Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Muskrats.

My brother Will graduated from college in 1878. He had to pay his expenses at college by doing everything and anything that came to hand by which he could earn a few dollars.

Among other things he used to trap muskrats in the swamps near Metuchen.

It was my job to skin these rats and dry the skins while my brother took the train for New Brunswick and to Rutgers College.

Trapping muskrats in cold winter weather is no picnic.

It meant getting up every morning at four o'clock visiting the traps, which were the usual steel traps made for trapping small game, bringing the traps home and in the evening going out and setting the traps again. Will could not leave his traps set during the day for there were always boys and men who stole traps and rats whenever they found them.

A muskrat is about as large as a house-cat. The skin is cut across between the hind legs and stripped off the body as one strips off an under-shirt.

We sold them to some man who regularly called for them and we got about a quarter apiece for the skins.

They had to be removed from the rat just so and dried just so, or something was deducted from the price. The skins were never split down the middle and nailed out on a door as are the skins of larger animals.

We stripped off the skin and stretched it, fur side in, over a shingle, cut cigar-shaped.

Nowadays, muskrat skins are very much in demand and bring a high price. The skins are clipped and dyed and sold under a variety of trade names; "Hudson Seal" is one. The fur below the long, coarser hair is soft, like that of the seal.

Many muskrat furs are made up in their natural colors, which are browns and grays.

In 1876 I think no woman would be seen wearing natural muskrat fur. I have been told by a very intelligent furrier that there are no real black furs in nature. All have to be dyed to make them jet black.

I know that our housecat, which appears to be jet black at a little distance, is rather of a brownish black in bright sunlight.

The name muskrat is a good illustration of the old adage, "Give a man a bad name and he will be rated bad," or something to that effect.

A muskrat is no rat at all. Does not belong to the rat family. He is more like the wood chuck or the rabbit, for he eats about the same kind of food. His flesh is perfectly good to eat, as I know, for I have eaten many of them since. When I think of the dozens of good muskrat carcasses I threw away, when a bit of fresh meat would have tasted good to an ever-hungry boy, I cannot help thinking what blind prejudice can do.

The ancient Lake Dwellers of Switzerland ate foxes and wolves but they would not eat hare because, behold, the hare is a timid creature and those who ate of his flesh would become timid also.

In France people eat tons of mussels and reject soft clams. In this country we eat soft clams and despise mussels. Mere custom and blind prejudice.

The muskrats my brother caught lived in holes along the banks of brooks, not in nests built of grass and sticks as do the pond muskrats.

The brook muskrats make a tunnel in the side of the bank with its entrance just below the water. A little way from the entrance the tunnel rises above the level of the water and there the nest is built under the ground.

Muskrats feed after dark, so one rarely sees one in the daytime.

The borders of the meadow brooks in New Jersey are sometimes honeycombed with the tunnels of the muskrat. One has to be careful in walking along the brooks not to step in the old caved-in tunnels. One is likely to go down to one's knees in mud.

Sometimes Will set box traps for muskrats.

These traps are made by nailing together four boards about three feet long and a foot wide, forming a pipe open at both ends.

Just inside one or both ends there is fitted a door with hinges at the top and made so long that it will open inward but not outward.

The door is made of heavy wires set vertically.

The trap is set in some narrow ditch and stakes driven on each side closely set so as to prevent the muskrat from passing at the sides of the trap.

These traps were only suitable in certain places and, unlike the steel traps, could not be brought in at night.

I remember that once Will caught a mink in such a trap.

He got the whole of $1.25 for that skin.