IX. Wild Animals Near Home
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Do you live on a farm? Or in a small town with woods and fields around it? There is a creek, perhaps, a swamp, hillside pastures, stone or rail fences bordered by briars. Then you have animal neighbors as wild and shy as any you will see when the menagerie comes to town. Take a long tramp over the country after a light snowfall. Don't take a dog with you. Take an opera glass, a microscope and a camera. Walk in the face of the wind, or all the little wild creatures will get early news of you and vanish.
Watch for foot-prints—trails of tiny tracks in the snow. Those are calling cards. Some nature-lovers can read every kind of track as easily as you read print. They can tell where a rabbit has gone across country by long jumps, and sat on his haunches in places to "stop, look, listen!" They can tell where squirrels have played tag around a tree; where field mice have chased each other around a straw stack; where muskrats have come up the bank of a frozen pond; where a chipmunk has sunned himself on an old stump lookout.
There are very few places in America where some of these rodents—little gnawing animals—are not to be found. But city children often know the common gray squirrel and the little brown chipmunk, better than country children do. That is a pity, for where they are not hunted all our native squirrels become very tame.
In a city park if you sit on one bench day after day and scatter peanuts or popcorn near you, the squirrels will learn to come to be fed. They leap on the bench, by and by, eat from your hand and go into coat pockets for nuts. Be patient at first, and keep wide awake, or you will miss seeing little switch-tail when he slips, a gray shadow, down a tree. Flash he comes, stops, "freezes" on his haunches, bright eyes watching, ears and plume up. Shelled corn scattered about a farm or country school yard will coax him out of the woods. Don't try to catch him or he will never come back.
What a pretty little fellow! All silver-gray, brownish-gray or even black, he is, for squirrels of the same family vary in color, just as foxes do. A little ten-inch furry bundle of fun, with a ten-inch banner of a tail! He plays tag, leap-frog, runs races on walls, rolls up and coasts down hill. He is just as curious about you as you are about him. He is very gossipy, chattering all day, but heattends to business, too. If he is hungry, he will sit up and show you how to crack and eat a nut. Then he will carry away what you give him, one nut at a time, and bury each, lightly, in a separate place. He will come back for them, by and by, and carry them into his high pantry in a tree.
On a snowy morning his foot-prints will guide you to his elevator door, the foot of a tree. Sometimes he uses a hole for a den, but often a crow's nest hammock, roofed over with leaves and bark. He cares neither for cold nor wind. His nest blown down by a gale, he catches on a limb like an acrobat, or drops on his feet like a cat. After eating he washes his face like a cat.
For the underground burrows of the chipmunks, look in the deepest woods, around old stumps, logs and boulders. Look sharp. Tail and all the chipmunk is less than a foot long, and he is just the color of rotten wood. Even the black and white stripes on his back are mere lights and shadows. A sunny, woodsy streak, he flashes across the open, stops stock still, upright, alert, and is gone. You are not sure you saw him at all. Perhaps you heard his gleeful "chip, chip, chip!" It is a challenge. He would just as soon lead you a merry chase as not. Little soldier, every log is a breastwork, every stump a sentry box, every screen of undergrowth a retreat. And for all he burrows, he is not a true ground squirrel. He can climb, and his habits are those of the tree squirrels.
With a last saucy "chip!" he is gone. Find his house-door, if you can. He hides the little round hole cleverly among drifted leaves, shaded by ferns and moss. You will find his snug den below frost-line, leaf-bedded and stored with acorns, nuts, and red winter berries. But you will not find the owner at home. He has another house or two just like it, and his bright eyes may be watching you a few yards away.
No country in the Old World has so many true ground squirrels as we have. Prairie dogs, gophers and woodchucks are ground squirrels. The gopher is the ill-tempered, rat-like hermit of the garden. You may be sure he is under a flower or vegetable bed, biting off roots, if plant tops suddenly wither. But be careful in digging him out. He cannot be tamed, and he bites with his chisel teeth. The prairie dog is found only on the wide plains of the West. To try to dig a village of these amusing little yappers out is like starting to dig a well. In the park zoo the prairie dog village is in a deep cement-lined pit filled with earth, so these clever little animals cannot tunnel and spread over the park.You can dig the woodchuck, or ground-hog, out. He is the fat, sleepy-head bear squirrel. Don't look for him in the woods. Keep your eyes open when crossing a hill-side clover field, or in going down a steep creek bank. If you see a hole big enough to thrust your arm in, probe it with a stick. If the hole slants upwards, Mr. Woodchuck is there. In the winter you can dig him out and roll him on the snow, like a flabby muff of coarse, gray-brbw^n hair. He is so fast asleep that if you take him into a warm house he will open his eyes, yawn, crawl under a bed or bureau, and go to sleep again. Some people say he wakes up on the second of February. If the sun is shining, and he sees his shadow, he knows there will be six weeks more of winter, so he goes to sleep again. With his clumsy body, flat head, beady eyes, and small ears and tail, he doesn't look in the least like a squirrel. But he sits upright to eat, and to look about. He never goes far from his hole, for he cannot run well. When alarmed, he jumps to shelter like a rabbit.
Molly Cottontail pricks up her nervous ears at that. "Not run well! Just watch me for three seconds!" she says. Look out for bunny. She is the color of dead grass, weeds and snow. She may be at your feet, or in that weedy fence corner. She smells you, hears you, sees you. She doesn't know yet, whether to sit still or to run. Boys can't smell rabbits, but dogs can. "Zip!" there she goes, a flying brown shadow, the bit of white under her tail, a flag of truce that no one regards. Poor Molly Cottontail! A timid, helpless creature, her only safety is in her legs. She cannot climb a tree, dig a den, or bite. She cannot crack nuts nor store food. She can run fast but not far. Her home is wherever she sleeps, out in the open, ears erect, eyes half-closed, nose wide and quivering. She is lucky if she gets forty winks at a time. If no dogs are about, she may creep under a barn, or in a wood pile, in cold weather. She distrusts a hole, because fences, owls and other enemies live in holes.
The one clever thing she can do is to cut tunnel roads in undergrowth. Bunny slips and winds through these six-inch mazes of runways she has patiently cut with her teeth. There she puzzles and tires out dogs and foxes by crossing the scent, and so gets away. A sociable little creature, Molly lives a fugitive life and all alone, for safety. On some brambly hill-side, you may come upon the shallow nest she has scooped out and lined with white fur from her own breast. Do not frighten her. There she brings up her brood of six or eight babies, in fear of their lives and her own.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 littlevillage of a dozen homes frozen in the ice and covered with snow. Mr. Sharp, a nature writer, says that you can skate all around them and sit on one to strap your skates, without bothering the furry bunch of sleepers inside. But push a stick carefully through the thick wall and you can hear a soft skurrying inside, then a "plunk, plunk, plunk!" as one after the other plunges into the water, through a doorway below the ice.
The muskrat doesn't mind. You couldn't wet his sleek, brown fur coat any more than you could wet a duck's feathers. He only sleeps in the daytime, in winter. Each stout dome has a single room. It is a sort of club house, or European hotel, where a number sleep in one bed, snuggled up to keep each other warm. At night they all tumble out into the icy water and hunt for food. They dive for fresh water mussels, and bite off tender white calamus blades. You know how good calamus is. They bring their food, up through a hole and wash it, just as the 'coons or washing-bears do. After this feast of a sort of oysters on the half-shell and celery, they often go up into orchards for frozen apples—fruit ice. A dainty feeder is the muskrat.
The muskrat builds his house only for a winter sleeping place. In the summer he burrows in the bank or builds under bushes on the swamp. Mr. Burroughs says he is a fine weather prophet. It he begins to build by October—and he works only at night—you may be sure there is to be a cold winter. Or, if he builds very high and strong, his house solidly plastered to logs, stumps or tussocks of grass, look out for high water.
A dark lantern, with which you can throw a light over a pond, will give you glimpses of muskrat families feeding. Only a foot long, their fur is so thick, rich and glossy a brown that it is sold as river mink. Muskrats sit up to eat, something like squirrels, or rather like kangaroos, using their six-inch, flat, scaly tails for third legs. They use those tails for rudders in swimming, too, and with them they slap the water to warn others of danger. Perhaps, who knows, they use them as beavers use their tails, for trowels in plastering their houses with mud. For his size the muskrat is just as bright and clever as his big cousin, the beaver.
Even where they are too quick, and you fail to see them, you can tell where muskrats have been by a faint musky odor, as of a flower perfume on the frosty, moonlit air of a lonely marsh.