Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

The rat is, as no one will doubt, a very fair climber. He can scamper about anywhere in the roof of a barn or can ascend the Ivy that grow on the house wall, and make the lives of the pigeons in their cotes anything but happy ones. The rabbit, on the other hand, is not usually accounted a climbing animal. A writer in Field describes the astonishment of his sister at seeing a rabbit jump from the bough of a tree, and, picking itself up, “scamper off rather dazed to its warren.” Whenever a rabbit is found in a tree, except when he is carried there by a receding snowdrift. It will be found that, a sloping trunk or other easy method of approach has been made use of. He is, however, very expert at climbing stone walls that bound his fields, and even the wire netting that the farmer vainly imagines will keep him from the choicest crops. We have seen rabbits run up the face of a quarry to their holes toward the top, a feat which we have not found it easy to imitate.