The shrews get around very fast, considering their size; and they're on the go all the time. I never saw such busy-bodies; nosing about in the old leaves and dead grass and under logs and boring into loose loam, punky wood, decayed stumps—anywhere you'd be likely to find a worm, a grub, a beetle, or a slug. Hard workers, these shrews, but so quarrelsome! When two Mr. Shrews meet there's pretty sure to be trouble. They're regular little swashbucklers among themselves; and—the queerest thing, until you know why—they don't seem to be afraid even of cats. Fancy telling Cousin Mouse that! But it isn't because the shrews wouldn't be afraid if the cats got after them, but because cats always let shrews alone. They don't taste good!

Shrews are so nimble on their tiny feet and so quick of hearing, they are very hard to catch. And please don't try! You simply can't tame them, and in spite of the fact they're so fierce and bold at home—among their own kind—they're easily frightened to death. A shock of fear and that wonderful little heart engine of theirs stops short—never to go again.

MR. MOLE'S PAWS AND HOW HE WORKS THEM

But while the shrews can get around so much faster above ground the moles are the most remarkable travellers under ground. The mole's paws, you notice, are turned outward, as one's hands are when swimming. In fact he does almost swim through the soft, loose soil—so fast does he move along! His two shovels, with the muscles that work them, weigh as much as all the rest of his body. Why, he has a chest like an athlete! He pierces the soil with his muzzle and then clears it away with his paws. His skull is shaped like a wedge. He has a strong, boring snout and a smooth, round body.

This snout, by the way, has a bone near the tip. You see how handy that would come in, don't you? At the same time, although it's so hard—this snout of his—it's very sensitive, like the fingers of the blind; for Mr. Mole must always be feeling his way along in the dark, you know.

The kind of moles you find in Europe live in what seem to be little earthen fortresses, and the tops, sticking above ground, make hillocks. In each of these little forts there is a central chamber; then outside of this, running all the way around, are two galleries, one above the other. The upper gallery has several openings into the central chamber. The galleries are connected by two straight up-and-down shafts. From the lower galleries several passages, usually from eight to ten, lead away to where the moles go out to feed; and if there is a body of water near by—a pond or a creek, say—there's a special tunnel leading to that.

Mr. Mole works hard and he sleeps hard. The big middle room in his home is the bedchamber of Mr. Mole and his family. Usually he sleeps soundly all night, but occasionally, on fine Summer nights, he comes out and enjoys the air.

You'd think he'd get awfully dirty, wouldn't you, boring his way along in the ground all the time? But he doesn't. His hair is always as spick and span as if he'd just come out of the barber-shop. Do you know why? It's because he wears his hair pompadoured. It grows straight out from the skin. So you see he can go backward and forward—as he is obliged to do constantly in the day's work—without mussing it up at all. If it lay down, like yours or like pussy-cat's, it would get into an awful mess! In France the children call Mr. Mole "The Little Gentleman in the Velvet Coat."

II. Four-Footed Farmers That Wear Armor

But, speaking of coats, I want to introduce you to a still more rapid worker in the soil, who wears a coat of mail. He is called the armadillo. There used to be a species of armadillo in western Texas. Whether there are any there still I don't know,[19] but go on down to South America and you'll find all you want. The woods are full of them, and so are those vast prairies—the pampas. The plates in the armadillo's coat of mail are not made of steel, of course, but of bone. These bony plates are each separate from the other on most of his body but made into solid bucklers over the shoulders and the hips. The armadillos have very short, stout legs and very long, strong claws, and how they can dig! They can dig fast in any kind of soil, but in the loose soil of the pampas they dig so fast that if you happen to catch sight of one when out riding and he sees you, you'll have to start toward him with your horse on the run if you want to see anything more of him. Before you can get to him and throw yourself from the saddle, he'll have buried himself in the ground. And you can't catch him; not even if you have a spade and dig away with all your might. He'll dig ahead of you, faster—a good deal faster—than you can follow.

MR. ARMADILLO'S REMARKABLE NOSE DRILL

For all he looks so knightly, so far as his armor is concerned, the armadillo is timid, peaceful, and never looking for trouble with anybody, but once aroused fights fiercely and does much damage with his long hooked claws. His chief diet is ants. These he finds with his nose. He locates them by scent and then bores in after them. You'd think he'd twist it off, that long nose of his; he turns it first one way and then the other, like a gimlet. And so fast!

The armadillo dislikes snakes as much as all true knights disliked dragons. That is, he doesn't like them socially; although he's quite fond of them as a variation in diet. He'll leap on a snake, paying not the slightest attention to his attempts to bite through that coat of mail, and tear him into bits and eat him.

Another armored knight that eats snakes and that other animals seldom eat—much as they'd like to—is the hedgehog. If you were a fox, instead of a boy or girl, I wouldn't have to tell you about how hard it is to serve hedgehog at the family table. One of the earliest things a little fox learns in countries where there are hedgehogs is to let the hedgehog alone.

"Hedgehogs would be very nice—to eat, I mean—if they weren't so ugly about not wanting to be eaten."

We can imagine Mamma Fox saying that to the children. Then she goes on:

"The whole ten inches of a hedgehog—he's about that long—are covered with short, stiff, sharp, gray spines. He's easy to catch—just ambles along, hardly lifting his short legs from the ground. And he goes about at night—just when we foxes are out marketing. That would be so handy, don't you see; but the trouble is about those nasty spines of his. Try to catch him and he rolls up into a ball with all his spines—they're sharp as needles—sticking out everywhere, and every which way. And—well, you simply can't get at him, that's all. So just don't have anything to do with him. It's only a waste of time."

Hedgehogs live in hedges and thickets and in narrow gulches covered with bushes. They do their share of ploughing when nosing about with their pig-like snouts for slugs, snails, and insects, and when they dig places for their home nests. These homes they line with moss, grass, and leaves, and in them spend the long Winter, indifferent to the tempests and the cold.

But there's another place to look for hedgehogs, and you never would guess! In people's kitchens. If you ever go to England you'll find them in many country homes, helping with the work. They're great on cockroaches, and they're perfectly safe from the cat and the dog. Both Puss and Towser know all about those spines, just as well as Mrs. Fox does.

When they've eaten all the cockroaches, give them some cooked vegetables, porridge, or bread and milk, and they'll be perfectly content. They're easy to tame and get very friendly.

In the wild state, besides the insects and things I mentioned, they eat snakes; and poison snakes, too! The poison never seems to bother them at all. Their table manners are interesting, also, when it comes to eating snakes. They always begin at the tail.[20] They'd no more think of eating a snake any other way than one would of picking up the wrong fork at a formal dinner.

UNDER THE HEDGEHOG'S WATER-PROOF ROOF

That's one of the things about good manners Mamma Hedgehog teaches the babies, I suppose. Of these she has from two to four, and she makes a curious nest especially for them; a nest with a roof on it that sheds rain like any other roof. Just as it is with puppies and kittens, the babies are born blind; and not only that, but they can't hear at first, either. While they are young their spines—I don't mean their back-bones, but their other spines—are soft, but they become hard as the babies grow and open their eyes and ears on the world. The muscles on their backs get very thick and strong, so that when they don't want to have anything to do with anybody—say a fox, or a dog, or a weasel—they just pull the proper muscle strings and tie themselves up into a kind of bag made of their own needle-cushion skins, with the needles all sticking out, point up!

III. A Visit to Some Farm Villages

TWELVE LITTLE MARMOTS ALL IN ONE BED

Next I'd like you to visit with me certain other farmers who remind us of the Middle Ages also; not because they wear armor, like the armadillos and the hedgehogs and the lords of castles, but because they live in farm villages as the farmer peasants used to do around the castles of the lords. Moreover, one reason they live together in this way is for protection—just as it was with the peasants—only among these little democrats there's no overlord business; each one's home is his castle. Another reason for this village arrangement is that it's such a sociable way to live; and they're great society people, these farm villagers. The marmots, for example, the largest and heaviest of the squirrel family, just love company. In their mountain country—they're mountain people, the marmots—they play together, work together, and during the long, cold night of Winter snuggle together in their burrows. Their burrows are close by each other among the rocks. They have both Summer and Winter residences. In Summer they go away up in the mountains, hollow out their burrows and raise their babies. When the snows of late Autumn send them down the mountainsides, twelve or fifteen of them, all working together, pitch in and make a tunnel in the soil among the rocks, enlarging it at the end into a big room. Next they put in a good pile of dry hay, carefully close the front door and lock it up with stones caulked with grass and moss. Then they all cuddle down together, as snug as you please, and stay there until Spring.

Another member of the marmot family who is very fond of good company is the prairie-dog. There may be thousands in a prairie-dog town. Each little prairie-dog home has in front of it a mound something like an Eskimo's hut. The prairie-dogs make these mounds in digging out their burrows. They pile the dirt right at the front door. This may not look neat to us, but you'll see it's just the thing—this dirt pile—when you know what the prairie-dog does with it. He uses it as a watch-tower.

When, from this watch-tower, he spies certain people he doesn't want to meet, you ought to see how quickly he can make for his front door and into the house! The times are still lawless where the prairie-dog lives, and he has to be on the lookout all the while for coyotes, for foxes, for badgers, for the black-footed ferret and the old gray wolf; to say nothing of hawks and brown owls.

SUCH NEAT CHAMBERMAIDS!

The prairie-dogs like sandy or gravelly soil for their homes, and in making them they do a lot of ploughing. And besides they supply this same soil with a great deal of humus—the grass that they use for bedding. They're very particular about changing their beds every day; always clearing out the old bedding and putting in new. They do this along about sundown. You can see them do it right in New York City, for there is a flourishing colony of them at the zoo.

Mr. Prairie-Dog is about a foot long and as fat as butter. The reason he's called a dog isn't because he is a dog or even looks like one, but because he has a sharp little bark like a very much excited puppy. He thinks he sees something suspicious: "Yap! Yap!"

Or he spies a neighbor down the street: "Yap! Yap! Hello, neighbor! Looks like another fine day, doesn't it?"

"Yap! Yap!" says neighbor. (This "yap" passes for "yes," no doubt—although it isn't quite the way Mr. Webster would say it, perhaps.)

Then maybe a neighbor from away over on the avenue, that he hasn't seen for some time, comes calling—as they're always doing, these neighborly little chaps. Then it's:

"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Why, how are you? And what have you been doing? And how are the little folks?"

And so it goes, all day long.

The prairie-dog's native home is on our Western plains, but he has a cousin away off in South America—although he may never have heard of him—called the viscacha.

The viscachas live on the great grassy plains of the La Plata in colonies of twenty or more, in villages of deep-chambered burrows with large pit-like entrances grouped close together; so close, in fact, that the whole village makes one large irregular mound, thirty to forty feet in diameter and two to three feet high. These villages being on the level prairie, the viscachas are careful to build them high enough so that floods will not reach them. They make a clear space all around the town. In doing this these little people seem to have two purposes: (1) To make it more difficult for enemies to slip up on them unnoticed, and (2) to furnish a kind of athletic field for the community; for it is in these open spaces that they have their foot-races, wrestling matches, and the like.

If you ever happen down their way, the first thing that will strike you is the enormous size of the entrances to the central burrows. You'd think somebody as big as a bear lived in them. The entrance is four to six feet across and deep enough for a tall man to stand in up to the waist.

Like our prairie-dogs, the viscachas are very sociable, and little paths, the result of neighborly calls, lead from one village to another. They are neighborly indeed; and in the Bible sense. Of course, they like to get together of an evening and talk things over and gossip and all that, but that isn't the end of it. To take an instance: These South American prairie-dogs, like our prairie-dogs up North, are not popular with the cattlemen; and the cattlemen, to get rid of them, bury whole villages with earth. Then neighbors from distant burrows come—just as soon as the cattlemen go away—and dig them out!

Another ploughman besides the prairie-dog and the viscacha, who isn't popular with farmers—although Thompson Seton calls him "The Master Ploughman of the West"—is the pocket-gopher. He has farmed it from Canada to Texas, all through the fertile Mississippi Valley. The reason he has that queer expression on his face—you couldn't help noticing it—is that each cheek has a big outside pocket in it; and, like the big pockets in a small boy's trousers, they're there for business. On each forefoot he has a set of long claws; and dig, you should see him! He's a regular little steam-shovel. He sinks his burrow below the frost-line and into this, stuffed in his two pockets, he carries food to eat when he wakes up during the following Spring, before earth's harvests are ripe.

IV. The Home of the Red Fox

Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made houses among the rocks of the mountainside.

THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE

The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his cunning—and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox family—is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or Mrs. Fox—depending on which is going marketing—stops and looks about to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and behind this the family bedroom and nursery.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox are among the thriftiest folks I know. They not only provide for to-day, but for to-morrow and the day after. For example, when Mr. Fox visits a poultry-yard, he doesn't simply carry off enough for one meal. He keeps catching and carrying off chickens, ducks, or geese—whatever comes handy—all night; working clear up to daybreak. And the fresh meat he thus gets for the family table he buries—each fowl in a separate place—not so very far away from the poultry-yard. Then later he comes and gets this buried treasure and takes it home to be shared with mother and the babies.

Of these babies there are from three to five. Young foxes are very playful and think there's no such sport as chasing each other about in the sunshine, while mother sits in the doorway keeping an eye out for possible danger and watching their antics with a complacent smile, as much as to say: "Aren't they the little dears!"

If just one little fox wants to play while his brothers and sisters want to sleep—and that sometimes happens—he goes off by himself and chases his own tail around, just like a kitten.

Little foxes are very nice and polite that way.

V. Work and Play in Chipmunkville

It isn't often one gets a chance to see little foxes at play, except occasionally in the big city zoos, for foxes are now so scarce; and, besides, their papas and mammas in the wild state are suspicious of human spectators, but there are certain nimble four-legged babies to be found all over the country that play in much the same way.

If, along in July, you should see a certain little body in a lovely striped suit chasing another little body in a striped suit, exactly like it, along the old rail fence or over the boulder wall or across the meadow, ten to one, it will be two baby chipmunks playing tag. When one bites the other's tail—they're always trying to do that in these tag games—it means he's "it," I think. In fact, I'm quite sure, for always, when one little Mr. Chipmunk bites another little Mr. Chipmunk on the tail, little Mr. Chipmunk No. 2 turns right around and chases little Mr. Chipmunk No. 1, and tries to bite his tail.

They keep this up on sunshiny days all through July and along into early August. Then the serious business of life begins. They sober down, these chipmunk children—they were only born last May—and learn to make homes for themselves. You never would think the way they love the sunshine that the homes of all the chipmunks are under the ground, and as dark as can be. But they are. You notice the chipmunks have rather large feet, considering what dainty little creatures they are. These feet, like the feet of the mole, are for digging. The chipmunk digs deep under the roots of trees and stone walls, if there happens to be either handy by, but, so far as I've seen, he's quite contented to make his burrows in the open meadows. The round nest at the end of the burrow is lined with fine grass. It has two entrances, one right opposite the other, like front and back doors. Sometimes there are as many as three doors; four, maybe, in case of a chipmunk of a particularly nervous disposition. All chipmunks are easily frightened and dive into their holes, quick as a wink, when there's any danger; and often when there's really nothing to be scared at at all.

WHEN THOSE EXTRA DOORS COME HANDY

But you can't blame them. There are times when it's no fun being a chipmunk, I tell you. The hawks get after you, and the minks and the foxes and the weasels. Those extra doors into the nest are very useful places to dodge into when you're outside and a savage old hawk swoops down on you, or a fox makes a jump at you. And they're just as handy—these extra doors—to run out of when a mink or a weasel follows you in. They'll do that, if you're a chipmunk; chase you right into your own house!

When a pair of grown-up chipmunks start housekeeping for themselves—that is to say when they are about ten weeks old—they first dig a little tunnel, almost straight down for several feet. Then they make a hall that runs along horizontally—like anybody's hall—for a few yards. Then, supposing you're Mr. or Mrs. Chipmunk in your new place, after it's all done—you go up a slant—a flight of stairs, you might say, although, of course, there aren't any stairs—and there you are in the family bedroom, the nest.

Not long after the chipmunks stop their outdoor games in the Fall you might think it was because they had the mumps; they go around with their faces all swelled out in such a funny way. The reason is they have their cheeks full of nuts and seeds that they are storing for the Winter. They don't put these stores in the nest—for then where would they sleep, the nest is so small—but in special cellars that they build near the nest, with connecting passages. These cellars, like the nests, are well below frost-line, so that Jack can't get the nuts or nip the noses of the chipmunks while they are asleep.

When Winter finally sets in, the chipmunks get very drowsy and go up to bed. And there they stay until Spring—one great long nap, except that they wake up and stir around occasionally on bright days and if it happens to warm up a little.

"Such sleepyheads!" you say. "And what about all those nuts? I should think they'd be fine for Winter parties."

They would, I dare say. But you know a body doesn't have much of an appetite when he doesn't get any outdoor exercise, and that's why the chipmunks only take a few bites now and then, during the Winter. And, besides, if they ate up everything in the Winter—you know how folks eat at parties—what would they do in the Spring, with no good nuts lying around on the ground, as there are in the Fall; and nothing else to be had that chipmunks care about? So they keep most of the nuts and seeds and things for the great Spring breakfast, and all the other meals, until berries are ripe. The berries they eat until the next nut harvest comes along.

Until then, you see, they haven't much of anything to do but play around and sit in the sun and chat. So why shouldn't they?

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

You will find some most readable things about foxes in Burrough's "Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers"; Comstock's "Pet Book"; Cram's "Little Beasts of Field and Wood"; Wright's "Four-Footed Americans"; Jordan's "Five Tales of Birds and Beasts"; Long's "Ways of Wood Folk"; and Seton's "Wild Animals I Have Known."

Comstock's "Pet Book" also tells about the prairie-dog; and Seton, in his "Wild Animals I Have Known," tells about "The Prairie Dog and His Kin."

It's a very common superstition among English country folk that shrews always drop dead if they attempt to cross a road. How do you suppose such a strange idea ever got started? Allen, in his "Nature's Work Shop," reasons it out, and his reasons seem very plausible. It's a fact that their dead bodies are nearly always found in roadways. You'll also find some interesting information about shrews in Johonnott's "Curious Flyers, Creepers and Swimmers" and Wright's "Four-Footed Americans."

There's some little dispute about squirrels as tree-planters; that is to say as to just how they do it, for there's no question that they do plant oaks and other trees. Thoreau, in his "Walden," gives the squirrel credit for doing an immense amount of tree-planting, but Ernest Ingersoll, in his article on squirrels in "Wild Neighbors," thinks the squirrel leaves comparatively few acorns or hickory-nuts, and that he doesn't forget where he puts them, as other writers on nature say. "They seem to know precisely the spot," says Mr. Ingersoll, "where each nut is buried, and go directly to it; and I have seen them hundreds of times when the snow was more than a foot deep, wade floundering through it straight to a certain point, dive down, perhaps far out of sight, and in a moment emerge with a nut in their jaws."

But how the squirrel knows it's there—that's the mystery! Read what Ingersoll says about it. The whole essay is extremely good reading, and will tell you a number of things to watch out for in squirrels that you perhaps never have noticed.

In Pliny's "Natural History" you will find, among other quaint stories, one to the effect that mountain marmots put away hay in the fall by one animal using itself as a hay-rack—lying on his back with his load clasped close while he is pulled home by the tail. "Animal Arts and Crafts" tells what a simple little thing originated this idea. Many of the peasants of the Alps still believe it.

Hornaday, in his "Two Years in the Jungle," gives an interesting account of how one of the four-footed knights in armor—the pangolin—does himself up in a ball, and how next to impossible it is to "unlock" him.

Ingersoll, in discussing the various uses of tails in "Wild Neighbors," tells how a gerboa kangaroo brings home grass for his nest, done up in a sheaf of which his own little tail is the binder.

An interesting four-footed burrower, when he can't rob a prairie-dog of his hole—or some other body smaller than himself—is the coyote. There is a long talk on the coyote and his ways in "Wild Neighbors." This little book also gives pictures of the different kinds of shrews in the United States, and a lot of detail about them and their little paws and their noses and their tails.

It's a queer thing how systematic and prompt shrews and moles are in business. You can actually set your watch by them, as you will see in the same book.

In the article on the gopher in the "Americana" you will find how the gopher got his name. Can you guess, when I tell you it's from a French word meaning "honeycomb"?

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