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More "Rodent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well named; he looked like nothing so much as a small bluish-purple rodent, with wise, beady little eyes and a scaly curling tail. But he spoke Terran clearly and well, and in every respect he was an ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... to the rat racketeers. One small hotel refused, and was at once deluged with an army of rats which drove out guests and employees, killed one old scrub woman and severely injured twenty of the cooks, waiters and porters who received the brunt of the rodent onslaught. ...
— The Rat Racket • David Henry Keller
... characteristic of other provinces are absent. North and South America, perhaps, present one or two exceptions to the last rule, but they are readily susceptible of explanation. Thus, in Australia, the later Tertiary mammals are marsupials (possibly with the exception of the Dog and a Rodent or two, as at present). In Austro-Columbia, the later Tertiary fauna exhibits numerous and varied forms of Platyrrhine Apes, Rodents, Cats, Dogs, Stags, Edentata, and Opossums; but, as at present, no Catarrhine Apes, no Lemurs, no Insectivora, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... very busy outside. Every minute a dog's yelp, the shout of its master, and the dull thud of a bludgeon, told plainly enough the tale of some unhappy rodent's ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet will use some other word than torso to describe a headless, but not limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her buckler, since she can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides an acre into a hundred fragments,—ever spurred on to his banquet by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the Revolution, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... away in the hold; but one of them I drove out of the ship, and the other I caught. This is how it was: for the first one with infinite pains I made a trap, looking to its capture and destruction; but the wily rodent, not to be deluded, took the hint and got ashore the day ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... both in size and in variety of forms, and were superior in both these respects to the mammals of to-day. In Pleistocene times in North America there were several species of bison,—one whose widespreading horns were ten feet from tip to tip,—a gigantic moose elk, a giant rodent (Castoroides) five feet long, several species of musk oxen, several species of horses,— more akin, however, to zebras than to the modern horse,—a huge lion, several saber-tooth tigers, immense edentates of several genera, and largest of all the mastodon ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... have only begun to come there, are too busy collecting ivory to be able to spare men. "The tusks were left in the terrible forests, where the animals were killed; the people, if treated civilly, readily go and bring the precious teeth, some half rotten, or gnawed by the teeth of a rodent called dezi. I think that mad naturalists name it Aulocaudatus Swindermanus, or some equally wise agglutination of syllables.... My chronometers are all dead; I hope my old watch was sent to Zanzibar; but I have got no letters for years, save some, three years old, at Ujiji. I have an intense and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... first, as one does who sees a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the tree against his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can watch his attempts at mischief with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his mind-control on any of the pigeon-like birds! He did, however, make a trip to the local zoo, and as he paused momentarily in front of each of the cages to look at the exhibit it contained, he briefly made an excursion into the mind of each different type of animal, bird or rodent. Outside of minor differences of texture, they all seemed about the same. Each of them had, naturally, different muscular abilities that would need considerable study if he ever ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... (p. 157), talking of the identification of a Mexican animal with the Synetheres prehensilis, says, "We do not know with what propriety, but if correct, it is, if not a solitary instance, at least very nearly so, of a rodent animal being common ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that, 'Gyp' smelt rats; and, what is more, he managed to nab one very cleverly as the rodent was leisurely hopping up the hatchway in the most free and easy manner from below, with a piece of cheese in its mouth which the beggar had appropriated from the steward's pantry, or from the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... depicted on this stamp, rejoices in the scientific name of Castor fiber. It is a rodent of social habits and was at one time widely distributed over Europe and North America. It is now practically extinct except in Canada and even there it is said to be in great danger of extermination. Full-grown animals vary in length from thirty to thirty-six ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... escaping from under the dark green otter hat. Holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact of her long, fawn-coloured suede gloves, and he saw again her moist, rodent teeth, her thin, bitten lips, and her troubled eyes, of a grey and opaque lustre which could suddenly be transfigured with radiance. "Oh, night after next it will be great ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of my tribe, as it is born in the blood of beavers. When I meet a man who is a loafer and a destroyer, I know he is alien to me. I fear him and all his breed. The beaver is a builder and the rat is a destroyer; yet they both belong to the rodent race. The beaver harvests his food in the summer; he builds a house and stores that food for the winter. The rat sneaks to the food stores of others: he eats what he wants and ruins the rest and then runs and hides in his hole. He lives in ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... The lemming, or leming. A rodent quadruped. "It is very prolific, and vast hordes periodically migrate down to the sea, destroying much vegetation in ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... birth from the brain to the commercial travellers who are employed to spread them discreetly, "urbi et orbi," through Paris and the provinces, seasoned with the fried pork of advertisement and prospectus, by means of which they catch in their rat-trap the departmental rodent commonly called subscriber, sometimes stockholder, occasionally corresponding member ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... innocent little blue mouse in the pantry. She fully intended to drown the helpless creature—as if this world were not big enough for mice and men to live and be happy in! I had great difficulty in rescuing the tiny rodent from his captor, and I remember the satisfaction I had in giving him his liberty under the kitchen porch of neighbor Rush's house ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... Harold R. Shepherd. Three acres were fenced in a fashion designed to exclude rodents but not deer. An adjacent three acres were fenced as a control, but not so as to exclude rodents or deer. Eight trap lines nearby provide an index of rodent fluctuations from year to year. These studies will need to be continued for a period of ten years or more, and should provide much information concerning not only deer but also rodents and their effect ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... of birch-bark containing these relics inclosed also the skin of a small rodent (Spermophilus sp.?) but in a torn and moth-eaten condition. This was used by the owner for purposes unknown to those who were consulted upon the subject. It is frequently, if not generally, impossible to ascertain the use of ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... sink!" ejaculated his brother Sam, and catching up a stove lifter he let fly with such accurate aim that the unhappy rodent ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... tried to electrocute a rat which was caught in a wire basket trap and accidentally discovered a painless method. I say painless, because the rodent does not object to a second or third experiment after recovering, and is apparently rigid and without feeling ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... nose leaping out at you in a high curve; narrow, delicate cheeks thinned away so that they seemed part of the nose; sweet rodent mouth smiling up under its tip; blurred ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... a rat became suddenly motionless, its sharp rodent's nose pointed directly at the enemy. There came a noise, a tiny popping hiss, like that of a very small drop of water striking hot metal. From the left nostril of the not-rat, a tiny glasslike needle snapped out at bullet speed. It struck the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... remain in the boat with our guns, ready to shoot all that came to the edge of the stream—the habits of both animals, when hard-pressed, being to take to the water. We had not long to wait. The first arrival was a Paca, a reddish, nearly tail-less rodent, spotted with white on the sides, and intermediate in size and appearance between a hog and a hare. My first shot did not take effect; the animal dived into the water and did not reappear. A second was brought down by my companion ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the tail, which is one foot more. It is of a deep chestnut colour; the hair very fine, smooth, and glossy. The Indians use its incisor teeth, which are very large and hard, to cut the bone or horn with which they tip their spears. It is a rodent, or gnawing animal. It has a broad, horizontal, flattened tail, nearly of an oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... may remain limited by cicatricial tissue, but it is more likely that the infiltration and destruction of tissue will spread out wider and deeper until a rodent ulcer (so called) is formed. One of the most frequent sites of cancer in cattle is in the eye, where they are called fungus hematodes, but they also occur on the skin, on the genitals, in the stomach, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... off some of the mud. Rick reached down and splashed a handful on his face. It was warm. He saw a wet black head emerge from under the duck blind and speed for shore. It was a startled water rat. Alerted by the small splash of their coming, the rodent decided to take better cover. Then they were at the corner of the blind ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... form relaxed suddenly and it seemed that the muscles pulsated with an accession of energy. Then one leg was stretched forth spasmodically. There was a convulsive heave as the lungs drew in a first long breath, and, with that, an astonished and very much alive rodent scrambled to its feet, blinking wondering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... a special favorite of the ancients, has nothing to do with mice. The fat dormouse of the South of Europe is the size of a rat, arboreal rodent, living in trees. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... me!" cried the afflicted one, making a vicious grab at an imaginary rodent's tail. "Ran dan the bastes! now they're gone. Musha, but it's a ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... he has one more of those living fossils, or primitive survivors, which still fairly preserve the ancestral form. The hyrax has four toes on the front foot and three on the hind foot, and the feet are flat. Its front teeth resemble those of a rodent, and its molars those of the rhinoceros. In many respects it is a most primitive and generalised little animal, preserving the ancestral form more or less faithfully since Tertiary days in the shelter ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... children in my tent forgot me and dashed out with the rest. I could not doubt the cause of the clamor. This was the morning of the warriors' return; and getting the knife in my teeth, I began filing furiously at the ropes about my wrists. Man is not a rodent; but under stress of necessity and with instruments of his own designing, he can do something to remedy his human helplessness. To the din of clamoring voices outside were added the shouts of approaching warriors, the galloping of a multitude ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... noticed in their structure and development. The peculiar structure of the enlarged heads of the warrior termites was particularly noticeable. Some had a formidable head provided with tentacles and powerful rodent clippers—as well as the peculiar whitish cuirasses in sections of the body. The workers had more normal shapes, the head being better proportioned with ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... contact with it. Now, by the amazing irony of fate, who weaves stranger dramas than could ever be set on censored stages, for they both take hundreds of years to unravel themselves, and are of the most unedifying character, Turkey, the rodent cancer, has been infected by another with greater organisation for devouring; the disease of Ottomanism is threatened by a more deadly hungerer, and Prussianism has inserted its crab-pincers into the cancer that came out of Asia. Those claws are already deeply ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... These laths, one-eighth of an inch thick, two inches wide, and just the length of the box; two at the bottom, and two at the top, were securely nailed to the cornerposts; thus completing a package which was cheap, strong, light, durable, rodent and insect-proof. With a capacity of a half-bushel, it weighed only five pounds. Filled with cubes, the gross weight was but thirty-five pounds. An ideal package, which could be piled high in transportation or store-house without injury; the upright ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... disease carried by rats of the genus Mastomys; endemic in portions of West Africa; infection occurs through direct contact with or consumption of food contaminated by rodent urine or fecal matter containing virus particles; fatality rate can ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... Jerboa in the Zoological Garden of Berlin.—A rare rodent from South Africa, one seldom seen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... called a rat, the animal has no right to the name, although, like the true rat, it is a rodent, and much resembles the rat in size and in the length and colour of its fur. The likeness, however, extends ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... you know that the squirrel and the rat are very near relations, and that they both belong to the Rodent family?" ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... lop-eared this line was plainly bowed inwards. In one specimen there was an additional molar tooth on each side of the upper jaw, between the molars and premolars; but these two teeth did not correspond in size; and as no rodent has seven molars, this is merely a monstrosity, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... shouting and a group ran across his path, chasing a small rodent. He heard a wild tumult begin, minutes later. When he passed the spot where they had stopped, a fight was going on, ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... soon?" Edwardson asked, his brown rodent's eyes on the indicator. The men didn't answer him. After two months together in space their conversational powers were exhausted. They weren't interested in Cassel's undergraduate ...
— The Hour of Battle • Robert Sheckley
... superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats, Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our 'Homo', as one ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... who had landed with their fowling-pieces, were fortunate in shooting a capybora, a rodent animal as large as a middling-sized pig. Soon afterwards they knocked over a couple of little peccaries, which furnished a welcome addition to the supper to all hands. The officers and men collected as before ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... both cases. Still, when we come to examine the more intimate underlying structure of the two animals, a profound fundamental difference at once exhibits itself. The one is distinctly a true squirrel, a rodent of the rodents, externally adapted to an arboreal existence; the other is equally a true phalanger, a marsupial of the marsupials, which has independently undergone on his own account very much the same adaptation, for very much the same reasons. Just so a dolphin looks ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the skin to a mouse in motion—not a particularly quieting thought to certain members of the fair sex! The origin of the word rat is less certain, but it may have been derived from the root of the Latin word radere, to scratch, or rodere, to gnaw. Rodent is derived from the latter term. Cat is also in doubt, but is first recognised in catalus, a diminutive of canis, a dog. It was applied to the young of almost any animal, as we use the words pup, kitten, cub, and so forth. Bear is the result of tongue-twisting from the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... tenderly, while at the same time his eyes were everywhere about the room and he was listening with the wary alertness of a rodent. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... across his shoulders and past his cheek he uttered a blood-curdling yell. A big wave surged up into the recesses of the cleft and was flung off in a drenching shower on to the forecastle. It nearly swept Watts into the next world, and it drove every rodent in that exposed place back to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... admitted. "In fact, I may say that I'm very, very fond of tree-buds. But I'm a bird. And of course everybody knows that you're a rodent." ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... citizen who had already lost $50,000 in gambling houses, should be selected as the recipient of such a momentous opportunity. Moreover, he knew very well that gentlemen in gambling houses were never introduced at all. He thought he detected the odor of a rodent. He naively inquired why, if all these things were so, Nelson and his friend were not already yet millionaires two or three times? The answer was at once forthcoming that they had been, but also had ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... to wound the feelings of the lower orders of creation by the opprobrious use of such epithets as ass, donkey, cat, mule, pig, goose, monkey, and so on. Picture the mental torture and degradation undergone by the self-respecting rodent who overhears the contemptuous exclamation, "Rats!" Realise, if you can, the stigma attached to the hard-working order of garden annelids when, possibly in their very presence, one human being addresses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... locality extends the known range of this species northward a distance of approximately 100 miles. Previously it had been recorded from only as far north as Alta Mira, Tamaulipas (Goldman, N. Amer. Fauna, 43:54, September 23, 1918). This specimen was trapped on February 16 in a rodent runway in dense grass in ...
— Mammals from Tamaulipas, Mexico • Rollin H. Baker
... most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous moles and hedgehogs, or the bats, could claim our ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... high collar at a time when it was completely out of fashion. Well, one day this very woman was shown into my consulting-room. When the footman was gone she suddenly tore off the upper part of her dress. 'For Gods sake do something for me!' she cried. Then I saw what the trouble was. A rodent ulcer was eating its way upwards, coiling on in its serpiginous fashion until the end of it was flush with her collar. The red streak of its trail was lost below the line of her bust. Year by year it had ascended and she had ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had a chance to find out, for the android walked past him and continued up the stairs. Stenciled on the back of its uniform were the words RODENT CONTROL DIVISION. This particular android, Barrent realized, was programmed only to look for rats and mice. The presence of a stowaway had made no impression on it. Presumably the other androids ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... placed his hand upon the floor it touched something which yielded to the pressure. Involuntarily he drew it back and placed himself instinctively in an attitude of defence. He hated vermin of every kind, and this he instantly resolved was a rodent of some description. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have turned back. But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the forest voices. He crept on, still looking now and again over his shoulder to see ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... energy are the inhabitants of Leeds carrying out their campaign against rats that it is considered unsafe for any rodent under three years old to venture out alone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... a rat and his wife, folk of noble race, who had one beautiful daughter. They were exceedingly proud of her charms, and dreamed, as parents will, of the grand marriage she was sure to make in time. Proud of his pure rodent blood, the father saw no son-in-law more to be desired than a young rat of ancient lineage, whose attentions to his daughter were very marked. This match, however, brilliant as it was, seemed not to the mother's taste. Like many people who think themselves ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... get away with that everywhere. Our orchard is far enough away from the nursery that we don't have any rodent damage. We have had some trouble from skunks, and they finally find out that the nuts are in there in a row where we have planted them, and they go right down and get them. But we have no trouble from mice or rats. We are far away from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... forest, darkly, and from its depths came those nameless sounds that are a part of the night life of the jungle—the rustling of leaves in the wind, the rubbing together of contiguous branches, the scurrying of a rodent, all magnified by the darkness to sinister and awe-inspiring proportions; the hoot of an owl, the distant scream of a great cat, the barking of wild dogs, attested the presence of the myriad life she could not see—the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... forecast, and confidence. None watching him as we did could fail to sympathize with him; and I fancy that in practical weather wisdom no government forecaster with all his advantages surpasses this little Alaska rodent, every hair ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... stalagmite; numerous fragments of human bones, crania, femora, tibiae, humeri, and radii were found in this layer, and in that of the subjacent clay. In many cases the medullary orifice had been enlarged to make it easier to get out the marrow. It is impossible to attribute this to a rodent, for the bones gnawed by animals of that kind present a regular series of marks. The conclusion is inevitable: these bones, alike of men and of animals, were ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... ground like a hawk that has sighted some napping rodent, and so near did he come that by the time he had leveled off, his wheels were almost touching the ground—and wheels must not touch when one is screaming through space at the rate of a hundred and forty ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... bottoms. Of the singular entry, "rat gnawing a gaspipe," the firemen state that it is common for rats to gnaw leaden service pipes, for the purpose, it is supposed, of getting at the water, and in this instance the gray rodent labored under a mistake, and let out the raw material of the opposite element. Intoxication is a fruitful cause of fires, especially in public houses ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... nauseam, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of tropical forest trees. (That pin, in particular, is now a well-worn classic.) The squirrel, once more, celebrated for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent standard, uses his pretty little paws as veritable hands, by which he can grasp a nut or fruit all round, and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of its true shape and properties. Throughout the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and thin. He dropped at the middle, but showed vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. His hair was black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. His eyes were small and very shrewd; his manner was humble. He had a monotonous inflection and rather chanted in a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... hay. From this various underground passages start which lead to the storerooms, which are three or four in number. It is to these that the Vole bears his harvest. Each compartment is large enough to contain four or five kilogrammes of roots, so that the little rodent finds himself at the end of the season the proprietor of about fifteen kilogrammes of food in reserve. He would have enough to enable him to revel in abundance if he were able to reckon without his neighbours. This diligent animal has in fact one terrible ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... surprisingly short time he became accustomed to the situation and found himself ravenously hungry, for the strain of the last twelve hours had burned up tissue. He took a biscuit out of his knapsack and began nibbling it, as became a true rodent. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to the rodent," he said, "that will make him turn over in his grave, wherever that ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... have it too—lest a worse thing befall you as it befell the guileless young Jerseyman on our ship. After he had paid out a considerable sum on being beaten—by just one card—upon the playing of his seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Taug, though, and told him what the others were planning, and the great bull stamped upon the ground and roared. His bloodshot eyes blazed with wrath, his upper lip curled up to expose his fighting fangs, and the hair upon his spine stood erect, and then a rodent scurried across the open and Taug sprang to seize it. In an instant he seemed to have forgotten his rage against the enemies of his friend; but such is the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... composition of this favorite edible; but statisticians usually admit that hogmeat forms the staple. Doctor KANE speaks in glowing terms of the excellence of rats when mixed with due proportions of walrus blubber, and cut out in frozen chunks, probably with a cold-chisel. Why this fierce rodent should make more savory meat than the innocent kitten, does not appear. The latter is certainly much nicer to play with, in the ante-mortem state. But this is a digression. Returning, therefore, not to the mutton, but to the pork, consider the distinctive habits of both pig and Boy at ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... was Commander da Cunha (of the Brazilian Navy), a capital sportsman and delightful companion. They found a deepish pond a hundred yards or so long and thirty or forty across. It was tenanted by the small caymans and by capybaras— the largest known rodent, a huge aquatic guinea-pig, the size of a small sheep. It also swarmed with piranhas, the ravenous fish of which I have so often spoken. Undoubtedly the caymans were subsisting largely on these piranhas. But the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... with a loud patter of feet, heading straight for the Jaguar, of whose presence it was unaware. Suma saw it just in time to raise a massive paw in order to avoid contact with the lowly creature, but when she lowered the great foot it was directly upon the rodent's tail for it had stopped as soon as it had reached the protection of the canes. Of course this calamity was infinitely worse than the noise that had first frightened it and the rat promptly began to squeak with a lustiness that was surprising, the shrill voice carrying ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... and why? Because, though not racially a temerarious, I nevertheless appertain to the masculine sex, and consequentially my heart is not capable of contracting at the mere aspect of a rodent. This is not to blow the triumphant trumpet of sexual superiority, but to prove a simple undenied fact by dint ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... relative the viscacha, are two little animals of the rodent, or grass-eating kind, that inhabit the very highest mountains of Peru and Chili. They are nearly of the same size, and each about as big as a rabbit, which in habits they very much resemble. They ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Sam laughed, for the frightened rodent scampered up the tree and ran out upon a heavy branch, where he whisked from sight and then back again, chattering in such a lively fashion that it was plain he had suffered no inconvenience from the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... animal, larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails, which made them strikingly resemble the squirrel, but in cunning and deviltry they were much ahead of that quick-witted rodent. I have known them to empty in one night a keg of spikes in the storehouse in Yamhill, distributing them along the stringers of the building, with apparently no other purpose than amusement. We anticipated great fun ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... plants, although there might be some. There are a few species of rodent-like animals—they're scavengers—and a herbivore we called the woods goat. The prowlers are the dominant form of life on Ragnarok and I suspect their intelligence is a good deal higher than we would like ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... traps or the new scientific poison baits that domestic pets will not eat. There is also the old farm method of mixing equal parts of plaster of Paris and corn meal, an entree harmless in itself but with fatal results for the invading rodent. In summer there is the possibility of a plague of ants. For this there is now a cheap and scientific ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... the animal has no right to the name, although, like the true rat, it is a rodent, and much resembles the rat in size and in the length and colour of its fur. The likeness, however, extends ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... the boat with our guns, ready to shoot all that came to the edge of the stream—the habits of both animals, when hard-pressed, being to take to the water. We had not long to wait. The first arrival was a Paca, a reddish, nearly tail-less rodent, spotted with white on the sides, and intermediate in size and appearance between a hog and a hare. My first shot did not take effect; the animal dived into the water and did not reappear. A second was brought down by my companion as ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... some of the mud. Rick reached down and splashed a handful on his face. It was warm. He saw a wet black head emerge from under the duck blind and speed for shore. It was a startled water rat. Alerted by the small splash of their coming, the rodent decided to take better cover. Then they were at the corner of the blind where the ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... instanced the eye of the cuttle-fish as not only analogous to, but also homologous with, the eye of a true fish—that is to say, the eye of a mollusk with the eye of a vertebrate. And he has also instanced the remarkable resemblance of a shrew to a mouse—that is, of an insectivorous mammal to a rodent—not to mention other cases. In the chapter alluded to these instances of homology, alleged to occur in different branches of the tree of life, were considered with reference to the process of organic evolution as a fact: ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... joints all quaked and knocked together, As they packed their Saratogas in lugubrious despair. It was ever their misfortune to be pillaged by extortion, And they thought they smelled a rodent on the ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of food conservers are the hamsters, members of the great rodent family. They have made their dwellings most comfortable and even luxurious in arrangement and furnishings. Like wealthy farmers, they are not satisfied with comfortable dwellings only, but they too must have spacious barns adjoining ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... a little ship-shape again Redwood went and stared at the huge misshapen corpse. The brute lay on its side, with its body slightly bent. Its rodent teeth overhanging its receding lower jaw gave its face a look of colossal feebleness, of weak avidity. It seemed not in the least ferocious or terrible. Its fore-paws reminded him of lank emaciated hands. Except for one neat round hole with a scorched rim on either side of its neck, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... abundant here. 3rd, The lower jaw of some large animal which, from the molar teeth, I should think belonged to the Edentata; 4th, some large molar teeth which in some respects would seem to belong to an enormous rodent; 5th, also some smaller teeth belonging to the same order. If it interests you sufficiently to unpack them, I shall be very curious to hear something about them. Care must be taken in this case not to confuse the tallies. They are mingled ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides an acre into a hundred fragments,—ever spurred on to his banquet by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the Revolution, will some ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... centiped stowed away in the hold; but one of them I drove out of the ship, and the other I caught. This is how it was: for the first one with infinite pains I made a trap, looking to its capture and destruction; but the wily rodent, not to be deluded, took the hint and got ashore the day ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... resinous gum of the hiawa-tree. Acouri, one of the agutis; a rodent about the size of a rabbit. Acuero, a species of palm. Aeta, a palm of great size; it may reach a hundred feet before the leaves begin. Ai, the three-toed sloth. Albicore, a fish closely related to the tunny. Anhinga, the darter or snake-bird; a cormorant-like ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... animals the chief in Australia is the 'possum (which is not really an opossum, but is somewhat like that American rodent, and so got its name), and the koala, or native bear. Why this little animal was called a "bear" it is hard to say, for it is not in the least like a bear. It is about the size of a very large and fat cat, is covered with a very thick, soft fur, and its face ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... genera grouped in several distinct families—such, e.g., as the family of mice and rats (Muridae), of squirrels (Sciuridae), of guinea-pigs and spine-bearing porcupines (Hystricidae), &c. The largest form of rodent is the capybara (or river-hog of the Rio de la Plata),—which is preyed on by the jaguar. Though a near ally of the little guinea-pig, it is as large as a hog. Amongst the more interesting rodents ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... but in like conditions, has produced in the end very similar results in both cases. Still, when we come to examine the more intimate underlying structure of the two animals, a profound fundamental difference at once exhibits itself. The one is distinctly a true squirrel, a rodent of the rodents, externally adapted to an arboreal existence; the other is equally a true phalanger, a marsupial of the marsupials, which has independently undergone on his own account very much the same adaptation, for ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... rodent, indeed, at that instant emerged from the wreckage of what had once been a copper cauldron near by, and walked slowly away towards a slope of dust garnished with broken bottles and abandoned cabbage stalks. The Prophet shuddered and longed to flee, but the two ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... and in a published discourse he has said of him: "He read men and women as great scholars read books. He took life at first hand, and not filtered through alphabets....He would get what he wanted out of a book as dexterously as a rodent will get the meat of a nut out of its shell.... He handled his rapidly acquired knowledge so like an adept in book-lore that one might have thought he was born in an alcove and cradled on a book-shelf." Dr. Bigelow was so frequently in Dr. Holmes's thought in the latter days that ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... instance, whether the Australian marsupials, which are divided into groups differing but little from each other, and feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse and others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and rodent mammals, could successfully compete with these well-developed orders. In the Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification in an early and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... direction of the trail to the Mandanes. The children in my tent forgot me and dashed out with the rest. I could not doubt the cause of the clamor. This was the morning of the warriors' return; and getting the knife in my teeth, I began filing furiously at the ropes about my wrists. Man is not a rodent; but under stress of necessity and with instruments of his own designing, he can do something to remedy his human helplessness. To the din of clamoring voices outside were added the shouts of approaching warriors, the galloping of a multitude ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... suddenly and it seemed that the muscles pulsated with an accession of energy. Then one leg was stretched forth spasmodically. There was a convulsive heave as the lungs drew in a first long breath, and, with that, an astonished and very much alive rodent scrambled to its feet, blinking wondering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... edible plants, although there might be some. There are a few species of rodent-like animals—they're scavengers—and a herbivore we called the woods goat. The prowlers are the dominant form of life on Ragnarok and I suspect their intelligence is a good deal higher than we would ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... can't get away with that everywhere. Our orchard is far enough away from the nursery that we don't have any rodent damage. We have had some trouble from skunks, and they finally find out that the nuts are in there in a row where we have planted them, and they go right down and get them. But we have no trouble from mice or rats. We are far ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... lapsed into a pose of deep concentration, like a two-bit swami. Cam noticed a tiny, rodent-type nose thrusting itself up from Everett's side pocket. "Fear ... I detect great apprehension—panic—hysteria verging on the loss of reason ... third booth this side ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... different sorts of animals which the doctor wished to examine or to add to his museum. There were among them three monkeys, a titi, a minas leonidas (a miniature lion—a curious little creature), a spider-monkey with white whiskers; besides a paca (a small rodent which burrows in the ground), and an opossum with a prehensile tail, which we saw with half-a-dozen little ones on its back. The doctor observed that, having no pouch, it thus carries its young, and is from this circumstance called Dorsigereas, or "back-bearing." The young ones were clinging on ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... development; and in the hyrax (or "coney") he has one more of those living fossils, or primitive survivors, which still fairly preserve the ancestral form. The hyrax has four toes on the front foot and three on the hind foot, and the feet are flat. Its front teeth resemble those of a rodent, and its molars those of the rhinoceros. In many respects it is a most primitive and generalised little animal, preserving the ancestral form more or less faithfully since Tertiary days in the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... such a menace to the hogs that they climbed the wall at the high ground and disappeared in the country beyond. And after them went the cowardly dingoes that preyed on their young. Rodent animals, more difficult to hunt, and a species of small kangaroo furnished him occupation and food until they, too, emigrated, when he was forced to follow; he was now a carnivorous animal, no longer satisfied ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... I will dispose of him first. Captain Ezra Triplett was a hard-bitten mariner. In fact, he was, I think, the hardest-bitten mariner I have ever seen. He had been bitten, according to his own tell, man-and-boy, for fifty-two years, by every sort of insect, rodent and crustacean in existence. He had had smallpox and three touches of scurvy, each of these blights leaving its autograph. He had lost one eye in the Australian bush where, naturally, it was impossible to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... absent. North and South America, perhaps, present one or two exceptions to the last rule, but they are readily susceptible of explanation. Thus, in Australia, the later Tertiary mammals are marsupials (possibly with exception of the Dog and a Rodent or two, as at present). In Austro-Columbia the later Tertiary fauna exhibits numerous and varied forms of Platyrrhine Apes, Rodents, Cats, Dogs, Stags, Edentata, and Opossums; but, as at present, no Catarrhine Apes, no Lemurs, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that it is usually safe to avoid one who pretends to be a friend without having any reason to be. It wasn't safe in this instance, however; for the cat went after that departing rodent, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the nitrogen bulb they stood in the cell of the dead man, gathered about the cage of the rat—a prison within a prison. After the first start caused by the needle prick, the rodent again shrank back into its corner. For perhaps ten minutes it remained thus, and then it began to exhibit signs of uneasiness. It stood up on its haunches and began to bite at the wires of the cage. It squeaked, more as though ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... one time supposed to be connecting links between groups, belong altogether to one group, and not at all to the other. For example, the aye-aye[103] (Chiromys Madagascariensis). {108} was till lately considered to be allied to the squirrels, and was often classed with them in the rodent order, principally on account of its dentition; at the same time that its affinities to the lemurs and apes were admitted. The thorough investigation into its anatomy that has now been made, demonstrates that it has no more essential ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... However it is assuredly not an otter, but is doubtless an unfinished or rudely executed ground squirrel, of which animal it conveys in a general way a good idea, the characteristic attitude of this little rodent, sitting up with paws extended in front, being well displayed. Carvings of small rodents in similar attitudes are exhibited in Stevens's "Flint Chips," p. 428, Figs. 61 and 62. Stevens's Fig. 61 evidently represents ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... it was all utterly insane and incomprehensible. A rodent, looking like a prairie dog, a little; but plainly possessing a high order of intelligence. And a voice whose soothingly familiar words were more repugnant somehow, simply because they could never belong in a place as eerie ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... inspect the stone-heaps, especially those which come from the quarry-works. Here we often find the Field-mouse sitting on a grass mattress, nibbling acorns, almonds, olive-stones and apricot-stones. The Rodent varies his diet: to oily and farinaceous foods he adds the Snail. When he is gone, he has left behind him, under the overhanging stones, mixed up with the remains of other victuals, an assortment of empty shells, sometimes plentiful enough to remind me of the heap of Snails which, cooked ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... home, it seemed. He was a pitiful little rodent, and it was a shame to torment him; but Hal stuck to him for ten or twenty minutes longer, arguing and insisting—until finally the little rodent bolted for the door, and made his escape in an automobile. "You can go to the Chief of Police ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... your jig round that if you've got to, and get it over, and then perhaps we can go on and not waste any more time over rubbish-heaps. Can we eat a door-mat? Or sleep under a door-mat? Or sit on a door-mat and sledge home over the snow on it, you exasperating rodent?" ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... easily noticed in their structure and development. The peculiar structure of the enlarged heads of the warrior termites was particularly noticeable. Some had a formidable head provided with tentacles and powerful rodent clippers—as well as the peculiar whitish cuirasses in sections of the body. The workers had more normal shapes, the head being ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
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