"Why, don't you see? A pig is like an oyster because he can't climb a tree! And that's the reason why we caught him."
"Bah!" exclaimed Andy; "that's a miserable joke, that is."
"Yet you must admit that it is a most happy circumstance that a pig cannot climb a tree, or we should have missed more than one good meal of fresh pork. Yet although we failed to make a pet of the squirrel because he could climb a tree, and of the pig because he could not, we shall make a pet of something or other yet. Of that I am certain."
It was some months later, and not until we were safely established in winter-quarters, that we finally succeeded in our purpose of having something to pet. I was over at Brigade headquarters one day, visiting a friend who had charge of several supply-wagons. Being present while he was engaged in overhauling his stores, I found in the bottom of a large box, in which blankets had been packed away, a whole family of mice. The father of the family promptly made his escape; the mother was killed in the capture, and one little fellow was so injured that he soon died; but the rest, three in number, I took out unhurt. As I laid them in the palm of my hand, they at once struck me as perfect little beauties. They were very young and quite small, being no larger than the end of my finger, with scarcely any fur on them, and their eyes quite shut. Putting them into my pocket and covering them with some cotton which my friend gave me, I started home with my prize. Stopping at the surgeon's quarters on reaching camp, I begged a large empty bottle (which I afterward found had been lately filled with pulverized gum arabic), and somewhere secured an old tin can of the same diameter as the bottle. Then I got a strong twine, went down to my tent, and asked Andy to help me make a cage for my pets, which with pride I took out of my pocket and set to crawling and nosing about on the warm blankets on the bunk.
"What are you going to do with that bottle?" inquired Andy.
"Going to cut it in two with this string," said I, holding up my piece of twine.
"Can't be done!" asserted he.
"Wait and see," answered I.
Procuring a mess-pan full of cold water, and placing it on the floor of the tent near the bunk on which we were sitting, I wound the twine once around the bottle a few inches from the bottom, in such a way that Andy could hold one end of the bottle and pull one end of the twine one way, while I held the other end of the bottle and pulled the other end of the twine the other way, thus causing the twine, by means of its rapid friction, to heat the bottle in a narrow, straight line all around. After sawing away in this style for several minutes, I suddenly plunged the bottle into the pan of cold water, when it at once snapped in two along the line where the twine had passed around it, and as clean and clear as if it had been cut by a diamond. Then, melting off the top of the old tin can by holding it in the fire, I fastened the body of the can on the lower end of the bottle. When finished, the whole arrangement looked like a large long bottle, the upper part of which was glass and the lower tin. In this way I accomplished the double purpose of providing my pets with a dark chamber and a well-lighted apartment, at the same time preventing them from running away. Placing some cotton on the inside of both can and bottle for a bed, and thrusting a small sponge moistened with sweetened water into the neck of the bottle, I then put my pets into their new home. Of course they could not see, for their eyes were not yet open; neither did they at first seem to know how to eat; but as necessity is the mother of invention with mice as well as with men, they soon learned to toddle forward to the neck of the bottle and suck their sweet sponge. In a short time they learned also to nibble at a bit of apple, and by and by could crunch their hard-tack like veritable veterans.
The bottle, as has already been said, had been filled with pulverized gum arabic. Some of this still adhering to the inside of the bottle, was gradually brushed off by their growing fur; and it was amusing to see the little things sit on their haunches and clean themselves of the sticky substance. Sometimes they would all three be busy at the same time, each at himself; and again two of them would take to licking the third, rubbing their little red noses all over him from head to tail in the most amusing way imaginable.