Harvest mouse

“ It was with the first budding and ripening of the young corn that the harvest mouse tasted the true joy of living. In the hedgerow it had been mere existence; for there had been no real scope for his tail. The grasping portion of it could only encircle the tiniest twigs. Here, Nature herself seemed to have been at pains to suit him. Whichever way he looked, there stretched before him long yellow avenues of pygmy [Pg 123] trees. Had they been passed through a gauge, they could not have better suited his proportions. He could whip his tail round any one of them. ”

“ Besides these parasitic mice, there are a host of field- and forest-mice in this and other countries. One of the best-known English species is the Harvest-mouse, which makes a globular nest of grass in the wheat-fields, attached to stems of corn or weeds. In this the young are born. In winter the mouse lives in holes in banks, and lays up a store of kernels and grain. The Wood-mouse is larger than the former, or than the House-mouse. It is yellowish brown in colour, lays up a great store of winter food, and is itself the favourite prey of the weasel. ”

“ When the mother mouse goes away, she closes up the door of her nest, so no one can see her little ones.
4. The harvest-mouse runs up the corn and grass stalks easily. In climbing, it holds on by its tail as well as by its claws. The way it comes down from its nest is very curious. It twists its tail about the stalk and slides down.
5. Another of the field-mice is the dormouse, that lives in the woods. It has a bushy tail, and makes its nest in hollow trees. It lives upon nuts and fruit. As cold weather comes on, it rolls itself up in a ball, and sleeps until spring. ”

“ All day long the happy pair enjoyed each other’s company aloft, leaping from corn-ear to thistle-head, from thistle-head to poppy, and back again to corn-ear, feasting, frivolling, stalking bluebottles. Their life was one long revel in the sunshine; for the harvest mouse has this distinction also, that, like a Christian, he loves the blue of the sky and sleeps at night.
frivolling.
[Pg 130] But he is wise in his generation, and lives far from the haunts of men. You must be quieter than a mouse if you want to see him. ”

“ The stoat heralded his coming by a stealthy swish that could be heard full twenty yards away. Many a foolish bewildered vole he caught, but never a harvest mouse.
The rat’s approach was a blundering four-footed crescendo, clear to mouse-ears as is the ringing of a horse’s hoofs to man. Little else appeared at all. ”

“ All good stacks come to an end, but, while they last, it is honey for the mouse-folk. Picture to [Pg 9] yourself the basement of a wheat-stack, occupied by a flourishing mouse colony—five hundred tiny souls, super-abundance of food, and no thought for the morrow. The companions of his youth stole into his dream with all the vividness of early impressions. The long-tailed wood-mouse—a handsome fellow this, with great black liquid eyes, and weasel colouring; the harvest-mouse, that Liliputian rustic to whose deft fingers all good mouse-nests are indiscriminately assigned ”

“ The field was flooded with moonlight. On all sides resounded the ominous hum of beetles’ wings. Nature had summoned her burying squad. They had their work cut out, and blundered down from every quarter. For death had been very busy, and it was not the death that needs seeking out. About the centre of the field the ground was stained with smears of half-dried blood. So the beetles came in their thousands, and before morning broke their task was done.
But the harvest mouse did not wait till the morning. The fragments of his nest were empty, and he dared not look to see what the rat was eating. ”

“ Tiny field mouse, that turn’d up nose vixen the shrew,
The harvest mouse, fresh from a settler’s rick,
Were condemn’d by the great ones as not of their clique;
These reclined round a mole hill, and each dipp’d his paw
In a cocoa-nut bowl fill’d with rice, “en pillau.”
And the harvest mouse took most exceeding great pains
To squeak them a stanza in honour of grains.
[p24]
MOUSE’S SONG.
“An ear of corn, a grain of rice,
Banquet rich for simple mice;
A leaf his bed, a hole his house,
Who could hurt a harmless mouse? ”

“ Thus was one unique distinction stolen from the harvest mouse. But to this day the harvest mouse shrugs his furry shoulders and says, that there are plenty of dwarfs with abnormal teeth in his own family, if the museum men want them.
He can afford to be superior, for he has yet another unique distinction left, and that is not likely to be taken from him.
[Pg 120] Of all the four-footed creatures in Great Britain and Ireland, he, and he only, has a prehensile tail. The middle of it he can bend through half a circle, the last half-inch he can wrap completely round a cornstalk. ”

“ Our country wide the field mouse ranges, feeds on roots, grasses and grain, does much harm in fields of Indian corn, in severe weather harms young fruit trees by stripping their bark close to the ground. For their young a simple burrow is dug, with nest at the bottom. Among their enemies are hawks, owls, crows, foxes, cats and weasels. The American harvest-mouse belongs to the south. ”

“ It is quite worth it.
the harvest mouse sat on the top of a
stalk and nibbled his supper.
The harvest mouse sat on the top of a cornstalk and nibbled his supper. His first summer had been most successful. So much had been crowded into it that he could only dimly remember the oat-stack in which he was born. Even the hedgerow seemed difficult to recall. He had lived in that two months, next door to the wood-mouse, and from him he may [Pg 122] have learnt something of the art of nest-building. ”

“ The mouse is a very small animal, with pointed nose and long tail. It has large bright eyes, large ears, strong sharp teeth, and is very timid.
2. The mouse gnaws through the walls and floors of our houses with its sharp, strong teeth. It makes a little nest in a hole. It comes out when all is quiet to look for crumbs, or anything left about that it can eat. It gets into the pantry sometimes.
3. Some mice live in fields and woods. The tiny harvest-mouse makes its nest on a wheat-stalk. It often does great harm to the wheat. ”

“ Where harvest mice live in dense vegetation they make small runways and food piles similar to those of Microtus but in more open areas they leave no perceptible signs. Near Yakima the nest of a harvest mouse was found among the roots of an overturned apple tree. This nest was an irregular ball composed of fine grasses and shredded bark closed above, with a side entrance and a central cavity three inches in diameter. Near Moses Lake three nests of harvest mice were discovered on the ground under cover of a dense growth of tumbleweed, and six live harvest mice were captured in the same area. ”

“ Until about December the young of the year resemble the House Mouse in colour, and may easily be mistaken for it; then from the hind quarters forwards they begin to assume the redder tint. As the adult Harvest Mouse weighs only about a sixth of an ounce, it is not surprising that it should be able to sit on an ear of corn to which its capable little hands and prehensile tail have enabled it to climb with ease. ”

“ And birds of prey take their toll of the feeding multitudes. All through the year animal life finds sanctuary in the cornfield. Underground are the moles; the harvest mouse weaves its nest in the corn-stems; the rabbit makes a stop in the field near the hedge, and eats the green blades. To the ripening corn the fox brings her cubs to play. In the ditches are hedgehogs; everywhere are rats, mice, and shrew-mice. The hare follows secret paths, and there are stoats and weasels seeking prey, and finding it on every side. ”

“ These were the trails of the shaggy-coated, crop-eared, short-legged, shorttailed meadow mouse. This firm crust had opened to him the opportunity of safety in paths that had been before dangerous in the extreme. He knew where{145} chestnuts had lain open to the sky for months, but he dared not go into the open path to get them. Fox, cat, skunk, weasel, hawk, owl, crow, all watched the paths and the edges of the thick grass for him. He must burrow or die. ”

“ And so, as the leaves pile up, we keep a sharp lookout for what the rake uncovers—here, under a rotten stump, a hatful of acorns, probably gathered by the white-footed wood mouse. For the stump gives at the touch of the rake, and a light kick topples it down the hill, spilling out a big nest of feathers and three dainty little creatures that scurry into the leaf-piles like streaks of daylight. They are the white-footed wood mice, long-tailed, big-eared, and as clean and high-bred looking as greyhounds. ”

“ As the young mice grow they change their - 134 - coats to a dark lead color, which they retain until the first moult.
The white-footed mouse will eat about everything edible found in the woods. It is fond of mushrooms, and never, like human beings, eats of the poisonous varieties. ”

“ Despite their numerous natural enemies field mice are so prolific they continue among the most destructive of agricultural pests. They are so obscure and the damage by a single mouse appears so insignificant, that it requires a knowledge of their habits, their wide distribution, and their enormous numbers to appreciate what a serious drain they are on the farmer’s income, even when in their normal numbers. ”

“ The rice-field mouse also is a southern animal; aquatic in its habits, it abounds on the banks of rice-fields and in coast-marshes. Widely distributed in this country, especially common in the west, is the interesting white-footed mouse, deer-mouse, or wood-mouse. It is fawn above, below white or light gray, its black eyes are large and very brilliant, its feet are snow-white. Pure white mice are albinos or sports. Their white offspring, and other “fancy mice”—black and white, yellow, black, brown, mauve and blue — are prized as pets; many become very tame and take readily to training. ”

“ Only their food is quite different, and when they come out in the twilight of the summer’s evening, the mouse is on the look out for acorns, nuts, grains, and roots, which it gnaws off with its sharp chisels, while the shrew is chasing worms and insects, or cracking tiny snails with its pointed teeth. ”

“ As a rule he does little harm to man, for his food is chiefly seeds of weeds, small wild fruits and parts of wild plants of no value to man. Once in a while his family becomes so large that they do some damage in grain fields. But this does not happen often. The most interesting thing about this little Mouse is the way he builds his home. Sometimes he uses a hole in a tree or post and sometimes a deserted birds' nest, but more frequently he builds a nest for himself—a little round ball of grass and other vegetable matter. ”

“ In speaking of mice, we have two important species commonly known as the meadow mouse and the other species known as the white-footed mouse. The meadow mouse is the one that does so much damage to the orchard trees and young nursery stock if unprotected, and the white-footed mouse may be responsible for some of this when present in great numbers, but of the white-footed mouse this much good can be said:
Squirrel guards.
Much of its diet, especially of the mother mouse during the [Pg 87] time that she is nursing her young ones, is made up of insects. ”

“ This handiwork of the white-footed or deer mouse can be found in almost every field or tangle of undergrowth; the nest of a field sparrow or catbird being used as a foundation and thickly covered over and tightly thatched with leaves. Now and then, even in mid-winter, we may find the owner at home, and as the weasel is the most bloodthirsty, so the deer mouse is the most beautiful and gentle of all the fur-coated folk of our woods. ”

“ His "little red mouse that rustles among the dead leaves and is coloured like a hare" is our wood-mouse; and sometimes he finds among the hazel branches the ball-like nests of the dormice. He knows that wherever fungi grows there is death, and the tree lighted up by the brightly-coloured bosses he marks with a red cross, which is as signing the warrant of its doom. He follows the yaffle, and wherever it pecks the trees he knows that decay has begun within. ”

“ As far as I have ever seen, they kill nothing larger, in the way of small game, than field-mice and such small fry. But they are both quick and clever at catching these. They will turn over stumps and roll logs aside and up-end flat stones and catch an escaping mouse before it goes a yard. ”

“ The service which the Barn Owl renders to the agriculturist, by its consumption of rats and mice, must be exceedingly great, yet it is little appreciated. "When it has young", says Mr. Waterton, "it will bring a mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes. But in order to have a proper idea of the enormous quantity of mice which this bird destroys, we must examine the pellets which it ejects from its stomach in the place of its retreat. Every pellet contains from four to seven skeletons of mice. ”

“ Though her mate was not at hand to guard the nest, she flew off down to the farm to see if there was anything new going on among those foolish men, or perhaps to catch a mouse among the cornstalks."
"Do crows eat mice?" demanded the Babe in astonishment.
"Of course they do," answered Uncle Andy impatiently. "Everybody that eats meat at all eats mice, except us human beings. And in some parts of the world we, too, eat them, dipped in honey." ”