Page:How and Why Library 325.jpg

 When crossing a field in winter, stop and listen at hay and straw stacks, and shocks of corn fodder. On the stillest, frosty day you may hear a crisp rustling within. Look all around for the tiny, bird-like tracks of field mice. Most field mice make beds in the ground and sleep all winter, but others stay awake. They are the bed-makers of our wild life. They can make a warm bed of anything —leaves, grass, corn-silks, feathers. Up in the woods you can find the tiny trails of the fawn and white deer-mice, and find their feather-lined nests in rotten stumps. You will know them by their big ears and bright black pop-eyes. Certain mice tunnel around pits of potatoes, beets and cabbage. They store clover and other roots in earth pockets. In countless hidden places out of doors these busy little gnawers have nests of babies no bigger than thimbles.

The mole you can always find by the long ridge of cracked earth that zig-zags across fields—the roof of his tunnel. It is lively work to dig out a mole, for he may be at either end, or anywhere along the route, or in a side chamber. If frightened by the noise you make, he will go deeper and bore a yard in ten minutes.

In your hand he lies helpless, a flat ball of fine, velvety, mouse-colored fur, six inches long. He has no neck or ears, dim pin-points of eyes, and a naked, pink tail that looks like a short, fat earthworm. Put the sprawly, wriggly creature on the ground. He scrambles about frantically until he finds a soft spot. Then he begins to bore with his bony gimlet of a nose. With his spade-like fore feet he digs and pries the earth back. In less than one minute the animal has disappeared. Do not kill moles. They are insect eaters. Mice, ground squirrels and rabbits are root eaters. The mole goes through the earth and around roots, eating slugs and beetles.

In the story of "Big Brother Bear," and in the main part of this book you can read about the raccoon, or little tree-bear. And in "Kangaroo and Tossum, Too," you can read about the opossum who has a fur pocket on her stomach to carry her babies in. These animals are found only in the South, as the prairie dog is found in the West. Every part of our country has some special small, wild animal—mink, weasel, badger, fox, skunk—whose haunts and habits are interesting. There is just one more that is found all over the United States, wherever there are creeks, ponds and swamps. This is the muskrat.

You can scarcely go skating on a frozen pond in the winter without finding a dome-shaped, mud and grass house, or a little