Every one is familiar with the little heaps of earth thrown up by the mole, and called mole-hills. But as the animal itself lives almost entirely underground, comparatively little is known of it; at all events, to the generality of those who see the hills. The mole is not often seen alive; and few who see it suspended among the branches by the professional killer would form any conception of the real character of this subterranean animal.
Meek and quiet as the mole looks, it is one of the fiercest, if not the very fiercest of animals; it labours, eats, fights, and loves as if animated by one of the furies, or rather by all of them together.
MOLE.
Intervals of profound rest alternate with savage action; and according to the accounts of country folks near Oxford, it works and rests at regular intervals of three hours each.
Useful as these creatures are as subsoil drain-makers, they sometimes increase to an inconvenient extent, and then the professed mole-catcher comes into practice, and destroys the moles with an apparatus apparently inadequate to such a purpose. But the mole is easily killed, and pressure he cannot survive; so the traps are formed for the purpose of squeezing the mole, not of smashing or strangling him.
The mole-catchers are in the habit of suspending their victims on branches, mostly of the willow or similar trees; but their object I could never make out, nor could they give me any reason, except that it was the custom.
When a mole is taken out of the ground, very little earth clings to it. There is always some on its great digging claws; but very little indeed on its fur, which is beautifully formed to prevent such accumulation. The fur of most animals “sets” in some definite direction, according to its position on the body; but that of the mole has no particular set, and is fixed almost perpendicularly on the creature’s skin, much like the pile of velvet. Indeed the mole’s fur has much the feel of silk-velvet; and so the title of the “Little gentleman in the velvet coat” is justly applied.
Those small heaps of earth that are so common in the fields, and called mole-hills, are merely the result of the mole’s travelling in search of the earth-worms, on which it principally feeds; and in their structure there is nothing remarkable.
But the great mole-hill, or mole-palace, in which the animal makes its residence, is a very different affair, and complicated in its structure. In it is found a central chamber in which the mole resides; and round this chamber there run galleries or corridors in a regular series, so as to form a kind of labyrinth, by means of which the creature may make its escape, if threatened with danger.