Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers

by John Burroughs

WILD MICE

One of the prettiest and most abundant of our native mice is the deer mouse, also called the white-footed mouse; a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes full of a wild, harmless look. He is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. When disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having none of the cunning or viciousness of the common Old World mouse. He is found in both fields and woods.

It is he who, high in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most delicate hands,—as they were. How long it must have taken the little creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey them up to his fifth-story chamber!

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But the deer mice do not always carry their supplies home in this manner; they often hide them in the nearest convenient place. I have known them to carry a pint or more of hickory nuts and deposit them in a pair of boots standing in the chamber of an outhouse. Near the chestnut-trees they will fill little pocket-like depressions in the ground with chestnuts; in a grain-field they carry the grain under stones; under some cover beneath cherry-trees they collect great numbers of cherry-pits. Hence, when cold weather comes, instead of staying at home like the chipmunk, they gad about hither and thither looking up their supplies. One may see their tracks on the snow everywhere in the woods and fields and by the roadside. The advantage of this way of living is that it leads to activity, and probably to sociability.

One day, on my walk in the woods, I saw at one point the mice-tracks unusually thick around a small sugar-maple. It was doubtless their granary; they had beech-nuts stored there, I’ll warrant. There were two entrances to the cavity of the tree,—one at the base, and one seven or eight feet up. At the upper one, which was only just of the size of a mouse, a squirrel had been trying to break in. He had cut and chiseled the solid wood to the depth of nearly an [p113] inch, and his chips strewed the snow all about. He knew what was in there, and the mice knew that he knew; hence their apparent consternation. They had rushed wildly about over the snow, and, I doubt not, had given the piratical red squirrel a piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice had a hole down into the snow, which perhaps led to some snug den under the ground. Hither they may have been slyly removing their stores while the squirrel was at work with his back turned. One more night and he would effect an entrance: what a good joke upon him if he found the cavity empty! These native mice, I imagine, have to take many precautions to prevent their winter stores being plundered by the squirrels, who live, as it were, from hand to mouth.

The wild mice are fond of bees and of honey, and they apparently like nothing better than to be allowed to take up their quarters in winter in some vacant space in a hive of bees. A chamber just over the bees seems to be preferred, as here they get the benefit of the warmth generated by the insects. One very cold winter I wrapped up one of my hives with a shawl. Before long I noticed that the shawl was beginning to have a very torn and tattered appearance. On examination, I found that a [p114] native mouse had established itself in the top of the hive, and had levied a ruinous tax upon the shawl to make itself a nest. Never was a fabric more completely reduced into its original elements than were large sections of that shawl. It was a masterly piece of analysis. The work of the wheel and the loom was exactly reversed, and what was once shawl was now the finest and softest of wool.

The white-footed mouse is much more common along the fences and in the woods than one would suspect. One winter day I set a mouse-trap—the kind known as the delusion trap—beneath some ledges in the edge of the woods, to determine what species of mouse was most active at this season. The snow fell so deeply that I did not visit my trap for two or three weeks. When I did so, it was literally packed full of white-footed mice. There were seven in all, and not room for another. Our woods are full of these little creatures, and they appear to have a happy, social time of it, even in the severest winters. Their little tunnels under the snow and their hurried leaps upon its surface may be noted everywhere. They link tree and stump, or rock and tree, by their pretty trails. They evidently travel for adventure and to hear the news, as well as for food. They know [p115] that foxes and owls are about, and they keep pretty close to cover. When they cross an exposed place, they do it hurriedly.

The field or meadow mice doubtless welcome the snow. They can now come out of their dens in the ground or beneath the flat stones and lead a more free and active life. The snow is their friend. It keeps off the cold, and it shields their movements from the eyes of their enemies, the owls, hawks, and foxes. Now they can venture abroad from their retreats without fear. They make little tunnels and roadways everywhere over the surface of the ground. They build winter houses under the great drifts. They found little mouse colonies in places where they have never been in summer. The conditions of life with them are entirely changed. They can get at the roots of the grasses, or the various herbs and seeds they feed upon, as well as in the snowless seasons, and without exposure to their enemies.

I fancy they have great times there beneath the drifts. Maybe they have their picnics and holidays then as we have ours in summer. When the drifts disappear in spring, you may often see where they have had their little encampments: a few square yards of the pasture or meadow bottom will look as if a map had been traced upon [p116] it; tunnels and highways running and winding in every direction and connecting the nests of dry grass, which might stand for the cities and towns on the map. These runways are smooth and round like pipes, and only a little larger than the bodies of the mice. I think it is only the meadow field-mouse that lives in this way beneath the snow.