The musk-rat is from six to eight inches long, of a slatish-blue colour, with a long movable snout, and diminutive eyes. Its skin is very loose, and quite conceals the extremities, only allowing the feet to be seen. This formation occasions the peculiar pattering of its run. The tail, broad at its base, is pinkish and bare of everything except a few hairs; ears are diminutive. Loathed and detested by all, this creature leads a charmed life; only a few dogs will kill it, and then there is always sneezing and a little foaming afterwards. Cats follow but won’t touch it; it is, moreover, equally avoided by more aristocratic rats and mice. As the animal runs along the wall of the room, it emits a kind of self-satisfied purr, which, if alarmed, breaks into a squeak, and immediately the scent-bottle is opened. If there is light to see the tiny creature, you will observe it scanning with its nose all parts of the horizon in search of what caused the alarm; the eyes apparently being unequal to the task.
Musk-rats have a singular habit of always running along the walls of a room, never crossing from one wall to the other; hence, as they are not swift movers, they are easily overtaken, and a blow from a cane instantly kills the animal. Traps are of little use in capturing these creatures; and if one is captured, that trap is for ever useless as regards ordinary rats and mice, which won’t approach it after being contaminated. ‘Muskies’ are omnivorous and very voracious. During the rains, the insect world is on the wing. If at this season you place a night-light on the ground near the beat of a musk-rat, you will be amused at watching its antics in trying to catch some of the buzzers round the light, or those crawling up the wall, and will be surprised at its agility. The captives are ruthlessly crunched, and the animal never seems satiated; at the same time its enjoyment is evinced by its purring. Woe betide him should another musky invade this happy hunting-ground! War is at once proclaimed, and immediately the two are fighting for their lives, squeaking, snapping, biting, rolling over and over, and all the time letting off their awful scent-bottles. You, in the comparative distance, just escape the disgusting odour; but the insect invasion catch it full, and quickly leave the scene. And so the fight goes on, until you happily catch both the combatants with one blow of your cane, and the stinking turmoil ceases; and having thrown open the doors to ventilate the room, you are glad to retire to rest.
I was awakened one night at Arrah by the squeaking and stench of two musk-rats, which were in mortal combat near my bed. Quietly rising and seizing my slipper, I smote the combatants a wrathful blow, to which one succumbed, and the other escaped through the venetian. I then lay down again, but only to hear the hateful p-r-r-r-r of ‘musky,’ who had come to look after his dead brother. Seizing him, he carried him off to the venetian, and there dropped him with a squeak, as I rose to my elbow. Bringing the dead rat back and laying my slipper handy, I again lay down. Very soon I heard the disgusting purr and saw the dead musky being carried off; and now the slipper was true, and both muskies lay prone.
Apropos to this, if you throw out a dead rat or mouse, he is at once swooped upon by a kite or crow; but both these scavengers will avoid a dead musk-rat; the kite will swoop and pass on as if he had not noticed the odour, whilst our old friend the crow will alight at a safe distance, and with one eye survey the dead shrew. Perhaps in that glance a whiff from the scent-bottle reaches him, for he hops off a yard or two, caws, and then rubs his beak once or twice on the ground. Then he takes an observation with the other eye, caws, and flies up into the overhanging nína tree. No one will touch the dead musk-rat; even those faithful undertakers, the burying-beetles, avoid him.
Now, what is the scent of the musk-rat like? When I was last at home in 1875, I went into a greenhouse on a hot summer day, and found it given up to the musk-plant. ‘Muskies! muskies!’ I exclaimed, as I fled from the stifling, dank, and fetid atmosphere. Get up that combination—a hot day, a dank, humid, and suffocating greenhouse given up to the musk-plant, and you will have the full effect of only one full-blown musky. The odour of the plant, heavy when close, is delicate when diffused; the scent of the musk-rat, on the other hand, is heavy when diffused, and insupportable when near. The marvellous diffusibility of this odour is illustrated in many ways. It has long been maintained that the musk-rat has only to pass over a closely corked bottle of wine to destroy its contents. I have tasted sherry so destroyed, and at the same time have placed corked bottles of water in the runs of musk-rats without any defilement. The odour won’t permeate glass, so the bottle of sherry must have been contaminated by a defiled cork. Place a porous water-goblet (sooráhí) in the run of a musk-rat, and defilement is secure; and if that goblet endures for a hundred years, it will during that century affect all water which may be put into it. These animals seem to enjoy communicating their disgusting odour to surrounding objects. It doesn’t follow that mere contact conveys it, for I have often handled these animals without contamination; but there is undoubtedly—setting aside the scent-bottle as a means of defence—an instinctive marking of objects for purposes of recognition, sheer mischief, or for the easing of the secretion organ.
Another anomaly pertains to this animal: though so disgusting to others, it is not so to itself; and it is one of the tidiest and most cleanly of animals. Its nesting arrangements, too, are very peculiar; nothing is more greedily utilised than paper, which it tears up. Some years ago, I lived in a boarded house, and used to be nightly worried by a pattering and purring musky dragging a newspaper towards a certain corner. Arrived there, it disappeared down a hole and pulled the paper after it—that is, as much as would enter the hole. If I gently removed the paper, the inquisitive nose would appear ranging round the hole, and shortly after, the animal itself in quest of the paper. I had the boarding taken up, and there, in a paper nest, lay five pink and naked muskies, all heads, with hardly any bodies, and quite blind.
I cannot find one redeeming trait in the character and conduct of Sorex cœrulescens, and I must admit that he is an ill-favoured beast, and of questionable utility.
A DAY IN EARLY SUMMER.
A little wood, wherein with silver sound
A brooklet whispers all the sunny day,