Dan Beards Animal book And Camp Fire Stories

YING SQUIRREL WITH PINK EYES. Being curious to know how and for what purpose the Norway brown rat, which infests our stables and houses, makes such a terrible rumpus after dark, I visited a certain summer kitchen, one night, that had the reputation of being haunted. The room had a brick floor, board walls, a common iron sink with hydrant, and a flight of wooden steps leading from the house proper, to the paved floor. There was a gas-jet in the summer kitchen. After lighting this, I seated myself upon the steps and waited for the ghosts to appear; I had long since learned that by keeping quiet and immovable one can disarm the suspicions of the most timid creatures, and I reasoned that since ghosts never appeared in daylight and always fled at the crow of a rooster, they must be exceedingly shy. I had not occupied my seat very long, before I saw abewhiskered nose peeping from one of the numerous rat holes, where the board walls met the paved floor. As I had anticipated the ghosts lived in rat holes. But before any of them emerged there were numerous small vibrating noses to be seen at the entrance of many of the dark passages, which led into the earth, below the bricks. For some time the ghosts were content to keep their stations in their doorways and watch the big intruder with their beady black eyes. At length, right from under the steps where I was sitting, a great grizzled old male rat appeared; he was evidently a veteran and the scars ab...