Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — Fought to the Death. [ARTICLE]

Fought to the Death.

A visitor at Scranton, Penn., saw a furious fight between a woodchuck and a muskrat on Choke CreekJ a few days ago. He was walking toward the creek, on the opposite side of which he saw a woodchuck slaking his thirst near a pool under a leaning yellow birch tree. The woodchuck became alarmed at his apfiroaeh, gave a whistle and started on a ively canter for its burrow, a few rods up the bank. At the same instant a monster muskrat, which had been nosing around in the grass and weeds near the woodchuck’s hole, made a dash for the pool under the leuning birch. The startled animals ran into one another in their haste to reach their respective abiding places, and the collision instantly made them forget all fear, caused them to become as angry as hornets, and set them to fighting like bulldogs. Each animal seemed to think that the other was to blame for running against it, and, instead of apologizing and trying to pass one another, they began to bite and scratch, bristle and squeal angrily, and roll and tumble in the grass, an though they were bound to kill one and other. The muskrat kept working the woodchuck toward tjie creek, the blood and fur flew, and at length the woodchuck broke away, cried enough, and went limping to its burrow. It hadn’t taken five steps before the pugnacious muskrat collared it and made it fight. The woodchuck sailed into the big rat with renewed vigor, but the latter knew its business, and in less than three minutes it caught the woodchuck by the throat and dragged it over the bank into the pool. The lighting animals churned the water into foam, but the muskrat held the woodchuck’s head under water until it was drowned, when it flung the carcass onto a stone and swam out of sight under the roots of the birch.