However, handsome is as handsome does, and the boy who kills a bat has killed one of our most useful animals and deserves to be bitten by all the mosquitoes, and bumped by all the June bugs, and crawled over by all the cockroaches, and to have his clothes corrupted by all the moths, that the dead bat would have eaten if it had been allowed to live.
After I had supposedly finished this chapter I was reading it aloud at the dinner-table to the defenceless Band, one Sunday afternoon about two o’clock, on a freezing day in December. Just as I was in the midst of the masterpiece, one of my audience suddenly woke up and said, “There’s a bat!” Sure enough, outside, in the glass-enclosed porch, was flying a large brown house-bat. Back and forth it went through the freezing air, as swiftly as if it were summer. I was much touched by this beautiful tribute to my authorship, and went out and managed to catch my visitor when he alighted. The bat however was ungrateful enough to bite the hand that had praised him, and I will end this account by writing of knowledge that a bat’s tiny teeth are as sharp as needles and that he is always willing to use them.
Not dangerous like the skunk, or brave like the raccoon, or big like the bear, the least of the Sleepers is the best-looking of them all. Shy and solitary, the gentle little jumping mouse is as dainty as he looks. His fur is lead, overlaid with gold deepening to a dark brown on the back, and like the deer-mouse he wears a snowy silk waistcoat and stockings. His strength is in his powerful crooked hind-legs, and his length in his silky tail, which occupies five of his eight inches. Given one jump ahead of any foe that runs, springs, flies, or crawls, and Mr. Jumping Mouse is safe. He patters through the grass by the edge of thickets and weed-patches, like any other mouse, until alarmed. Then with a bound he shoots high into the air, in a leap that will cover from two to twelve feet. It is in this that his long tail plays its part. In a graceful curve, with tip upturned, it balances and guides him through the air in a jump which will cover over forty times his own length, equivalent to a performance of two hundred and forty feet by a human jumper. The instant he strikes, the jumper soars away again like a bird, at right angles to his first jump, and zigzags here and there through the air, so fast and so far as to baffle even the swift hawk and the dogged weasel.
Every day Mr. Jumping Mouse washes and polishes his immaculate self, and draws his long silky tail through his mouth until every hair shines. Mrs. Jumping Mouse is a good mother, and never deserts her babies. If alarmed while feeding them, she will spring through the air with from three to five of them clinging to her for dear life, and carry them safely through all her series of lofty leaps.
The first frost rings the bed-time bell for the jumping mouse. Three feet underground he builds a round nest of dried grass, and lines it with feathers, hair, and down. Then he rolls himself into a round bundle, which he ties up with two wraps of his long tail, and goes to sleep until spring. Of all the Sleepers he is the soundest. Dig him up and he shows no sign of life; but if brought in to a fire, he wakes up and becomes his own lively self once more. Put him out in the cold, and he rolls up and falls asleep again.
One of the Band who holds high office is by way of being a naturalist instead of an explorer or an aviator, as he originally intended. Last summer, in a bit of dried-up marshland near the roadside, he heard strange rustlings. On investigating, he found a family of young jumping mice moving through the grass and feeding on the buds of alder-bushes. They were quite tame, and as they ran out on the ends of the branches, he had a good view of them and finally managed to catch one by the end of his long tail. The mouse bit the boy, but did not even draw blood. Afterwards he seemed to become tamer, although shaking continually. Given a bit of bread, he sat up and nibbled it like a little squirrel; but even as he ate he suddenly had a spasm of fright and died. This death from fright occurs among a number of the more highly strung of the mice-folk, even when they seem to have become perfectly tame. This same young naturalist observed another jumping mouse which, contrary to all the books, took to the water when pursued, and swam nearly as expertly as a muskrat.
So endeth the Chronicle of the Seven Sleepers.