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Meadow Mouse — Part 2
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I have spent considerable time on the marshes when they were being overflowed for the first time in weeks and cannot recall ever having seen so much as one solitary meadow mouse swimming for his life there.
Their paths are made by gnawing off the short stiff marsh grass close down to the roots leaving an even roadway something more than an inch wide. The closely ranked grass on either side bends just enough to meet overhead for a screen against the prying eyes of hawks.
The grass that is cut away to make the paths disappears completely, probably having been eaten by the mice, though when it comes to calculating the amount removed in the construction of the miles and miles of little roads that thread the meadows one cannot help wondering just how much a meadow mouse is capable of consuming in the course of a season, for they do not live upon grass alone; the isles between the stems of the fox grass and black grass swarm with brown sand-hoppers and various other salt-loving creatures which I am inclined to think furnish the principal incentive that calls the meadow mice away from the uplands; diminutive shellfish and other small fry are also eaten by them.
Meadow mice inhabit alike meadows and pasture land, orchards, gardens and cornfields and, wherever the lawns are not kept too closely trimmed and the cats are not too officious, readily take up their abode about houses, especially where there are woodpiles beneath which they can find shelter.
In wet ground every stranded piece of driftwood and fallen fence board is made to serve as roof for their crooked galleries and they frequently make their nests of withered grass in such places.
They also dig simple burrows hardly a foot in depth, having nests at the bottom where the young mice pass the first period of their lives; these young mice soon learn to ascend the almost perpendicular shafts leading up to the sunlight and may often be seen poking their stub noses out into the air to learn what the world is like.
In the winter they have their nests on the surface of the ground beneath the snow, their galleries leading off through the matted grass in all directions. I have found these nests with young ones as early as February and think it quite possible that they may be in the way of breeding throughout the winter.
Their tunnels beneath the snow are being constantly extended, allowing them to ramble about and explore the stubble for grass seeds and tender shoots in comparative safety. They have frequent doorways admitting them to the upper air, and at night are often out scampering back and forth across the snow, leaving an interesting tracery of footprints on its white surface, and are also not infrequently seen out in the winter sunshine among weeds and bushes that have remained uncovered. In hard seasons they depend largely on the bark of different fruit trees and shrubs, and even appear to find the resinous bark of the ground juniper palatable, the vanishing snow in the spring frequently revealing stems and branches stripped bare of their covering beyond all possibility of recovery.
Lacking the agility of other mice they have learned to stand and fight, no matter what the odds may be, employing the same manner of defence that woodchucks do. And yet none of the regular mouse hunters appears ever to hesitate to seize one of them; inexperienced kittens, and no doubt other young animals of like appetite, often get well bitten in a first attempt, but soon discover a better method of attack. Few animals are more constantly pursued than the meadow mice; while the warm weather lasts they have to be constantly on guard against the marsh hawk and the hen hawks who diligently search the grass land in regions where they are allowed to build their nests. Crows, also, are fond of going a-mousing on foot, particularly in late summer after the grass is cut, but naturally are not nearly as successful as the hawks.
As winter approaches these foes gradually take their departure, but their places are usually more than filled by the owls of various species. With the exception of the great horned owl and the arctic owl, these lovers of the twilight may be said to live on mice, the rabbits, squirrels and birds which they capture being only side issues or strokes of probably unexpected luck in a practically never-ending mouse hunt.
At uncertain intervals the rough-legged or winter hawks make their appearance and bend their energies in the same direction; like the owls they seem to be forever seeking for good mousing country, and having found it are apt to gather in considerable numbers and establish themselves for an indefinite period.