The farmer I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, who is so thrifty about his root crops and so neat, belongs to the Vole family. He lives away over in Siberia and his full name is Arvicola economus. In gathering his crop of roots, he first digs a little trench around them and lays them bare. Then he cleans them off nicely so as not to fill his storehouse with dirt; cuts them up in sizes convenient for carrying, and then hauls them home and piles them up in little cellars made specially for them.
He only takes one piece at a time, walking along backward and pulling it after him with his teeth. He travels long distances in this fashion, going around tufts of grass, stones, and logs that lie in the way. When he gets home, he backs in the front door and into the living-room, and then into the barns which are back of the living-room. There are several of these and they are at the end of a long crooked passage.
Some of the Vole family make a specialty of wheat. One species of these wheat harvesters used to be common in Greece. He made such a nuisance of himself—from the Greek farmer's standpoint—that the Greeks had a special god to get after him; Apollo Myoktonos, "Apollo, Destroyer of Mice."[26] For the vole is just a kind of field-mouse. The runs of these wheat-harvesting voles are eight to twelve inches below the ground, and are connected with the surface by vertical holes. The end of the run is enlarged into a big room for the nest, and there are special rooms leading from the main runway that are used for the storing of the grain. These voles do their harvesting in the evening. Standing on their hind legs and holding to the stock with their little paws as a beaver clasps a tree, they cut off the wheat head with their teeth. They work very fast.
HOW DID THESE FARMERS LEARN TO STORE?
Neither the voles nor any other of these interesting farmers and warehousemen used to get much credit for what they did. The fact that they helped themselves to some of the good things of earth annoyed Man, of course, and then, when it came to the matter of intelligence, conceited Mr. Man said: "Oh, that's just instinct." But nowadays when scientists have begun to study to find out what "instinct" really is, it is thought that man's brother animals, although they are born with more knowledge of how to do things—with more of what we call "instinct"—have also learned by experience just as man did. It is argued that the storing habit was forced on animals wherever the climate cut off the food-supply for a time—either because it was too cold or too hot. The idea of putting something by for a rainy day appealed particularly to the burrowers because they are a timid lot. Not being able to defend themselves very well against their enemies they were obliged to pack up what they could and hurry to some hidden eating-place. That is where the cheek-pouches, which many of them have, come in handy. They are also very industrious, and as the seeds and nuts on which they lived began to ripen, they just couldn't resist the impulse to gather and gather and gather more than they could possibly eat at the time. So, as a result of this habit, food piled up in their underground homes. Then, as they were kept indoors by cold weather or by their enemies, they took to eating more and more from the pantry shelf, and thus the members of the family that were the busiest and, therefore, had the most to eat would naturally survive and leave children of a similar disposition, while the less thrifty would die off.
III. The Long Winter Sleep
Some of these forehanded people, instead of putting their Winter supply of food in the ground, put it on their bones. That is to say, before turning in for the Winter, they get as fat as can be and then live on this fat until Spring. A great advantage of this system of storage is that it is particularly pleasant work—you eat and eat and enjoy your meals, that's all. Another advantage is that you can't be robbed of your store as easily as the hamster, for example, frequently is. You carry it right with you wherever you go.
There are a lot of curious things about this hibernation. Not only will warmth arouse the sleepers but also extreme cold, and after the extreme cold may come another sleep from which the sleepers never awaken; in other words, too much cold kills them. So the object of burying one's self as the ground-hog does, or under the snow as rabbits do, or in hollow caves and trees as Brer Bear does, is to keep from getting too cold. Sometimes two or more "bunk" together, as little pigs do on cold March days. The body of each helps to keep his bedfellows warm.
[IT'S THE COLD THAT MAKES ONE DROWSY]
It is the cold itself that seems to make hibernating animals feel sleepy; just as it does human beings. At a moderate temperature, say 45 or 50 degrees, dormice and hedgehogs will wake up, eat something, and then go to sleep again. The dormouse usually wakes in every twenty-four hours, while the hedgehog's Winter naps are two or three days long. Hunger seems to be the cause of their waking, just as it is with babies. The little dormouse, as the air grows colder, gradually dozes off, and his breathing is very deep and slow. As the temperature rises, he begins to take shorter and more rapid breaths and gradually wakes up. Then, if he is in his own little home under the ground, he feeds on the nuts and other foods that he stored in Autumn and drops off again. He sleeps from five to seven months, depending on the weather.