hus a
silver-plated spoon may have gone from its associate cup one night, but
in that cup you may find a long pine cone or a surplus nail, by which
token you may know that a Pack-rat has called and collected. Sometimes
this enthusiastic fancier goes off with food, but leaves something in
its place; in one case that I heard of, the Rat, either with a sense of
humour or a mistaken idea of food values, after having carried off the
camp biscuit, had filled the vacant dish with the round pellets known as
"Elk sign." But evidently there is a disposition to deal fair; not to
steal, but to trade. For this reason the creature is widely known as the
"Trade Rat."

[Illustration]

Although I have known the Pack-rat for years in the mountains, I never
saw one within the strict lines of the Yellowstone sanctuary. But the
guides all assure me that they are found and manifest the same
disposition here as elsewhere. So that if you should lose sundry bright
things around camp, or some morning find your boots stuffed with
pebbles, deer sign, or thorns, do not turn peevish or charge the guide
with folly; it means, simply, you have been visited by a Mountain Rat,
and any _un_eatables you miss will doubtless be found in his museum,
which will be discovered within a hundred yards--a mass of sticks and
rubbish under a tree--with some bright and shiny things on the top
where the owner can sit amongst them on sunny days, and gloat till his
little black eyes are a-swim, and his small heart filled with holy joy.

THE UPHEAVER--THE MOLE-GOPHER

[Illustration: Pack-rat nest]

As you cross any of the level, well-grassed prairie regions in the
Yellowstone you will see piles of soft earth thrown up in little
hillocks, sometimes a score or more of them bunched together. The
drivers will tell you that these are molehills, which isn't quite true.
For the Mole is a creature unknown in the Park, and the animal that
makes these mounds is exceedingly abundant. It is the common
Mole-gopher, a gopher related very distantly to the Prairie-dog and
Mountain Whistler, but living the underground life of a Mole, though not
even in the same order as that interesting miner, for the Mole-gopher is
a rodent (Order _Rodentia_) and the Mole a bug-eater (Order
_Insectivora_); just as different as Lion and Caribou.

The Mole-gopher is about the size of a rat, but has a short tail and
relatively immense forepaws and claws. It is indeed wonderfully
developed as a dig