"Wee Tim'rous Beasties" Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EMPEROR CREPT ALONG THE LEAVES A LITTLE CLOSER.]

It was the strangest courtship imaginable, for it was all on one side.

From tree to tree they went, the Emperor flashing his purple in the sunshine, the Princess, to all appearance, unconscious of her suitor's presence. Yet he tried every allurement he could think of. He circled round her, changing from purple to violet, from violet to velvet black. He soared above her skywards until he was a mere speck in the blue. He showed her the broad ribbon that he also wore. He even uncurled his slender saffron proboscis, and toasted his divinity in the sap of the oak-leaf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE SHOWED HER THE BROAD, WHITE RIBBON THAT HE ALSO WORE.]

What made her change her mind at the eleventh tree? What had he said to her? I cannot tell you, but I can tell you this. From that tree they rose together, circling round each other. Higher they went and higher, until the oakwood shrunk to a copse beneath them; higher and higher, until the sea was their horizon; higher and higher, until they pa.s.sed from sight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE EVEN UNCURLED HIS SAFFRON PROBOSCIS, AND TOASTED HER IN THE SAP OF THE OAK-LEAF.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE HARVEST MOUSE

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, the Harvest Mouse was the smallest of British beasties, absolutely the very smallest. Even the museum men, who look through microscopes, had to admit that.

Then a Liliputian shrewmouse turned up. He was found stretched dead in the middle of the path, and the time, as any book that deals with shrewmice would tell you, was the autumn. He was so small that, had he not died in the path, he would a.s.suredly not have been found at all.

Now, because of his smallness, and because he was found dead in the autumn (from which you may a.s.sume that he was full-grown), he was sent to the museum men; and the museum men examined his teeth, and rubbed their hands with glee, for they found that his upper incisors were abnormal.

So they had his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for him--SOREX MINUTUS. The lesser shrew. The _smallest_ British quadruped.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEN A LILIPUTIAN SHREWMOUSE TURNED UP.]

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.

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. It is pale chestnut above, and pasty white below. Taken all round, it is the most marvellous tail in the United Kingdom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE, AND HE ONLY, HAS A PREHENSILE TAIL.]

A ma.s.s of whipcord muscle, it can be made rigid, or flexible, at will. He can sit back with his hind feet resting on one stalk, hitch his tail round another, and lean his full weight against it. His full weight is one-sixth of an ounce. Were the G.P.O. more friendly to naturalists, a score of him could travel for a penny; but, even so, his tail is trivial in proportion.

He is so proud of it that he cleans it continually. Other mice clean their tails at odd times--only when they really seem to need it. The harvest mouse cleans his tail as a matter of regular toilet routine, and he does his toilet fifteen times a day. First his whiskers, then his head and ears, then his body, and finally his tail. He pulls it forward between his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It is quite worth it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 have learnt something of the art of nest-building. Then he had wandered abroad. The field, on the left of the hedgerow as you walk westward, was, when he entered it, tinged with uncertain green,--a sand-stained green like that of shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week's time, the sprouting corn had got the mastery, shrouding with its exquisite mantle the humble mother soil it seemed ashamed of; then, as if it had imprisoned the sunbeams, it turned to golden yellow, and now, wearying of conquest, had borrowed the copper radiance of a dying day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WOOD-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 trees. Had they been pa.s.sed through a gauge, they could not have better suited his proportions. He could whip his tail round any one of them. As he travelled from ear to ear, there was always something handy to grip on to. To reach the top of a cornstalk from the ground took him just two seconds and a half. He ran up it, he did not condescend to climb. Once among the ears, he travelled with little jumps, sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the corn, and help him, sometimes boldly leaping from the summit, and trusting confidently to his tiny hands and feet to pull him up a foot or so below.

Even if he blundered to earth he had nothing to fear, for, of all the denizens of the cornfield, he alone could thread the avenues in perfect silence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE FIRST BUDDING AND RIPENING OF THE WHEAT HE TASTED THE TRUE JOY OF LIVING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOMETIMES WAITING FOR THE WIND TO SWAY THE CORN AND HELP 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. Now and again came a foolish hen-faced pheasant, strayed from its nursery, and screaming for its keeper. One was shot as it crossed the path in front of him, but we must not say anything about that. Now and again a corn-crake, moving in silence, bowed to the ground, but betrayed by its loquacity. Now and again a trembling gla.s.s-eyed rabbit. To each and every footstep he had one invariable response. He ran up the nearest cornstalk, as high as he could go, and watched the author of it pa.s.s beneath him. He was rarely sighted. Once a weasel leapt at him. The weasel is a pretty jumper, but this time a tendril of convolvulus upset his aim.

Before he reached the ground again the mouse was five and twenty feet away, playing with his tail.

Half the summer pa.s.sed before he tired of these diversions. The coming of the sparrows put an end to them. They came just as the corn-ears had commenced to harden. There must have been a thousand. They were not in the field all day, but, while they were there, life was not worth living.

Picture it to yourself. A thousand unkempt, shrieking hooligans, plucking at the corn-ears, flinging the milky grain aside half eaten, filling the air with the whirring of their wings as they sighted man a hundred yards away, back again as man departed, quarrelling incessantly, blatant, noisy, vulgar. The cornstalks were no place for mice while sparrows were about.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AS DAINTY A LITTLE HARVEST MOUSE AS EVER CROSSED A CORNFIELD.]

But the evil had been of short duration. A month had seen the end of it.

During that month the ways of the mouse were humble. He wandered in and out the undergrowth, feeding on what the sparrows had discarded. Not that he was really afraid of them. Had they cared to eat him, they a.s.suredly would have done so at the start. But they never missed the opportunity of making him jump, and involuntary jumping is always unpleasant.

However, the life below had its compensations. He would certainly have lost her in the waving maze above. As it was, he saw her at the end of a straight avenue, and he could more or less mark her direction. She was running at full speed, as dainty a little harvest mouse as ever crossed a cornfield.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER FRONT WAS OF THE PUREST WHITE, AND TWISTED IN A DAINTY CURVE TO MATCH HER FEATURES.]

Her coat was of the softest fawn-chestnut; sharply contrasted with her pure white front, and twisted in a dainty curve to match her features.

Her feet and tiny claws were the pink of a sea-sh.e.l.l. Her eyes were small (harvest mice have small eyes), but they were very gentle. As she sighted him, she swung lightly up a thistle stem, and sat for a moment balanced on the head. Evidently he was not altogether uninteresting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER EYES WERE SMALL, BUT THEY WERE VERY GENTLE.]

Far into the evening he pressed his suit. When the inevitable rival mouse appeared, half the sun's disk was already masked by the hedgerow.

Ungainly, straggling shadows spread across the field, dark bars across a lurid crimson ground. Never was finer _mise-en-scene_ for such a conflict.

They fought on the very summits of the stalks, and the sun just managed to see the finish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEVER WAS FINER _MISE-EN-SCeNE_ FOR SUCH A CONFLICT.]

They built the nest together. It was his part to bite the long ribbon leaves from their sockets, hers to soften them and knot them and plait them until they formed a neat, compact, and self-coherent sphere.

Nine cornstalks formed the scaffolding. Six inches from the ground she built between them a fragile gra.s.s-blade platform. Then she started on the nest itself. Her only tools were her fore-paws, tail, and teeth. The latter she employed to soften stiff material. The weaving she did from below upwards by pure dexterity of hand and tail. For six hours she worked indefatigably, and in six hours it was finished. But it was not meant to live in; it was merely a nursery. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRIVOLLING.]

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.