"Muskrat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not so fortunate when they fell a second time into the hands of the Hurons, who had secretly gained possession of 'Muskrat Castle,' as Hutter's house had been called. This 'castle' stood in the open lake, at a quarter of a mile from the nearest shore. There was no island, but the house stood on piles, with the water flowing beneath it. The lake ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... at least a single victim. There were muskrats along the banks and there was a great beaver, which was not abundant, and which was a mighty creature of his kind. Of muskrats the boys speared many—and roasted muskrat is so good that it is eaten by the Indians and some of the white hunters in Canada to-day—but the big beaver they did not succeed in capturing at this stage of their career. Once they saw a seal, which had come up the river from the sea, and pursued it, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... murmuri. Muscat wine muskatvino. Muscle muskolo. Muscular muskola. Muse muzo. Muse revi. Museum muzeo. Mushroom fungo. Music muziko. Musical muzika. Musician muzikisto. Music (to play) muziki. Muskrat miogalo. Musket pafilo. Muslin muslino. Mussel mitulo. Must (verb) devas. Must mosto. Mustard mustardo. Mustard plant sinapo. Mustard-plaster sinapa kataplasmo. Muster kunvenigi. Musty malfresxa. Mutation sxangxado. Mute muta. Mute ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that she had not a drop of Indian blood running in her veins, he looked very solemn. At last he spoke. He told the interpreter to tell her,—for he spoke but a few words of English,—that the Great Spirit made a snake, a snake; a fox, a fox; a muskrat, a muskrat; a coon, a coon; a bear, a bear; an Indian, an Indian; a White Indian, a White Indian. Each must be snake, fox, coon, bear, Indian or White Indian, as long as he lived. Each must ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... a memento of the feast hanging up at the top of the kitchenward door—a pair of roughly-forged, rusty handcuffs amalgamated into one pair of jaws, like a muskrat trap. What was the use of that thing, conductor? "That sir, they put the 'ands in of them as shirked and didn't drink up all the wine as was poured into their cups, and there they made them stand on tiptoe up against that door, sir, before all the company, sir, until they was ashamed of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... all settled!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, one day, as he hopped up the steps of his hollow stump bungalow where Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady housekeeper, was fanning herself with a cabbage leaf tied to her tail. "It's ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... circumference of forty miles then he set his traps, for the beaver, the mink, the fox, the fisher, the muskrat, and the other fur-bearing animals of the north. At regular intervals he visited these traps one after the other, crunching swiftly along on his snow-shoes. Jim always accompanied him. When the snow was deep, he wallowed ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... the troll in Mountaineer Lake, but caught nothing. Apparently there was nothing there but trout, of which fish I caught eight at the inlet. I shot with my pistol a muskrat that was swimming in the lake, but George did not cook it, as he said the flesh would be too strong at that season. It was raining again and the mosquitoes were out in millions, but with three geese still on hand and a good lake ahead we were indifferent to such troubles as that, although our ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... ebbs and flows, and not even there in such quantities. One might gather barrels and barrels of them, large and apparently fat, and yet there would be hundreds or thousands of barrels left. The mink, the muskrat, and other animals that hunt along the water, and have a taste for fish, have a good time of it among them, for we saw bushels of shells in places where the fish ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Baniya[FN87] (trader), Hiranyadatt, had a daughter, whose name was Madansena Sundari, the beautiful army of Cupid. Her face was like the moon; her hair like the clouds; her eyes like those of a muskrat; her eyebrows like a bent bow; her nose like a parrot's bill; her neck like that of a dove; her teeth like pomegranate grains; the red colour of her lips like that of a gourd; her waist lithe and bending like ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... you take half dozen or so, and let me get the others when I come back—I'll pile them up on this muskrat house here, and pick them up after I have left you at the steamer. You see," continued he, "my people live about two miles on the other side of the town, closer to the Hudson Bay post. I must go back and get acquainted ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... newest construction, Made by the best makers in London, which he will sell on reasonable terms. He gives Cash for all kinds of FURS: And has for sale a quantity of Canada Beaver, and Beaver Coating, Racoon Skins, and Racoon Blankets, Muskrat Skins, &c. &c. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... so much kindness of heart as respect for his own dignity which made Viggo refrain from calling Marcus a "Muskrat" or a "Smelling-Bottle." And yet Marcus regarded this gracious forbearance on his part as the mark of a noble soul. He had been compelled to accept these offensive nicknames, and, finding rebellion vain, he had finally ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey." (2) According to Lewis Morgan, the North American Indians of various tribes had for totems the wolf, bear, beaver, turtle, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey, muskrat; pike, catfish, carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare, rabbit, snake; reed-grass, sand, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... unscrupulous way, and there seems no means of stopping it under the present law. We saw scarcely a fox track in the country, though a few years ago they were exceedingly plentiful all over the foot-hills of the great range. Mink, marten, and muskrat were seen from time to time swimming in the river; a couple of yearling moose started from the bank where they had been drinking as we noiselessly turned a bend; brilliant kingfishers flitted across the water. So down these rivers we drifted, sometimes in sunshine, sometimes ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... should get a muskrat skin and wear it over their lungs with the fur side next to the body. It ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... his kingly demeanor. The great blue heron, like a French sentinel on duty along the muddy Meuse, awaits in silence any hostile demonstrations from those green-coated Boches among their camouflaged fortresses of spatterdocks and lily pads. The muskrat goes scouring the water, searching for booty near the river's bank or submerges like a submarine when discovered by a noisy convoy of Senegalese boys on the bank. A wily weasel, no doubt considered by those cliff-dwellers, the kingfishers, as one of the "Ladies from ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Sunday, a day later, when Susie came into the living-room and noticed her mother sewing muskrat around the top of a moccasin. It was a man's moccasin. The woman had made no men's moccasins since her husband's death. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... all around, Billy Bunny knocked on the door of the little stone house and in a few minutes it was opened by a nice lady muskrat, whose ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... off its eggs into the water, where it can cope with any enemy. The nests are nearly always concealed under the overhanging bushes that line the shore; the one shown in the full page illustration, however, was located upon the top of an old muskrat house. The two eggs which they lay are a very dark greenish brown in color, with black spots. Size 3.50 x 2.25. Data.—Lake Sunapee, N. H., June 28, 1895. Nest placed under the bushes at the waters edge. Made ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... efficient canoe paddle. On impulse Val shouted after him, but he never turned. A rifle lay across his knees and there were some rusty traps in the bottom of the flimsy canoe. Then Val remembered that Pirate's Haven lay upon the fringe of the muskrat swamps where Cajun and American squatters still carried on the fur trade ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... in the lake over yonder, and coming this way, too!" exclaimed Felix "Can it be a muskrat, Tom, do you think, swimming on top of ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... "Peter, you will be the death of me. Why, down in the Sunny South, where I spent the winter, you have a cousin who is more closely related to you than Jumper the Hare. And what is more, he is almost as fond of the water as Jerry Muskrat. He was called the Marsh Rabbit or Marsh Hare, and many a time I have watched him swimming about by ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... had noticed that Johnny Chuck had dug his house deeper than usual and had stuffed himself until he was fatter than ever before. He had noticed that Jerry Muskrat was making the walls of his house thicker than in other years, and that Paddy the Beaver was doing the same thing to his house. You know there is very little that escapes the sharp eyes ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... angular point and flat. the fore feet each have four toes, the hinder ones five unconnected with a web and destitute of tallons. it's tail was reather longer than the body, and in form like that of the muskrat, first riseing in an arch higher than the back, and decending lower than the body at the extremety, and flated perpindicularly. the belly and under part of the neck and head were of a Brick red every other part of the colour ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Tom's human natur', it is not much like other men's human natur', but more like a muskrat's human natar', seeing that he takes more to the ways of that animal than to the ways of any other fellow-creatur'. Some think he was a free liver on the salt water, in his youth, and a companion of a sartain Kidd, who was hanged for piracy, long afore you and I were born or acquainted, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a trapper would not get enough mink, otter, fox, or even muskrat skins to buy his tobacco in a season. Why, these little varmints are just chain lightning when it comes to cleverness, and they can sometimes outwit the smartest old trapper who ever drew breath. There are a thousand secrets connected with the business, and no one man carries them all. Many ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... attack a man; when they are trapped, wounded, or cornered—just as a muskrat will; but of all the wolf stories I have ever heard, in which wolves killed a man, the following is the only one I have any reason to believe, as it was told me first-hand by a gentleman whose word I honour, and whose unusual knowledge of animal life and northern travel ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... furs were mink, coon, muskrat, wildcat, and beaver. Besides this the stores advertised that they would take for their articles cash, beeswax, and country produce or tallow, hogs' lard in white walnut kegs, butter, pork, new feathers, good horses, and also corn, rye, oats, flax, and "old Congress money," the old Congress ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something. Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way. We're the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their period. Come ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Month the Agents would crawl into the Presence of the Grandson of the mighty Muskrat Hunter and dump before him a Wagon- load of Paper Money which had been snatched away from the struggling Shop-Keepers, who, in turn, had wheedled it from the people who paid a Nickel apiece for Sunday Papers so as to look at the Pictures of the Decorations in the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... time, while he swam as fast as ever he could with his head under water as he had seen his cousin, Mr. Otter, swim. The more he did this, the longer he could hold his breath. After a while he found that because he was slim and trim and moved so fast, he could out-swim Mr. Muskrat, and this made him feel very good indeed, for Mr. Muskrat spent nearly all his time in the water and was accounted a very good swimmer. There was only one thing that bothered Mr. Mink. The water was so dreadfully ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... good-sized muskrat, as they saw him clinging to the wet, mossy stones, meowing pitifully. He was either too frightened or too cold to make any effort to climb up. Perhaps he could not have done so anyway. Cricket lowered ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... beasts, birds, and fish. He observed the squirrels garnering their winter supply in the fall. He watched the shrewd pocket gopher as it came up and deposited the contents of its cheek pockets upon the pile of fresh dirt beside his hole. He learned how to trap the muskrat, and woe to the raccoon that was discovered stealing the corn, for it was tracked and treed even at midnight. The boy's eyes occasionally caught sight of a red fox or of a deer; and the call of the dove, the drum of the pheasant, the welcome "whip-poor-will" ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... out there," replied the man, pointing toward mid-channel. "I was driftin' along when I seen a muskrat in the reeds on t'other shore. I stood up to reach the gun, an' just as I got holt of it my foot slipped on a wet board, an' down I come. The weapon went overboard, an' that was the end of it. It riles me bad, 'cause that gun belonged to my ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... it, then!" said Mr. Frog. "My time is valuable, you know. I ought to be back in my shop this moment; for I promised Paddy Muskrat I'd make him a policeman's uniform by to-morrow morning. And I haven't begun ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... after game in the woods, where they would have been exposed to the ambuscades of the Iroquois, the friendly Indians brought to market the bear, the elk, the deer, the buffalo, the caribou, the beaver and the muskrat. On fast days the Canadians did not lack for fish; eels were sold at five francs a hundred, and in June, 1649, more than three hundred sturgeons were caught at Montreal within a fortnight. The shad, the pike, the wall-eyed pike, the carp, the brill, the maskinonge were plentiful, and there ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... offered us charming surprises. Sometimes a muskrat swam hastily in a pointed furrow of ripple; vanishing wings, barely sensed in the flash, left us staring; stealthy withdrawals of creatures, whose presence we realized only in the fact of those withdrawals, snared our eager interest; porcupines ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... unenlivened by any particular incident. We had left behind us the heavy timber, and again travelled through the "oak openings." Not an animal was started during the whole day, and the only one seen was a muskrat that took to the water of a small creek and escaped. This occurred at the spot where we had halted for our night-camp, and after the tents were pitched, several of the party went "rat-hunting." The burrow of a family of these curious little animals was discovered in the bank, and an attempt ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... but not as currency. Other furs or Indian commodities, like maple sugar and wild rice, were bought in terms of beaver. As this animal grew scarcer the unit changed to money. By 1820, when few beaver were marketed in Wisconsin, the term plus stood for one dollar.[233] The muskrat skin was also used as the unit in the later days of the trade.[234] In the southern colonies the pound of deer skin had answered the purpose of ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... been seen by the colonists in their various expeditions were the stag, fallow deer, hart, black and grizzly bear, antelope, ahsahta or bighorn, beaver, sea and river otter, muskrat, fox, wolf, and panther, the latter extremely rare. The only domestic animals among the natives were ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... show them some more interesting things about following a trail," Smithy immediately replied; "how to tell what sort of little animal like a fox, a woodchuck, a mink, a muskrat or an otter had made the marks; what it was trying to do; and how it was captured by the men who make a business of collecting skins, or as they ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... round, brown animal hunched up on the bank eating a clam. It dived into the water at his approach, but it reappeared swimming farther on. Then, when it dived again, Yan saw by its long thin tail that it was a Muskrat, like the stuffed one he had ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 45.) He found these games among one hundred and thirty tribes belonging to thirty different linguistic stocks. Throughout this wide distribution the "dice" are not only of different forms but are made from a variety of materials: split-cane; wooden or bone staves or blocks; pottery; beaver or muskrat teeth; walnut shells; persimmon, peach or plum stones. All the "dice" of whatever kind have the two sides different in color, in marking, or in both. Those of the smaller type are tossed in a basket or bowl. Those that are like long sticks, similar to arrow shafts, from which they ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... present there, but the forest was filled with inhabitants, and hundreds of eyes regarded the red youth with the bow, and the white youth with the rifle, as they passed among the trees. Rabbits looked at them from small red eyes. A muskrat, at a brook's edge, gazed a moment and then dived from sight. A chipmunk cocked up his ears, listened ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Their old stocks still remain. He culled the graceful elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and so refined and smoothed his village plot. He rudely bridged the stream, and drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, muskrat, and with the whetting of his scythe scared off the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with his grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion and the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling his English ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... "Animal homes" which appeal especially to the child's mind are the hen and chickens, the downy eider ducks, the family of red foxes, and the home of the muskrat. "Color in nature" is effectively illustrated by grouping together certain tropical fishes, minerals, shells, insects, and birds in such a manner as to bring out vivid red, yellow, blue, and green colors. Here and elsewhere in the museum are placed appropriate quotations ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Grandfather Frog asked what the matter was. Little Joe wouldn't tell, but Billy Mink told the whole story. When he told how Buster had been too smart for Little Joe, it tickled him so that Billy had to laugh in spite of himself. So did Grandfather Frog. So did Jerry Muskrat, who had been listening. Of course this made Little Joe angrier than ever. He said a lot of unkind things about Buster Bear and about Billy Mink and Grandfather Frog and Jerry Muskrat, because they had laughed at the smartness ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... this stone he would find thirteen grains of moulding corn and some goat's hair. These he was to bring back with him. Under the first rail near the same gate Mercy would find: a dead frog with its eyes torn out, and across the road in the hollow of a stump Apollo was to look for a muskrat's tail and a weasel's paw. They went off reluctantly, the entire corps de plantation following, and soon they all came scampering back, trampling down the ox-eyed daisies and jamming each other against the corners of the rail fence, for, sure enough, the witch's treasures had been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... well remember their frequent and unheralded entries into our house, and their ready assumption of its privileges. I can see them yet—yes, and smell them, too. In some unventilated chamber of my rather capacious nostrils an abiding breath of that intense, all-conquering odor of fish, smoke and muskrat, which they brought with them, still survives. I well remember their impudent and sometimes bullying demeanor; and the horror of one occasion I shall never forget, when a stalwart Winnebago, armed with a knife, tomahawk and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the earliest mammals produced their young, we can only judge by the lowliest members of the group that live upon the earth to-day. The most primitive of these is the so-called Duckmole, of Australia. This little creature has habits not unlike those of the muskrat. It burrows in the bank of a stream, and makes a nest at the end of the burrow, where it lays its eggs. This is one of the very few warm-blooded, hair-covered animals which still lays eggs. A little higher in the scale stand the kangaroo ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... earth. "Assembling in grand conclave all the aquatic tribes he ordered them to bring up dirt from beneath the waters, and proclaimed death to the disobedient. The beaver and otter forfeited their lives. At last the muskrat went beneath the waters, and, after a long time appeared at the surface, nearly exhausted, with some dirt. From this, Unkthee fashioned the earth into a large circular plain. The earth being finished, he ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... and it ran in subdued voice, note by note, along the shore. The Harvester gripped the mattock and stood motionless. Wild things had taught him so many lessons he heeded their warnings instinctively. Perhaps it was a mink or muskrat approaching the rushes. Listening intently, he heard a stealthy step coming ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... before snow-fall! What fires we made, and the roaring and sweet-smelling! How dear the Indian lovers, and how brave in bear hunting! With teeth of the cinnamon and grizzly we made chains for our necks, and with breasts of waterfowl we made aprons. In streams we tracked beaver and muskrat, besides mink for our ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... of the door opening are rude benches of split logs. On the walls are stretched a coon and a small bear, squirrel and muskrat skins. In the foreground on the right is seen an old-fashioned wash pot set on three stones. Near the wash pot is fixed in the ground a pole, on the top of which are hung six gourds cut for martin swallows ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... was mad clear through, and yet he didn't know what to make of it. Were they just trying to make him mad, or had he really been screaming in his sleep? He flew over to the Smiling Pool. Jerry Muskrat looked up ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... upper country of South Carolina three or four men with their dogs could kill fourteen to twenty buffaloes in a single day." Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the hunter; wild turkeys filled every thicket; the watercourses teemed with beaver, otter, and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious fish. Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and the veracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro, amusingly records: "The wolves wh. are not like those in Germany, Poland and Lifland (because ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of the coyote and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... potatoes home to his own yard and buries them, for winter use. They dig a hole about four or five feet in diameter and one foot deep, in which they pack the potatoes and pile them up above ground in a conical heap about four feet high. So when done they look like a sort of overgrown muskrat's nest, or small wigwam.[71] Large families have in some cases seven or eight of these conical heaps in ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... of many a slaughtered varmint was nailed on its shingle, and the landing-place was carpeted with the fur. Doughnuts, ex-barkeepers, and civilization at one end of the lake, and here were muskrat-skins, trappers, and the primeval. Two hunters of moose, in default of their fern-horned, blubber-lipped game, had condescended to muskrat, and were making the lower end of Chesuncook ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... come and gone before Thompson finished his job at Porcupine Lake, some ninety-odd miles, as the crow flies, north of Fort Pachugan. The Porcupine was a marshy stretch of water, the home of muskrat and beaver, a paradise for waterfowl when the heavy hand of winter was lifted, a sheet of ice now, a white oval in the dusky green of the forest. Here the free trader had built a fair-sized structure of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... now," she said, as she opened the register and called the names of her own making. "Me hair is done like Miss Morrison's, all wadded out around me head, wid a row of muskrat houses up the back, the kind I can take off and comb on the palm o' me hand. I've got gold-fillin' in me teeth which just shows when I laugh wide, and I'll do it often, and I've got a watch wid a deer's head on it and me name on it, R. J. P. Watson, and I can talk like they do ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... entered the Irish Sea at night. Although it was moonlight and we could see for miles about us, every light on the ship, except the green and red port and starboard lanterns, was extinguished. As we sailed across the Irish Sea, silently and cautiously as a muskrat swims on a moonlight night, we received a wireless message that a submarine, operating off the mouth of the Mersey River, had sunk an English freighter. The captain was asked by the British Admiralty to stop the engines and await orders. Within an hour a patrol ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... in the chatter that kept pace with their movements. He realized that he had a serious proposition on his hands just then. If so experienced a man as that muskrat trapper could get lost in Black Water Swamps and stay lost for two whole days, it behooved a party of boys, unfamiliar with such surroundings to be very careful in all ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... in earnest, indeed I am," continued Sneak; "bekaise I hain't been inside of my house, now, for three or four days, and who knows but the dod—mean the—Indians have been there and stole all my muskrat skins?" ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Muskrat came. They were late, for the legs of Little Joe Otter are so short that he is a slow traveler on land, while Jerry Muskrat feels much more at home in the water ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... May sometimes; so we went to another place I knew where there was a tiger's den, and I loaded with tiger lily bullets, gave him the gun and showed him where to aim. After we had waited a long time out came a muskrat, and started for the river. I looked to see why Mr. Pryor didn't shoot, and there he was gazing at it as if a snake had charmed him; his hands shaking a little, his cheeks almost red, his ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... that Old Man Coyote meant what he said about our being friends, I'd start out this very minute to call on all my old friends. My, my, my, it seems an age since I visited the Smiling Pool and saw Grandfather Frog and Jerry Muskrat and Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter! Mr. Coyote sounded as if he really meant to leave me alone, but, but—well, perhaps he did mean it when he saw me sitting here safe among the brambles, but if I should meet him out in the ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... ponds in his route, as if by them was the place for wonders and miracles to happen. Once, while in advance of my companions, I saw, from a high rock, a commotion in the water near the shore, but on reaching the point found only the marks of musquash [Footnote: Musquash: muskrat.] degrees. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... before this opening. The cracks between the logs were filled with moss. Dry leaves served for a bed. It is thus that a couple of men, in a few hours will construct for themselves a temporary, but tolerably comfortable defense, from the inclemencies of the weather. The beaver, otter, muskrat and squirrel are scarcely their equals in dispatch in fabricating for themselves a covert from ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... same fear was clutching at the hearts of Bob White, hiding in the brown stubble; of Mrs. Grouse, squatting in the thickest bramble-tangle in the Green Forest; of Uncle Billy Possum and Bobby Coon in their hollow trees; of Jerry Muskrat in the Smiling Pool; of Happy Jack Squirrel, hiding in the tree tops; of Lightfoot the Deer, lying in the closest thicket he could find. It was even clutching at the hearts of Granny and Reddy Fox and of great, big Buster Bear. It seemed to Peter that ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... hours of daylight is a complicated labyrinth of tunnels. Ejection of refuse and soil from this retreat builds up the mound frequently referred to. These mounds are, as Bailey says, characteristic of the species, and are as unmistakable as muskrat houses or beaver dams, and as carefully planned and built for as definite a purpose—home and shelter. They are, furthermore, the most notable of all kangaroo rat dwelling places (Nelson, 1918, 400). They range in height from ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... illimitable expanse, and spied a loon. "Dive down, my brother," he said to him, "and fetch up some earth, so that I can make a new earth." The bird obeyed, but rose up to the surface a lifeless form. He then saw a muskrat. "Dive!" said he, "and if you succeed, you may hereafter live either on land or water, as you please; or I will give you a chain of beautiful little lakes, surrounded with rushes, to inhabit." He dove down, but floated up senseless. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... of Marie-Anne's forehead, and a half-smile trembled on her red lips. "Yes, there is betting. But those who are for you are offering next autumn's muskrat skins and frozen fish against lynx and fisher and marten. The odds are about thirty to one against ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... takes these to the store, and, after much travail and advice, exchanges them for winter supplies and gewgaws that strike his fancy. In this primitive way is wrought the gigantic trade that covers woman with fur, from queens with their ermine to the shop-girl with her scraggly muskrat ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew, The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay, The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, Peered from the doorway of his cell; The muskrat plied the mason's trade, And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; And from the shagbark overhead The grizzled squirrel ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the water with deep green shadow. Here, too, the rock-maple reared its verdant masses, the beech its glistening leaves and clean, smooth stem, and behind, stiff and sombre, rose the balsam-fir. Here in the tortuous channels the muskrat swam and plunged, and the splashing wild duck dived beneath the alders or among the red and matted roots of thirsty water willows. Aloft, the white-pine towered above a sea of verdure; old fir-trees, hoary and grim, shaggy with pendent ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a cause of the spread of tuberculosis is the change in clothing. The original native was clad in skins, which are the warmest clothing in the world. Moose hide or caribou hide garments, tanned and smoked, are impervious to the wind, and a parkee of muskrat or squirrel, or, as was not uncommon in the old days, of marten, or one of caribou tanned with the hair on, with boots of this last material, give all the warmth that exposure to the coldest weather requires. Nowadays fur garments of any sort are not usual amongst the natives. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... The author of "Wild Life Near Home" says that muskrats "will wash what they eat, whether washing is needed or not." If the coon washes his food only when it needs washing, and not in every individual instance, then the proceeding looks like an act of judgment; the same with the muskrat. But if they always wash their food, whether soiled or not, the act looks more like instinct or an inherited habit, the origin of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... there casting in silence. Once a splash in the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... a curtain of soft dusk which in the Green Forest became black. The little stars looked down from the sky and twinkled just to see their reflections twinkle back at them from the Smiling Pool. And there and all around it was perfect peace. Jerry Muskrat swam back and forth, making little silver lines on the surface of the Smiling Pool and squeaking contentedly, for it was the hour which he loves best. Little Friend the Song Sparrow had tucked his head under his wing and gone to sleep among the alders along the Laughing ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... but he never came out alive. The doctor had roast bear meat all that winter, and much bear's oil. He gave some of the oil to his younger brother. The boy took it in a measure. Going along the creek, he saw a Muskrat (Keuchus, Pass.). He said to the Muskrat, "If you can harden this oil for me, I will give you half." The Muskrat made it as hard as ice. The boy said, "If my brother comes and asks you to do this for him, do you keep it all." ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... down!" the Blackbird said. "Look at the blossoms overhead; Look at the lovely summer skies; Look at the bees and butterflies— Look up, old fellow! Why, bless your soul, You're looking down in a muskrat's hole!" But still, with his gurgling sob and choke, The Frog continued to ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... grassy islet, with a low, dome-shaped, stick-covered mound at one end of it. This, plainly, was a beaver house, the first he had ever seen. His delighted eyes, observing it at this distance, at once pronounced it immeasurably superior to the finest and most pretentious muskrat-house he had ever seen—a very palace, indeed, by comparison. Then, a little further up the pond, and apparently adjoining the shore, he made out another dome-shaped structure, broader and less conspicuous than the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts |
