Post-mortem examination, however,
proved once more the unreliability of uncorroborated circumstantial
evidence. The snake had done good and friendly service instead of ill,
for it had swallowed a white-tailed rat--the only specimen that I have
seen on the island.
Next comes the little frugivorous rat of russet brown, with a glint of
gold on its fur tips. A delicate, graceful creature, nice in its habits,
with a plaintive call like the cheep of a chicken; preferring ripe
bananas and pine-apple, but consenting to nibble at other fruits, as well
as grain. The mother carries her young crouched on her haunches, clinging
to her fur apparently with teeth as well as claws, and she manages to
scuttle along fairly fast, in spite of her encumbrances. The first that I
saw bearing away her family to a place of refuge was deemed to be
troubled with some hideous deformity aft, but inspection at close
quarters showed how she had converted herself into a novel perambulator.
I am told that no other rodent has been observed to carry its young in
this fashion. Perhaps the habit has been acquired as a result of insular
peculiarities, the animal, unconscious of the way of its kind on the
mainland, having invented a style of its own, "ages ahead of the
fashion.
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