Everyday Adventures Part 13

A moment later there was a chorus of delighted squeals. Each chipmunk had run up and taken the nut which was in sight, and was burrowing and scrabbling with soft little paws and sniffling little noses into four sets of clenched fingers, in an attempt to secure the other hidden nuts. When the last of them had disappeared, looking as if he had an attack of mumps, the Band thanked Mr. Prindle and started for home.

"b.u.t.ternutly yours," quoted Alice-Palace as they hurried down the long hill.

Have you ever dreamed of writing a wonderful poem, and then waked up and found that you had forgotten it; or, worse still, that it wasn't wonderful at all? That is what happened to me the other night. All that was left of the lost masterpiece was the following alleged verse:--

After dark everybody's house Belongs to the little brown Flittermouse.

I admit that the mystery and pathos and beauty which that verse seemed to have in dreamland have some way evaporated in daylight. So as I can't give to the world any poetry in praise of my friend the Flittermouse, I must do what I can for him in prose. In the first place, his everyday name is Bat. Our forebears knew him as the flying or "flitter" mouse. Probably, too, he is the original of the Brownie, that ugly brown elf that used to flit about in the twilight.

He is perhaps the best equipped of all of our mammals, for he flies better than any bird, is a strong though unwilling swimmer, and is also fairly active on the ground. In addition, he has such an exquisite sense of feeling, that he is able to fly at full speed in the dark, steering his course and instantly avoiding any obstacle by the mere feel of the air-currents. In fact, the bat's whole body, including the ribs and edges of its wings, may be said to be full of eyes. These are highly developed nerve-endings, which are so sensitive that they are instantly aware of the presence of any body met in flight, by the difference in the air-pressure.

As early as 1793 an Italian naturalist found that a blinded bat could fly as well as one with sight. They were able to avoid all parts of a room, and even to fly through silken threads stretched in such a manner as to leave just s.p.a.ce enough for them to pa.s.s with their wings expanded. When the threads were placed closer together, the blind bats would contract their wings in order to pa.s.s between them without touching.

An English naturalist put wax over a bat's closed eyes and then let it loose in a room. It flew under chairs, of which there were twelve in the room, without touching anything, even with the tips of its wings.

When he attempted to catch it, the bat dodged; nor could it be taken even when resting, as it seemed to feel with its wings the approach of the hand stretched out to seize it.

When it comes to flying, the bat is the swallow of the night.

Sometimes it may be confused with a chimney-swift at twilight, but it can always be told by its dodging, lonely flight, while the swifts fly in companies and without zigzagging through the air. It is doubtful whether even the swallow or the swiftest of the hawks, such as the sharp-shinned or the duck hawk, perhaps the fastest bird that flies, can equal the speed of the great h.o.a.ry bat. Moreover, the flight of the bat is absolutely silent. He may dart and turn a foot away from you, but you will hear absolutely nothing. A h.o.a.ry bat, the largest of all the family, has been seen to overtake and fly past a flock of migrating swallows, while a red bat has been watched carrying four young clinging to her, which together weighed more than she did, and yet she flew and hunted and captured insects in mid-air as usual.

There is no bird which can give such an exhibition of strong flying.

The h.o.a.ry bat has even been found on the Bermuda Islands in autumn and early winter. As these islands are five hundred and forty storm-swept miles from the nearest land, this is evidence of an extraordinarily high grade of wing-power.

When it comes to personal habits, bats of all kinds are perhaps the most useful mammals that we have. No American bat eats anything but insects, and insects of the most disagreeable kind, such as c.o.c.kroaches, mosquitoes, and June-bugs. A house-bat has been seen to eat twenty-one June-bugs in a single night; while another young bat would eat from thirty-four to thirty-seven c.o.c.kroaches in the same time, beginning this commendable work before it was two months old.

Moreover, bats do not bring into houses any noxious insects, like bedbugs or lice, despite their bad reputation. They are unfortunately afflicted with numerous parasites, but none of them are of a kind to attack man. All bats are great drinkers, and twice a day skim over the nearest water, drinking copiously on the wing. Sometimes, where trout are large enough, bats fall victims to their drinking habits, being seized on the wing like huge moths by leaping trout, as they approach the water to drink.

Bats also feed twice a day at regular periods, once at sundown and once at sunrise, always capturing and eating their insect food on the wing. Some of them have a curious habit of using a pouch, which is made of the membrane stretched between their hind legs, as a kind of net to hold the captured insect until it can be firmly gripped and eaten. In this same pouch the young are carried as soon as they are born, and until they are strong enough to nurse. After that, like young jumping mice, they cling to the teats of the mother bat, and are carried everywhere in this way. When they get too large to be so conveyed in comfort, the mother bat hangs them up in some secret place until her return.

Moreover a mother bat is just as devoted to her babies as any other mammal. She takes entire charge of them, with never any help from the father bat. Young bats are blind at birth, but their eyes open on the fifth day, and on the thirteenth day the baby bat no longer clings to its mother, but roosts beside her. The bat has from two to four young, depending on the species. Most young bats can fly and forage for themselves when they are about three months old, although the silvery bat begins to fly when it is three weeks old. No bat makes a nest.

t.i.tian Peale, of Philadelphia, in an early natural history, tells a story of a boy who, in 1823, caught a young red bat and took it home.

Three hours later, in the evening, he started to take it to the museum, carrying it in his hand. As he pa.s.sed near the place where it was caught, the mother bat appeared and followed the boy for two squares, flying around him and finally lighting on his breast, until the boy allowed her to take charge of her little one.

The bat has but few enemies. They are occasionally caught by owls, probably taken unawares or when hanging in some dark tree. In fact, virtually the only enemies a bat has are fur-lice, which breed upon them in enormous quant.i.ties. It is this misfortune, and the fact that a bat has a strong rank smell like that of a skunk, which keep it from being popular as a pet.

A friend of mine once, however, kept a little brown bat, which had been drowned out from a tree by a thunder-storm, for a long time under a sieve as a pet. The bat became tame and would accept food, and it was most interesting to see the deft, speedy way in which he husked millers and other minute insects, rejecting their wings, skinning their bodies, and devouring the flesh only after it had been prepared entirely to its liking. He would wash himself with his tongue and his paw, like a cat, using the little thumb-nail at the bend of his wing, and stretching the rubbery membrane into all kinds of shapes, until it seemed as if he would tear it in his zeal for cleanliness.

A bat always alights first by catching the little hooks on its wings.

As soon as it has a firm grip with these, it at once turns over, head downward, and hangs by the long, recurved nails of the hind feet, and in this position sleeps through the daylight. It sleeps through the winter in the top of some warm steeple or, far more often than we suspect, in dark corners of our houses, and sometimes in hollow trees and deserted buildings and caves. Only when caught by the cold does the bat hibernate. Often it migrates like the birds.

One of the strangest things about the flittermouse is its voice. It is a penetrating, shrill squeak, so high that many people cannot hear it at all. The chirp of a sparrow is about five octaves above the middle E of the piano, while the cry of the bat is a full octave above that.

In England there is a saying that no person more than forty years old can hear the cry of a bat. This is founded probably on the fact that the ears of many of us, especially as we approach middle age, are unable to distinguish sounds more than four octaves above middle E.

Some naturalists believe that the shrill squeak which most of us do hear is only one of many notes of the bat, and that the various species have different calls, like those of birds, and probably even have a love-song during the mating season, in late August or early September, which can never be heard by human ears.

Most bats found in the Eastern States are either large brown house-bats, one of two kinds of little brown bats, black bats, red or tree bats, pigmy bats, or, last, largest and most beautiful of all, h.o.a.ry bats. The big brown bat, or house-bat, is the commonest. This is the last of the bats to come out in the evening, for each has a certain fixed hour when it begins to hunt, which varies only with the light. When the big brown bat starts, the twilight has almost turned to dark.

The two kinds of little brown bat, Leconte's and Say's, cannot be told apart in flight. Both of them are much smaller than the big brown bat, and the ear of a Leconte's bat barely reaches the end of the nose, while that of a Say's bat is considerably longer. All bats have large ears, each of which contains a curious inner ear known as the "ant.i.tragus." Both of these little bats are country bats and prefer caves and hollow trees to houses and outbuildings.

The black bat can be told from all other American bats by its deep black-brown color touched with silvery white. This bat likes to hunt and hawk over water, skimming across ponds like swallows. Some of the black-bat colonies, or "batteries," are very large, one by actual count including 9,640 bats.

Next comes the Georgia pigmy bat, so called to distinguish it from the very rare New York pigmy bat. This little bat can be told by its small size, for it is the smallest of all of our eastern bats, by its yellowish pale color, and especially by its flight, which is weak and fluttering, like that of a large b.u.t.terfly.

The red bat is a tree bat, spending the daytime in the foliage of trees, and rarely, if ever, being found in caves or houses. It can be told at a glance by its red color. It is the greatest of all the bats except the last, the h.o.a.ry bat, the largest of them all, with a wing-spread of from fifteen to seventeen inches. This great bat soars high, well above the tree-tops, where it can prey upon the high-flying great moths. It is one of the most beautiful, as well as the rarest, of our bats, being found in the East only in the spring or fall migration. It wears a magnificent furry coat as beautiful as that of the silver fox, but, like all of its race, it is cursed with the homeliest face ever worn by an animal. It is this hobgoblin face which, in spite of a blameless life and useful habits, makes the flittermouse, whatever its species, universally hated.

However, handsome is as handsome does, and the boy who kills a bat has killed one of our most useful animals and deserves to be bitten by all the mosquitoes, and b.u.mped by all the June bugs, and crawled over by all the c.o.c.kroaches, and to have his clothes corrupted by all the moths, that the dead bat would have eaten if it had been allowed to live.

After I had supposedly finished this chapter I was reading it aloud at the dinner-table to the defenceless Band, one Sunday afternoon about two o'clock, on a freezing day in December. Just as I was in the midst of the masterpiece, one of my audience suddenly woke up and said, "There's a bat!" Sure enough, outside, in the gla.s.s-enclosed porch, was flying a large brown house-bat. Back and forth it went through the freezing air, as swiftly as if it were summer. I was much touched by this beautiful tribute to my authorship, and went out and managed to catch my visitor when he alighted. The bat however was ungrateful enough to bite the hand that had praised him, and I will end this account by writing of knowledge that a bat's tiny teeth are as sharp as needles and that he is always willing to use them.

Not dangerous like the skunk, or brave like the racc.o.o.n, or big like the bear, the least of the Sleepers is the best-looking of them all.

Shy and solitary, the gentle little jumping mouse is as dainty as he looks. His fur is lead, overlaid with gold deepening to a dark brown on the back, and like the deer-mouse he wears a snowy silk waistcoat and stockings. His strength is in his powerful crooked hind-legs, and his length in his silky tail, which occupies five of his eight inches.

Given one jump ahead of any foe that runs, springs, flies, or crawls, and Mr. Jumping Mouse is safe. He patters through the gra.s.s by the edge of thickets and weed-patches, like any other mouse, until alarmed. Then with a bound he shoots high into the air, in a leap that will cover from two to twelve feet. It is in this that his long tail plays its part. In a graceful curve, with tip upturned, it balances and guides him through the air in a jump which will cover over forty times his own length, equivalent to a performance of two hundred and forty feet by a human jumper. The instant he strikes, the jumper soars away again like a bird, at right angles to his first jump, and zigzags here and there through the air, so fast and so far as to baffle even the swift hawk and the dogged weasel.

Every day Mr. Jumping Mouse washes and polishes his immaculate self, and draws his long silky tail through his mouth until every hair shines. Mrs. Jumping Mouse is a good mother, and never deserts her babies. If alarmed while feeding them, she will spring through the air with from three to five of them clinging to her for dear life, and carry them safely through all her series of lofty leaps.

The first frost rings the bed-time bell for the jumping mouse. Three feet underground he builds a round nest of dried gra.s.s, and lines it with feathers, hair, and down. Then he rolls himself into a round bundle, which he ties up with two wraps of his long tail, and goes to sleep until spring. Of all the Sleepers he is the soundest. Dig him up and he shows no sign of life; but if brought in to a fire, he wakes up and becomes his own lively self once more. Put him out in the cold, and he rolls up and falls asleep again.

One of the Band who holds high office is by way of being a naturalist instead of an explorer or an aviator, as he originally intended. Last summer, in a bit of dried-up marshland near the roadside, he heard strange rustlings. On investigating, he found a family of young jumping mice moving through the gra.s.s and feeding on the buds of alder-bushes. They were quite tame, and as they ran out on the ends of the branches, he had a good view of them and finally managed to catch one by the end of his long tail. The mouse bit the boy, but did not even draw blood. Afterwards he seemed to become tamer, although shaking continually. Given a bit of bread, he sat up and nibbled it like a little squirrel; but even as he ate he suddenly had a spasm of fright and died. This death from fright occurs among a number of the more highly strung of the mice-folk, even when they seem to have become perfectly tame. This same young naturalist observed another jumping mouse which, contrary to all the books, took to the water when pursued, and swam nearly as expertly as a muskrat.

So endeth the Chronicle of the Seven Sleepers.

XII

DRAGON'S BLOOD

Then Sigurd went his way and roasted the heart of Fafnir on a rod. And when he tasted the blood, straightway he wot the speech of every bird of the air.

It takes longer nowadays. Yet the years are well spent. There is a strange indescribable happiness that comes with the knowledge of the bird-notes. As for the songs--they are not only among the joys of life, but they bring with them many other happinesses. Even as I write, the memory of many of them comes back to me: wind-swept hilltops; white sand-dunes against a blue, blue sea; singing rows of pine trees marching miles and miles through the barrens; jade-green pools; crooked streams of smoky-brown water; lonely islands; orchid-haunted marsh-lands; far journeyings and good fellowship with others who have learned the Way--these are but a few of them. Let me entreat you to leave the narrow in-door days and wander far afield before it be too late.

Come sit beside the weary way And hear the angels sing.

Ride with Auca.s.sin into the greenwood. There perchance, as happed to him, you will see the green gra.s.s grow and listen to the sweet birds sing and hear some good word.

To him who will but listen there are adventures in bird-songs anywhere, any time, and any season. It was but last winter that I found myself again in the dawn-dusk facing a defiant hickory, armed only with an axe. Let me recommend to every man who is worried about his body, his soul, or his estate during the winter months, that he buy or borrow a well-balanced axe and cut down and cut up a few trees for fire-wood. As he forces the tingling iced oxygen into every cell of his lungs, he will find that he is taking a new view of life and love and debt and death, and other perplexing and perennial topics.

Quite recently I read a journal that a young minister kept, back in the fifties. One entry especially appealed to me.

"Decided this morning that I was not the right man for this church.

Chopped wood for two hours in Colonel Hewitt's wood-lot. Decided that this was the church for me and that I was the man for this church."

On this particular morning, I heard once more the wild dawn-song of the Carolina wren, full of liquid bell-like overtones. As I listened, my mind went back to another wren-song. I had been hunting for the nest of a yellow palm warbler in a little gully in the depths of a northern forest. The blood ran down my face from the fierce bites of the black-flies, and the mosquitoes stung like fire. Suddenly, from the side of the tiny ravine, began a song full of ringing, gla.s.sy notes such as one makes by running a wet finger rapidly on the inside of a thin gla.s.s finger-bowl. Listening, I forgot that I was wet and tired and hungry and bitten and stung. For the first time I listened to the song of the winter wren. For years I had met this little bird along the sides of brooks in the winter and running in and out of holes and under stones like a mouse; but to-day to me it was no longer a tiny bird. It was the voice of the untamed, unknown northern woods.

It is hard to make any notation of the song. It flowed like some ethereal stream filled with little bubbles of music which broke in gla.s.sy tinkling sprays of sound over the under-current of the high vibrating melody itself. The song seemed to have two parts. The first ended in a contralto phrase, while the second soared like a fountain into a spray of tinkling trills. Through it all ran a strange unearthly dancing lilt, such as the fairy songs must have had, heard by wandering shepherds at the edge of the green fairy hills. At its very height the melody suddenly ceased, and once again I dropped back into a workaday, mosquito-ridden world, with ten miles between me and my camp.

On that day I found two of the almost unknown, feather-lined nests of the yellow palm warbler, and climbed up to the jewel-casket of a bay-breasted warbler, and was shown the cherished secret of a Nashville warbler's nest deep hidden in the sphagnum moss of a little tussock in the middle of a pathless mora.s.s. Yet my great adventure was the song of the winter wren.