La Mole

“ It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. ”

“ Mole reached down a lantern from a nail on the wall and lit it... and the Rat, looking round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore-court. A garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller; for the Mole, who was a tidy animal when at home, could not stand having his ground kicked up by other animals into little runs that ended in earth-heaps. ”

“ You must know, then, that the mole’s body bears about the same relation to his forefeet, as a boiler does to a steam engine, which is admirably adjusted in all its parts, working smoothly and noiselessly, like a thing of life—polished and beautiful in all its bearings and put together so skillfully that no human thought could better it. That is to say, the only wonderful thing about a mole is his hand. ”

“ A Mole appearing on the upper side of the right temple, in either sex, denotes another on the extremity of the belly; signifying to a man a steady fortune, and a continuation of riches; and to a woman, a happy marriage, and a peaceful life.
A man or woman having a Mole near the eye-brow on the right temple, denotes another on the right loin, signifying the party will gain much esteem, favour, love and advantage, and considerable riches, by legacies, dowries, and reversions. ”

“ One would naturally suppose that in a country village where boys and girls are daily going to and from school, they would all have been familiar with this little creature, but when the question was asked if they had ever seen a dead mole, only fifteen children out of ninety had seen one, and only three had ever seen a live one. ”

“ It must not be supposed, however, that eating and sleeping make up the whole life-history of the Mole. Very early in the year a time comes when he feels strange emotions stirring within him, and then he goes off gallantly, in his velvet coat, in search of a partner in his lonely encampment. ”

“ The ordinary mole hills, so plentiful in our fields, present nothing particularly worthy of notice. They are merely the shafts through which the quadruped miner ejects the material which it has scooped out, as it drives its many tunnels through the soil, and if they be carefully opened after the rain has consolidated the heap of loose material, nothing more will be discovered than a simple hole leading into the tunnel. But let us Page 208 strike into one of the large tunnels, as any mole catcher will teach us, and follow it up to the real abode of the animal. ”

“ Then the Mole heard him saying quietly to himself, ‘Hullo! hullo! here—is—a—go!’
‘What’s up, Ratty?’ asked the Mole.
‘SNOW is up,’ replied the Rat briefly; ‘or rather, DOWN. It’s snowing hard.’
The Mole came and crouched beside him, and, looking out, saw the wood that had been so dreadful to him in quite a changed aspect. Holes, hollows, pools, pitfalls, and other black menaces to the wayfarer were vanishing fast, and a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up everywhere, that looked too delicate to be trodden upon by rough feet. ”

“ It is not likely that any of us will ever catch many moles. If they are troublesome in your lawn, you and the neighbour boys can do some trapping with mole traps. They are of a kind specially fitted to outwit the mole in his tunnel, and directions accompany each trap. ”

“ Indeed the whole life of the mole is one of fury, and he eats like a starving tiger, tearing and rending his prey with claws and teeth, and crunching audibly the body of the worm between the sharp points. Magnify the mole to the size of the lion and you will have a beast more terrible than the world has yet seen. ”

“ Now this is exactly what the mole is always doing. The earth which it throws up is fresh, rich earth from down below, which the roots have not reached. It is just what the failing grass requires. And if the farmer rakes the molehills down, so as to spread this earth evenly over the surface of the field, he finds that it forms a top-dressing quite as good as any he could apply himself. So instead of looking upon the mole as one of his enemies, he ought to include it in the list of his laborers. ”

“ The Moles are known to be the best burrowers in the world: since they can pass under the surface of the ground as fast as a man can dig after them, or even faster. In England, the common mole is well-known—too well, in fact—for it is the very pest of the farmer; and the damage done by it to the herbage is very considerable indeed—of greater amount than that occasioned by any other wild animal.
In America, where there are several species of moles, their habits are similar; and the common American mole is very like its European congener in every respect. ”

“ Mole, I'm afraid they're in trouble. Little Portly is missing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though he never says much about it.'
'What, that child?' said the Mole lightly. 'Well, suppose he is; why worry about it? He's always straying off and getting lost, and turning up again; he's so adventurous. But no harm ever happens to him. Everybody here-abouts knows him and likes him, just as they do old Otter, and you may be sure some animal or other will come across him and bring him back again all right. ”

“ To get rid of this he makes his way to the surface from time to time, breaks through, and pushes the troublesome rubbish out with his nose, producing those well-known “Mole-hills” of loose earth which so commonly betray his progress in our fields and meadows. The depth at which the Mole works in his hunting-grounds depends very much upon circumstances. In light and newly-worked soils, after rain, when the earthworms especially come to the surface, the Mole will travel along in a sort of shallow trench in pursuit of his prey. ”

“ The fur of the mole is very short, fine, and close, and is as smooth and soft as Genoa velvet.
Moles display a high degree of instinct in the skilful construction of their subterranean fortresses. Their site is not indicated by those little mounds of loose earth, which we see raised up at night, and which mark their hunting excursions, but under a hillock reared by themselves, and protected by a wall, bank, or roots of a tree. The earth is well worked, so as to make it compact and hard, and galleries are formed which communicate with each other. ”

“ The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea. ”

“ To an artistic eye, the mole in his velvet coat is handsomer than the robin, which is at best a bouncing, bourgeois sort of bird, a true suburbanite, with all the defects of his class. But my friend has no mercy on the mole because he destroys her garden,—her garden which she despoils every morning, gathering its fairest blossoms to droop and wither in her crowded rooms. To wax compassionate over a bird, and remain hard as flint to a beast, is possible only to humanity. ”

“ However slight may be their personal acquaintance with the Mole himself, his engineering work is only too evident to every possessor of a garden. He may, perchance, live in a neighbour's land, but from time to time we shall find some morning that he has driven a tunnel right across the lawn or the tennis-court, marring its hitherto fair surface with an ugly ridge and at intervals a little heap of raw earth. If we are sufficiently self-controlled to dissemble our inward rage, we may get some countervailing good out of the calamity. ”

“ The Mole is a Mole no longer, but a greenish horror, putrid, hairless, shrunk into a round, greasy mass. The thing must have undergone careful manipulation to be thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its fur. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? ”

“ Wet or stony land does not suit the mole, because it cannot dig its rooms and galleries in such soil. Fertile fields that have been cultivated and loosened by spade and plough are its favorite haunts. It is very wonderful that such a small, soft creature can move and disturb so much earth.
Every mole lives alone and builds for itself an elaborate and comfortable home. This house consists of a central dome, where the earth is well packed and beaten to prevent the percolation of water. A bed made of leaves, grass, and vegetable stems is placed in this room. ”

“ Dream planet-struck by the grape’s round wine-red star.
Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.
{49} MOLE.
TUNNELLED in solid blackness creeps
The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps,
He knows not which, but tunnels on
Through ages of oblivion;
Until at last the long constraint
Of each hand-wall is lost, and faint
Comes daylight creeping from afar,
And mole-work grows crepuscular.
Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees
Men as strange as walking trees? ”

“ While the mole is engaged in travelling, particularly in loose earth, the soil for a time clings to the fur; but at tolerably regular intervals the creature gives the skin a sharp and powerful shake, which throws off at once the whole of the mould that has collected upon the fur. Some amount of dust still remains, for, however clean the fur of a mole may seem to be, if the creature be placed for an hour in water, a considerable quantity of earth will be dissolved away and fall to the bottom of the vessel. ”

“ When a hill of enlarged dimensions is thus discovered, we may be almost certain of finding the nest, or den of the mole near it, by digging to a sufficient depth. The fur of the mole is admirably adapted from its softness and short close texture for defending the animal from subterraneous damp, which is always injurious, more or less to non-amphibious animals; and in this climate, no choice of situation could entirely guard against it. It is a singular fact that there are no moles in Ireland. May not the dampness of the climate account for their not thriving there?—Edinburgh Lit. ”

“ The passages are made by the Mole in his search after the earth-worms and grubs, on which he lives; and the molehills are formed by the earth he scrapes out of his runs. These molehills do a great deal of mischief to grass lands, as they render the ground very difficult to mow; and on this account mole-catchers are employed to fix traps in the ground, so that when the mole is running through one of his passages, he passes through the trap, which instantly springs up out of{77} the ground with the poor Mole in it. The female Mole makes her nest at a distance from the male’s castle. ”

“ They had seen the ridges in the meadows beneath which the Moles had their runways, and they knew that [Pg 164] when the Moles were making these long streets under ground, they had to cut an opening through the grass once in a while and throw the loose earth out. This new mound in the forest looked exactly like those in the meadow, so they decided there must be a Mole in the neighborhood.
If that were so, somebody should call upon him and get acquainted; but how could they call? Mrs. Red Squirrel said: "Why can't some of you people who are so clever at digging, burrow down and find him?" ”

“ Moles are among the most prolific of mammals; and, in fact, were it not so, their race would have been long ago exterminated. We may, perhaps, venture to say, that by multiplying so prodigiously, they wish to do us a service in spite of ourselves. How tender is the solicitude of nature for the ungrateful human species!
To see the marvellous qualities ascribed to the mole by the ancients, one would suppose that they had made him the object of their special study. ”

“ I also gave him a pan of water, as I remembered seeing a plan of a mole's burrow which always includes a place for water. It was a really painful sight to watch the creature feeding; he pounced upon a worm with the fury of a tiger, and holding it in his mouth, tore it to pieces with his sharp claws and rapidly devoured all the pieces, and snuffing about to make sure he had quite finished it, he then darted off to seek another. The mole has a most voracious appetite and dies very quickly if unable to obtain food. I was interested to watch the bustling, active life of the little creature ”

“ See what wonderful front paws the mole has—so broad, so very strong, and armed with such great, stout claws. They are partly pickaxes, and partly spades, which can tear away the earth and fling it up into molehills with the most wonderful speed. The rapidity with which a mole can dig is really marvelous. ”

“ CHAPTER LV The Mole—The Two Moors—Djmah of Tangier—House of God—British Consul—Curious Spectacle—The Moorish House—Joanna Correa—Ave Maria.
So we rode to the Mole and landed. This Mole consists at present of nothing more than an immense number of large loose stones, which run about five hundred yards into the bay; they are part of the ruins of a magnificent pier which the English, who were the last foreign nation which held Tangier, destroyed when they evacuated the place. The Moors have never attempted to repair it; the surf at high water breaks over it with great fury. ”