all, this is a very old house
not used since last winter.

Going back to the bank, the trapper skirts through the crush of brittle
rushes round the swamp. Coming sharply on deeper water, a dank, stagnant
bayou, heavy with the smell of furry life, the trapper pushes aside the
flags, peers out and sees what resembles a prairie-dog town on
water--such a number of wattled houses that they had shut in the water
as with a dam. Too many flags and willows lie over the colony for a
glimpse of the tell-tale wriggling trail across the water; but from the
wet tangle of grass and moss comes an oozy pattering.

If it were winter, the trapper could proceed as he would against a
beaver colony, staking up the outlet from the swamp, trenching the ice
round the different houses, breaking open the roofs and penning up any
fugitives in their own bank burrows till he and his dog and a spear
could clear out the gallery. But in winter there is more important work
than hunting musk-rat. Musk-rat-trapping is for odd days before the
regular hunt.

Opening the sack which he usually carries on his back, the trapper draws
out three dozen small traps no larger than a rat or mouse trap. Some of
these he places across the runways without any bait; for the musk-rat
must pass this way. Some he smears with strong-smelling pomatum. Some he
baits with carrot or apple. Others he does not bait at all, simply
laying them on old logs where he knows the owlets roost by day. But each
of the traps--bait or no bait--he attaches to a stake driven into the
water so that the prisoner will be held under when he plunges to escape
till he is drowned. Otherwise, he would gnaw his foot free of the trap
and disappear in a burrow.

If the marsh is large, there will be more than one musk-rat colony.
Having exhausted his traps on the first, the trapper lies in wait at the
second. When the moon comes up over the water, there is a great
splashing about the musk-rat nests; for autumn is the time for
house-building and the musk-rats work at night. If the trapper is an
Eastern man, he will wade in as they do in New Jersey; but if he is a
type of the Western hunter, he lies on the log among the rushes, popping
a shot at every head that appears in the moonlit water. His dog swims
and dives for the quarry. By the time the stupid little musk-rats have
taken alarm and hidden, the man has twenty or thirty on the bank. Going
home, he empties and resets the traps.

Thirty marten trap