November 26.
What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day?
November 26, 2016
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1854
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What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? See January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen."); May 31, 1858 ("I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see,. . .but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. ") See also See also February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. . . .Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods? ") Compare July 12, 1856 ("In the still wet road on the hill, just beyond Lincoln bound, a short-tailed shrew (Sorex brevicaudus of Say), dead after the rain. I have found them thus three or four times before.")
What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? See January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen."); May 31, 1858 ("I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see,. . .but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. ") See also See also February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. . . .Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods? ") Compare July 12, 1856 ("In the still wet road on the hill, just beyond Lincoln bound, a short-tailed shrew (Sorex brevicaudus of Say), dead after the rain. I have found them thus three or four times before.")
What mouse? Is it "the long-tailed meadow mouse" of May 31, 1858? HDT refers to the wood mouse, deer mouse (Mus leucopus), white-bellied mouse, white-bellied deer mouse, white- footed mouse, meadow mouse, short-tailed meadow mouse (Arvicola hirsuta), and long-tailed meadow mouse. Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, describes only the common mouse (mus musculus), the jumping mouse, and the meadow mouse, the latter of which "we have doubtless as many as two or three species belonging to this genus" (Arvicola) Today's mouse is not the short-tailed meadow mouse. See August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. . . . above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp.”); December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath,. . .. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse") Today's mouse is not white bellied or the deer mouse of the woods. See December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice");;May 12, 1855 ("a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the [owl] eggs.");. May 27, 1856 ("Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches"); November 14, 1857 ("I examined those scratches with a microscope, and . . . comparing them with the incisors of a deer mouse (Mus leucopus) whose skull I have, . . .I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse."); November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse");,January 4, 1860 ("See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. . . evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen") See also April 8, 1861 (" The pitch pines have been much gnawed or barked this snowy winter. . . .At the base of each, also, is a quantity of the mice droppings. It is probably the white-footed mouse.")
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