Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1892 — THE “ TRUMPET RAT.” [ARTICLE]

THE “ TRUMPET RAT.”

j How a French Soldier Deceived a Naturalist. t\ hen the French Zouaves were first in Africa a new sort of rat made its appearunco there. It was called “trumpetrat,” having u long proboscis. . 'The sale of a specimen by one of the soldiers to an enthusiastic u ituralist gavo rise to au action at law. Said the plaintiff in court: “ I his zouave has cheated me out of 100 francs. He knows that I am much interested in natural sciences. 1 have collections of fossils, of shells, of rare animals, of curious plants. One day ho called upon me and said: ‘Sir, I have a kind of animal which has never been mentioned by any naturalist. It is "a trumpet rat, and luis a trunk like an elephant's. It is alive and well; if you wish to see it, you have only to come to my house.’ “I was very anxious to behold this strange animal. We arrived at his house and he showed mo in a cage an enormous rat, very lively and in good condition, which really had on its nose a slender excrescence more than an inch in length. The excrescence was covered with hair like the body' of tho animal, with vertebrae in it, and (a most extraordinary thing) larger at tho summit than at tinbase—the contrary to what it ought to bo in the usual course of things. To convince myself that it was not a dupe and a mystification I stuck a pin into the trumpet. The animal cried out and a drop of blood came from the prick. The experiment was conclusive. It was really' a trumpot forming part of the rat. “I was amazed. I asked this man if he would sell his rat. Ho said ves; and I paid him 50 fruncs for it. My friends andservauts all admired it, and I was enehanted. My rat was a male. .Seine one said that I ought to procure a fomale. I asked the zouave if lie could procure for me a female, and he said he had two. 1 saw them and bought one of them for 50 francs. Some months afterward tho female had young, I looked at them and they had no trumpets. I said to myself, ‘They' will sprout.’ I waited one month, two months, six months; everyday I looked at tho noses of my rats, but the trumpets nevor appeared.

“11l a house where I go frequently I made the acquaintance of an officer who had served a long time in Africa. I told him about my trumpet rats and he laughed j as though his sides would split. When he I was calm again he told me that the trumj pet rat was not a freak of nature, but an invention due to the leisure moments of the zouaves. This is how they make I them: You take two rats and fasten their ; paws firmly to a board, the nose of one | close to the end of the tail of the other. Then with a penknife or a lancet you j make an incision into the nose of the rat j which is hindermost and you graft the ■ tail of the first into the nose; you tie I firmly the muzzle to the tail and you : leave the two rats in this position for | forty-eight hours. At the end of that i time the union has taken placo and the [ two parts are grown together; then you I cut off the tail of the rat which is in I front to the required length and let him j go, but still keep the othor fastened to | the board, with his head looso, and you give him something to cat. At the end ! of a fortnight the wound is perfectly j healed and the eye of the most curious ! investigator would not see a trace of the j grafting. This is the way the zouaves make rats with trumpets.” | On the part of the defendant it was | urged that no had certainly made up the rats as stated, but he affirmed that ho had not sold them to the plaintiff as having been “born” wdth trumpets. Verdict for the zouave.