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Later in the winter, I gave up on the trap on the log. I had not caught a thing in any of my traps. I knew early on that my method was not something that was working. But I could think of nothing else to do. One day maybe in February when much of the snow had melted in a warm spell, I discovered a Muskrat run closer to home in the channel, dividing the swamp from the town.
The water was often low in the winter, probably because the locks of the dam at the north-west end of the lake were left open in the fall, when people no longer had to worry if their boats grounded out on sand-bars. This low water left a wide mud flat before it reached the ice in the center, and a track in the exposed mud showed that Muskrat was using the trail. I placed my trap on the trail as a foot catch without any apple.
It worked. The next morning I found that I had caught a Muskrat. But there was a problem. A Muskrat had been in the trap. It had worn a groove in the icy mud, walking around and round the stick at chains length. But now - what was in the trap was only a foot. The Muskrat had chewed its foot off. This was enough for me and the end of my trapping career. I was told that the muskrat would re-grow its foot, but I am still not sure if this is true, or I was only told such to make me feel better.
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