on which to do the heavy work, instead of being obliged to plod around in the mud. The extreme cold killed all the malaria in the air and the water, so that we were not subject to fevers or chills, it also killed the germs of the little bug or worm that invariably infected the peas and sometimes the beans, making them wormy in the states farther south, and last but not least, we had left the old gray rat so far behind us that he could never overtake us during our lifetime, and if he did, he could never withstand the rigors of our northern climate, but would invariably perish during the first winter season.

But woe to our dreams of fancied security and delight ; it is true that we enjoyed twenty-five years of immunity from their annoyance, but an evil day finally dawned upon us. Our fond hopes proved after all to be but empty dreams, for slowly but surely the rats have been on our trail during all these long years, following us up with an unerring instinct and have overtaken us at last.

A\'hen they first put in an appearance in the county it is difficult to say, but the first time I remember seeing them was about the year 1897. They were quite numerous and aggressive around Frazee about that time. How they came, whether by rail, by wagon or on foot, is a matter of uncertainty ; we only know they came. They do not appear quite so numerous in 1905, as they were at first. It has been intimated that the extremely cold winter of 1903 and 1904 reduced them to some extent.

An ordinary barn rat is about eight inches in length, exclusive of the tail, which is six inches long and about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and entirely naked. Their color is a dark blue when young, but they become gray with age.

In some of the older states, fifty or sixty years ago, manv of the barns were literally overrun with rats. We killed scores of them every year, but they did not appear to get anv less in numl^ers. They may have found some way by which they have been able to diminish their numbers since, but if they have, I never heard of it. My father had a barn thirty by forty feet in extent, and in one corner of the barn was a granary about twelve feet square, which he kept well filled with wheat and oats during the winter season. The rats would gnaw a hole into this granary every winter and help themselves to the grain. During the winter of 1849-50 they became unusually numerous and troublesome, and my brother, C. P. Wilcox and myself decided to make war on this community of rats. We accordingly provided ourselves with a lantern, and each armed with a club we proceeded to the barn about nine o'clock one evening. They had gnawed a hole through a corner of the granary door at the top, and the noise from the inside denoted considerable activity among the animals within.

We quietly opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door behind us as quicklv as possible and plugged up the hole in the door. We then went after the rats with our clubs, hitting them right and left with telling effect. There must have been about forty of them in that little room and when they found their onl\- avenue of escape was cut off, they became desperate and began to show fight. They came at us half a dozen at a time, and after being bitten several times we were glad to open the door and get out. We killed fourteen rats that evening and about as many more the two nights following. After that they would invariably make a rush for the door as soon as it was opened and rush out.

They burrowed in tlie hay-mow during the winter months. cutting tunnels through the solid hay. twenty or more feet in length, with chambers leading in various directions, insuring warm and comfortable quarters for themselves during the winter.

I am not aware that there were any black or gray squirrels in Becker Count}- before the coming of the white settlers. I believe that zoologists have decided that the gray and black squirrels are one and the same species, but I am hardly reconciled to the theory.

According to the best of my knowledge, they have been coming to Becker County in about equal numbers, the first coming about 1878. Unfortunately, however, they manage to get killed off about as fast as they come, so I am afraid they will never become very numerous.

These squirrels are certainly very interesting and beautiful animals, and it is a pity, they cannot be let alone a few years, and given a chance to get a foothold in the county.

Fifty years ago black squirrels were very plentiful in Western New York, and there would usually be about twenty black squirrels to one gray one. During those same times, in Ohio, the conditions were reversed, and there would be about twenty gray squirrels to one black one, while in Michigan they were about equally divided.

Once in Western New York when they were very abundant, I saw a black squirrel, a grey squirrel and a white squirrel, all up in the same tree and they were all about the same size. It was the only white squirrel I ever saw or heard of. I could easily have killed it, but only tried to catch it alive and failed. As would naturally be supposed, it was a shining mark for the men and boys with guns in the neighborhood, and was shot a day or two after I saw it.

Occasionally there would be a year when squirrels would pass through those states in large numbers. They never appeared to be in a hurry and generally would linger through the entire season. They would climb the houses, the barns, the shade trees in the dooryards and along the highways, and the fruit trees in the orchards. They were killed by both men and boys in large numbers, and thev were considered the best eating of any game in the country.

There was some excuse for killing squirrels, for they were a pest in early times, being great thieves of seed corn and green corn. More than a dozen different varieties were indigenous to the United States, but the best known was the common gray or migratory squirrel. It was called migratory on account of the long journeys it sometimes made. Occasionally, for reasons of their own, probably in search of food, these squirrels used to migrate from one part of the country to another in great numbers. Once started on one of these migrations, neither mountains nor rivers could stop them, and they devoured ever3'thing eatable that came in their wav.