The Adventures of a Grain of Dust Part 13

I. MR. MOLE AND HIS RELATIONS

Moles do a lot of good work for the farmer. Not only were they ploughing and ploughing and ploughing the soil--over and over again--thousands of centuries before man came along to plant seed in it, but they are all the time eating, among other things, destructive worms and insects in the soil. They work all over the world, that is to say, in the upper half of it--the Northern Hemisphere; and there's where the biggest half of the land is, if I haven't forgotten my geography.

WONDERFUL LITTLE MACHINES ON FOUR LEGS

Closely related to the moles are the shrews--quaint little mouse-like creatures with long, pointed heads and noses that they can twist about almost any way in hunting their meals and finding out other things in this big world that concern them. On these funny, long noses they have whiskers like a p.u.s.s.y-cat; and that helps, too, when you want to keep posted on what's going on around you. Like the moles the shrews are found all over the Northern Hemisphere. What is known as the "long-tailed shrew," is the very smallest of our relations among the mammalia. Why, they're no bigger than the end of a man's little finger; and the smallest watch _I_ ever heard of was a good deal bigger than that. Yet, inside these wee bodies is as much machinery as it takes to run any other mammal--an elephant, say.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COMMON AND THE SHORT-TAILED SHREW]

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 gra.s.s 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CILIATED SHREW]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECTION OF MR. MOLE'S CASTLE

This is a cross-section of a mole-hill, showing the central chamber and the rooms leading into it.]

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 pa.s.sages, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COMMON AND THE STAR-NOSED MOLE]

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 p.u.s.s.y-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.

[19] One of my friends in the faculty of the University of Chicago tells me there are still a good many armadillos in Texas.

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, gra.s.s, 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 c.o.c.kroaches, 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 c.o.c.kroaches, 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.

[20] Isn't that the way a toad swallows an angleworm? Or how _does_ he do it?

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-cus.h.i.+on 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 gra.s.s and moss. Then they all cuddle down together, as snug as you please, and stay there until Spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIGHWAYS OF GROUND-SQUIRREL TOWN

Almost as crooked as the streets of London town, aren't they? And as hard to find one's way about in--unless, of course, one were a ground-squirrel. This is the burrow of a Richardson ground-squirrel sketched by Thompson Seton, near Whitewater, Manitoba.]

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.