_), a handsome,
interesting animal, always attracting attention wherever seen. It is
more like a squirrel than a rat, is much larger, has delicate, thick,
soft fur of a bluish slate color, white on the belly; ears large, thin,
and translucent; eyes soft, full, and liquid; claws slender, sharp as
needles; and as his limbs are strong, he can climb about as well as a
squirrel. No rat or squirrel has so innocent a look, is so easily
approached, or expresses such confidence in one's good intentions. He
seems too fine for the thorny thickets he inhabits, and his hut also is
as unlike himself as may be, though softly furnished inside. No other
animal inhabitant of these mountains builds houses so large and striking
in appearance. The traveler coming suddenly upon a group of them for the
first time will not be likely to forget them. They are built of all
kinds of sticks, old rotten pieces picked up anywhere, and green prickly
twigs bitten from the nearest bushes, the whole mixed with miscellaneous
odds and ends of everything movable, such as bits of cloddy earth,
stones, bones, deerhorn, etc., piled up in a conical mass as if it were
got ready for burning. Some of these curious cabins are six feet high
and as wide at the base, and a dozen or more of them are occasionally
grouped together, less perhaps for the sake of society than for
advantages of food and shelter. Coming through the dense shaggy thickets
of some lonely hillside, the solitary explorer happening into one of
these strange villages is startled at the sight, and may fancy himself
in an Indian settlement, and begin to wonder what kind of reception he
is likely to get. But no savage face will he see, perhaps not a single
inhabitant, or at most two or three seated on top of their wigwams,
looking at the stranger with the mildest of wild eyes, and allowing a
near approach. In the centre of the rough spiky hut a soft nest is made
of the inner fibres of bark chewed to tow, and lined with feathers and
the down of various seeds, such as willow and milkweed. The delicate
creature in its prickly, thick-walled home suggests a tender flower in a
thorny involucre. Some of the nests are built in trees thirty or forty
feet from the ground, and even in garrets, as if seeking the company and
protection of man, like swallows and linnets, though accustomed to the
wildest solitude. Among housekeepers Neotoma has the reputation of a
thief, because he carries away everything transportable