WATER-RAT.
If we walk along the bank of a stream or a pond, we shall probably hear a splash, and looking in its direction, may see a creature diving or swimming, which creature we call a Water-rat; to the title of Rat, however, it has but little right, and ought properly to be called the “Water-vole”.
On examining the banks we shall find the entrance to its domicile, being a hole in the earth, just above the water, and generally, where possible, made just under a root or a large stone. Sometimes the hole is made at some height above the water, and then it often happens that the kingfisher takes possession, and there makes its home. Whether it ejects the rat or not I cannot say, but I should think that it is quite capable of doing so. Many a time I have seen the entrance to a rat-hole decorated with a few stray fish-bones, which the rustics told me were the relics of fish brought there and eaten by the water-rat. But I soon found out that fish-bones were a sign of kingfishers, and not of rats; and so guided, found plenty of the beautiful eggs of this beautiful bird. Excepting the eggs of swallows and martins, I hardly know any so delicately beautiful as those of the kingfisher, with their slight rose tint and semi-transparent shell. But, alas! when the interior of the egg is removed, the pearly pinkiness vanishes, and the shell becomes of a pure white, very pretty, but not containing a tithe of its former beauty.
The piscatorial propensities of the kingfisher are not the only cause of the slanderous reports concerning the water-vole, and its crime of killing and eating fish. The common house-rat often frequents the water-side; and, it being a great flesh-eater, certainly does catch and eat the fish.
But the water-rat is a vegetable feeder, and I believe almost, if not entirely, a vegetarian in diet. That it is so in individual cases, at all events, I can personally testify, having seen the creature engaged in eating.
In former days, when I thought the water-rats ate fish, I waged war against them, for which warfare there are great facilities at Oxford. However, a circumstance occurred which showed me that I had been wrong.
I saw a water-rat sitting on a kind of raft that had formed from a bundle of reeds which had been cut and were floating down the river. Seeing it busily at work feeding, I took it for granted that it was eating a captured fish, and shot it accordingly, stretching it dead on its reed raft.
On rowing up to the spot, I was rather surprised to find that there was no fish there; and on examining the reeds, I rather wondered at the regular grooves cut by my shot. But a closer inspection revealed a very different state of things; namely, that the poor dead rat was quite innocent of fish eating, and had been gnawing the green bark from the reeds, the grooves being the marks left by its teeth. After this I gave up rat shooting on principle.
Once, though, a rather curious circumstance occurred.