"Muskrat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 painfully ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... buffalo-bull. From him proceed invisible influences. The Great Unkthee created the 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 took a ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... for the benefit of the college, taxed raw and tanned hides, dressed buckskin, skins of doe and elk, muskrat and raccoon. The construction of the new seat of learning was begun at Williamsburg. When it was completed and opened to students, it was named William and Mary. Its name and record shine fair in old ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... tells us in his delightful way of the fox, mink, skunk, weasel, porcupine, muskrat, and other wild creatures. There are fifteen colored illustrations reduced from Audubon's ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... ended yet," answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day the greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat have taken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past four years a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the average price for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for a rat-hide—many a boy in my time thought he was rich if he got ten cents. A buffalo robe averaged three dollars; a beaver ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... thou 'scape Our ambush on thy devil's racer, Caught here upon this marshy cape, Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall scrape, The sturgeon suck—Death thy embracer!" So ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... 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
... 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 boat approached and escorted ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the marshy arm of a small lake, whose surface was profusely dotted with conical muskrat houses which reared their brown domes above the broken rice-straw and ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... slip-knot, having the handle in easy reach, and when you come to a narrow, tortuous channel, where shrubs and weeds crowd you on both sides, take the double-blade inboard, use the pudding stick, and you can go almost anywhere that a muskrat can. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... 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 ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... 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
... knew that land, and he loved every acre of it, whether blue-grass, bear-grass, peavine, or pennyroyal, and he knew its history from Daniel Boone to the little Boones who still trapped skunk, mink, and muskrat, and shot squirrels in the hills with the same old-fashioned rifle, and he loved its people—his people—whether they wore silk and slippers, homespun and brogans, patent leathers and broadcloth, or cowhide ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Miller defined it in 1891, is the power "of a court to decide and pronounce a judgment and carry it into effect between persons and parties who bring a case before it for decision";[1] or in the words of the Court in Muskrat v. United States,[2] it is "the right to determine actual controversies arising between adverse litigants, duly instituted in courts of proper jurisdiction."[3] Although the terms "judicial power" and "jurisdiction" are frequently used interchangeably ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the Ottawa Indians is that the earth was found in the claws and jaws of a muskrat. It grew and grew upon the surface of the water, and the Great Spirit, who sat above watching its growth, sent out a wolf and told him to run around the earth and then return to him, that he might see how large the new island had become. Within a short time the wolf was back, so the Great Spirit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... called "Love's Lane." To the right was the swamp and marsh that afterwards became Union Square. Following the trail farther, the hardy voyager wandered over "hills and valleys, dales and fields," through a countryside where trout, mink, otter, and muskrat swam in the brooks and pools; brant, black duck, and yellow-leg splashed in the marshes and fox, rabbit, woodcock, and partridge found covert in the thicket. Here and there was a farm, but the city, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... it was clear and cool, and the boys set out to look at their beaver traps, of which three had been placed in position. To their delight, two of the traps held beavers; and to their astonishment, the third trap held a muskrat. ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... waited a little while longer, and afterwards he ordered the muskrat to go down; but the muskrat did not like the idea, for he had seen the beaver coming up lifeless. So he had to flatter him a little in order to induce him to go down, by telling him, "Now, muskrat, I know that thou art one of the best divers of all the animal creation; ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... 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 ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... there was no need of going back to the shack of the muskrat trapper again, while they were just half the ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... 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
... 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 coats in ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... note just a suggestion of musk. All the other scents and sounds have been of a soothing quality, especially in combination with each other. In this suggestion of musk is something which bids one sit up and watch out. By and by I see the beast, a muskrat, steamboating his way up the rapids like a furry Maid-of-the-Mist, or perhaps I should say a submarine, that navigates the surface with but little bulk exposed. Presently he proves himself a submarine by diving in a shallow. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... below gave an alarm signal, 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
... of yarn, from which I was knitting a pair of mittens for Sammie Littletail," said the kind muskrat. "The ball dropped in the dirt and I can't find it. I wonder ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... 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 ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... such 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 ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... we were pulling over a lot of old truck in a corner of the shop, we found some rusty muskrat traps. Edmund asked William if he used them. "No; I did considerable trapping when I was a boy. You and Ben may have them if you want them. Your father and I, Benny, trapped together one winter; and we used to go hunting wild turkeys too. There were a number of ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... them all sorts of outdoor adventures. In the first story, "At Log Cabin Bend," they solve a series of mysteries but not until after some lively thrills which will cause other boys to sit on the edge of their chairs. The next story telling of their search for a lost army aviator in "Muskrat Swamp" is just as lively. The boys are all likable and manly—just the sort of fellows that every other wide-awake boy would be glad to go ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... 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 ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... 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 ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the river, displayed a face of solid ice intermixed with veins of black earth, and as the heat of the sun melted the ice, the trees frequently fell into the river. The variety of channels in the river rendered it difficult to decide which should be followed. Muskrat, the new guide, recommended that which ran to the east; but his leader, not feeling sure of his wisdom or ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... he pounced on an animal like a muskrat that tried to cross the track—a tough thing to kill, a tougher to eat. At dusk he drew near a farmhouse, where a man was chopping wood. The man picked up a stick, ordered him away, then went ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... broder, me go," the visitor replied, pointing to himself. "All go trap many beaver, many mink, many muskrat," he added, making a circle with his hand to indicate his inability to count the pelts which had been taken. "Me broder he wan' go on warpath. He wan' help drive palefaces out Kantuckee. Me fader he say he go," nodding his head many times to emphasize his statement. ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... Murder mortigo. Murderer mortiganto. Murky malhela, malluma. Murmur 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a great ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... the ears and pinch them out thin and into their natural shape, then cover the entire face under the skin with compo. Fill eye sockets and set eyes as second step. Lastly fill the nose and lips and model them firmly upon the jaws. In all mammals cover the teeth well with the lips. Even in a muskrat the teeth do not ordinarily show at all. Also avoid getting the lips, nose, and whisker base too full. Set the tail into easy normal position, pin toes to grasp the perch or set well upon the ground and inspect the body ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... beings were 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, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... waters is anchored "Muskrat Castle," and over it, to and fro, move the "Ark of Floating Tom" and the Indian canoes, which gave a strange, wild interest to the story. Afloat and ashore come those unlike sisters,—proud Judith, handsome but designing, and simple-hearted ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... 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 ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... regularly every three or four hours with food for the prisoner. Sometimes it was a fish—trout, or brown sucker, or silvery chub—sometimes a duck or a grouse, sometimes a rabbit or a muskrat. Always it was the male, with that grim black streak across the side of his white face, who came. Always Horner made a point of taking the prize at once from the angry youngster, and then throwing it back to ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... fisher-martin; and a tiny opossum no bigger than a mouse. They had taken four species of opossum, but they had not found the curious water-opossum which they had obtained on the rivers flowing into the Caribbean Sea. This opossum, which is black and white, swims in the streams like a muskrat or otter, catching fish and living in burrows which open under water. Miller and Cherrie were puzzled to know why the young throve, leading such an existence of constant immersion; one of them once found a female swimming and diving freely ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... little heart-warmer!" cried Jimmy Malone, as he lifted his tenth trap, weighted with a struggling muskrat, from the Wabash. "Varmint you may be to all the rist of creation, but you mane a night at Casey's ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "to cheat the husbandman of his corn and the laborer of his hire. If the gold and silver had all to be sent to France to pamper the luxuries of a swarm of idlers at the Court, they could buy and sell as they had done in the early days of the Colony, with beaver skins for livres, and muskrat skins for sous. These paper bills," continued he, "had been tried on a small scale by the Intendant Hoquart, and on a small scale had robbed and impoverished the Colony. If this new Mississippi scheme propounded by new Laws,"—and here La Corne glanced boldly at the Intendant,—"is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... three. These are laid in a saucer shaped structure of dead vegetation, which is scraped together, from the surface of the wet, boggy ground. The bird figured in the plate had placed its nest on the edge of an old muskrat house, and my attention was attracted to it by the fact that upon the edge of the rat house, where it had climbed to rest itself, was the body of a young dabchick, or piedbilled grebe, scarcely two and one-half inches long, and not twenty-four hours out of the egg, a beautiful little ball of blackish ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the timber. They heard a distant splash where a muskrat had taken to the water. Every one wished solemnly by the evening star. And two of the wishes came true in record time. The Captain wished that he might find the son so long lost to him. Katy wished—she didn't quite put the wish ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... men are up here with money to buy furs. If you have any bear, mink, muskrat or fox you will find these men at the store until Wednesday, or you can apply to Francois Paradis of Mistassini who is with them. They have plenty of money and will pay cash for first-class pelts." His news finished, he descended ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... old {79} portage route in the district of North Renfrew, an old brass astrolabe of Paris make, dated 1603; the instrument used in those distant days for taking astronomical observations and ascertaining the latitude. No doubt it had belonged to Champlain, who lost it on this very portage by way of Muskrat and Mud lakes, as from this place he ceases to give us the correct latitudes which he had ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... 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 ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... most forgot. This here's some kind o' paper I picked up on the track. Beats anything how passengers chucks things off. Mike Smith 'most got killed last week with an empty bottle. Lucky he had his big muskrat cap on. May be ye'd like to see it, Miss Sophy? Guess my old woman wouldn't have no use for it as it don't seem to have any picters ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Foreword The Forgotten Ear of Corn The Little Mice The Pet Rabbit The Pet Donkey The Rabbit and the Elk The Rabbit and the Grouse Girls The Faithful Lovers The Artichoke and the Muskrat The Rabbit, and the Bear with the Flint Body Story of the Lost Wife The Raccoon and the Crawfish Legend of Standing Rock Story of the Peace Pipe A Bashful Courtship The Simpleton's Wisdom Little Brave and the Medicine Woman The Bound Children The Signs of Corn Story of ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... had 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 ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Ostable folks are pretty excited. Elnathan Mullet, who owns that strip below your house, knows somethin' about it, I think. I shouldn't wonder if he'd had an offer, or a hint, or somethin'. But Elnathan's mouth shuts tighter than a muskrat trap and I couldn't get nothin' out of him. He just looked knowin' and that was all. But, if it's so, it may mean ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that traffic with America was not desirable, as the Americans did not pay their debts. Possibly that was true, for muskrat pelts were low at that time, and England refused to take cord-wood and saw-logs piled on the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... him right away. He's down on the boat now. A mighty good hand is Burke, tough as a bull, swims like a muskrat, but he has one failing—only one so far as I know—he will drink, and when he's drunk he's vicious. But they all take their whiskey, these boatmen, and so does almost every landsman, for that matter—and Pierce is no worse than the rest. But here's the point: cap had a row at the tavern, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of his dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armored sentinel on the watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter back and forth above the tops of the trees. A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidle off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollen with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it moved along ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... half persuaded that the muskrat is a wise little animal, and that on the subject of the weather, especially, he possesses some secret that I should be glad to know. In the fall of 1878 I noticed that he built unusually high and massive nests. I noticed them in several different localities. In a shallow, sluggish ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... goes to the trapper to-day for such common skins as red-fox and skunk and muskrat than was ever paid to the fur-hunter for beaver, seal, and sea-otter in the old days. Six million dollars worth of raw furs are sold annually by auction in London, and Canada is the Mother Country's chief feeder. Included in these London sales are some hundred ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... from hearing a boy talking when I was down in the market yesterday morning. You know who he is, Johnny Spreen, the fellow who always ships out a raft of dried ginseng roots every year, and in the Spring sends a bunch of muskrat skins ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... lion, tiger, eagle, or the 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; ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... necessary stops until they reached Three Rivers, in Quebec. Here the Major was handed over to the French officer in charge at that place, and was put under guard, but treated well, as had been the case on the journey from Nova Scotia. Possibly roasted muskrat would not be considered an appetizing diet, but the major found it kept away hunger, and that was no small consideration in a journey of five hundred miles ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... and Jerry 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 than on the ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... been there about an hour, I think, when the corporal of the guard came in to report to the officer of the day, that a fierce blizzard was making it impossible for sentries to walk post. His own appearance told better than words what the storm was. He had on a long buffalo coat, muskrat cap and gauntlets, and the fur from his head down, also heavy overshoes, were filled with snow, and at each end of his mustache were icicles hanging. He made a fine, soldierly picture as he brought his rifle to his side and saluted. The officer of the day hurried out, and after a time ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... 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 the pards: her hands and feet like softest blossoms; her complexion like the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... find tough going there. Not enough water; trees there, four hundred feet high with thorny roots and rough bark—they wouldn't like that. Oh no, these natives ought to be pretty snug in their dens. Why, they're as hard to catch as a muskrat! Don't know what a muskrat is, huh? Well, it's the same as the Inranians, only different, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... 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
... that at the least suspicion the bird can slide 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 of rushes, weeds and grasses; a large structure nearly three feet in ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Muskrat Falls is th' first," answered Bob, adding uncertainly: "I'm 'feared you'll find th' work on th' river wearisome, not bein' used t' un—th' portagin' an' trackin'. I ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... woods an old rabbit gentleman named Uncle Wiggily Longears, and in the hollow-stump bungalow where he had his home there also lived Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, a muskrat lady housekeeper. Near Uncle Wiggily there were, in hollow trees, or in nests or in burrows under the ground, many animal friends of his—rabbits, squirrels, puppy dogs, pussy cats, frogs, ducks, chickens ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... a 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 seen in the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a 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 the bucket ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... portage from what is now known as Portage du Fort to Muskrat Lake, a distance of about nine miles, Champlain, though less heavily loaded than his companions, carried three French arquebusses, three oars, his cloak, and some small articles, and was at the same time bitterly oppressed by swarms of hungry and insatiable mosquitoes. On the old portage ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... 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. The ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Johnnie almost always went barefooted. And he never minded getting his feet wet any more than Paddy Muskrat did. ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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 in books. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... follow those animals in their periodical migrations, could more easily than any others recur to the habits of their ancestors, and live without the white man or any of his manufactures. But the buffalo is constantly receding. The smaller animals—the bear, the deer, the beaver, the otter, the muskrat, &c., principally minister to the comfort and support of the Indians; and these cannot be taken without ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... fox his hill-side cell forsakes, The muskrat leaves his nook, The blue-bird in the meadow brakes Is singing with the brook. "Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry Bird, breeze, and streamlet free, "Our winter voices prophesy Of summer days to thee!" So in the winters of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... help it? I can feel the cold of the water yet, and your rope settling over my shoulders. You never gave me a chance to say 'God bless you' for that; you just coiled up your rope— swearing all the time you did it, because it was wet—and rode off, dripping like a muskrat. What did ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... reptiles. If we wish to know how 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 ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... moment on the surface. But the channels that separate the flat, alluvial islets are yellow, their sluggish waters being bedded heavily down with the broad leaves of the wintering basswood-trees, which, in some places, touch branch-tips across the narrow straits. The muskrat's hut is thatched with the wet, dead leaves,—no thanks to him; and there is a mat of them before his door,—a heavy, yellow mat, on which are scattered the azure shells of the fresh-water clams to be found so often upon the premises of this builder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... beings and when danger threatens they will take to the water without hesitation; and when the muskrat has gone the way of the beaver, our ditches and ponds will not be completely deserted, for the little meadow mice will swim and dive for many ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... I'm 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
... fully one third larger than those killed in any other region. Black bears and brown bears are most frequently to be met with between Fort Pelly and Portage La Loche. Cumberland House is the centre of the greatest breeding grounds for muskrat, mink, and ermine. Manitoba House is another great district for muskrat. Lynxes are found in greatest numbers in the Iroquois Valley, in the foothills on the eastern side of the Rockies. Coyote skins come chiefly from ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming |
