A MOTHER WATER-RAT

A MOTHER WATER-RAT - TRUE STORY

I WAS standing on a bridge over a small Hampshire brook with a trout-rod in my hand, when I saw a water-rat swimming up the stream towards me, and making for the archway. The animal did not see me, for I lowered my rod, and touched it with the top, when it dived and disappeared; but, on returning towards the same spot shortly  afterwards, I caught sight of the rat coming from under the arch with something in its mouth, and swimming quickly towards me. Close at hand was a rail with an upright post, around which clung a good deal of floating weed. To this the rat made her way, still carrying her burden, which she laid upon it and then began to climb up herself. When she was fairly up, I saw that her burden was a young one of about three inches long, which nestled under the mother, till, a slight shower coming on, they both made for the rail, the mother pushing her child up on to it first in safety, and then getting up on the rail herself and nursing it as before. I crept so close to them, that I could nearly put my hand on them, and could see the sharp black eyes of the little one, watching me intently; but as I was now drawing too near, the mother at once took a header into the brook, and the little one flopped in after her, swimming down stream a short way to another piece of floating weed, and then the anxious mother came back, and again took her little one in her mouth, and swam away with it down stream. I walked by the side of the brook for more than a hundred yards, watching the mother carrying her child in her mouth, and when I lost sight of her, she was still swimming onward with her babe. Is it possible that she was moving her family one by one to a more favorable spot?
 W.S. OWEN 

References:

American Chatterbox 1882