For the first time I perceive this spring
that the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life –
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
. . .
The woods are nightly thronged with
little creatures which most have never seen.
Once in a year one glances by
like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet,
and that is for the most part all that we see of them.
I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. . .
He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath,
and ran swiftly down the stems.
I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis [jumping mouse],
or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii [deer mouse],
or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse.
Saw probably a deer mouse
jumping off by the side of the swamp;
short leaps of apparently ten inches.
May 27, 1856
Looking over the shoulder of the miller,
I drew his attention to a mouse running up a brace.
“Oh, yes,” said he, “we have plenty of them.
Many are brought to the mill in barrels of corn.”
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.
I see . . . evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta.
Generally 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.
I had a transient vision
of one mouse this winter, and that
the first for a number of years.
*****
Spring: Nests and other signs of mice revealed.
March 21. In the hollow behind Britton's Camp, I see seven mouse-holes - probably Mus leucopus -- around an old oak stump, all within a foot of it, and many of their droppings at each hole and where they have gnawed off the grass, and indistinct galleries in the grass, extending three or four feet on every side March 21, 1855
March 22. A (probably meadow) mouse nest in the low meadow by stone bridge, where it must have been covered with water a month ago; probably made in fall. Low in the grass, a little dome four inches in diameter, with no sign of entrance, it being very low on one side. Made of fine meadow-grass. March 22, 1855
March 25. I notice on hillside in Stow's wood-lot on the west of the Cut what looks like a rope or hollow semicylinder of sawdust around a large white pine stump, just over its instep. There are two or three mouse-holes between the prongs, and the mice have evidently had a gallery through this dust. Much of it is very coarse and fibry [sic], — fibres of wood an inch or more long mixed with finer. This is probably the work of the mice in the winter on the roots below, making rooms for themselves. Some of the fine dust is formed into a pellet a quarter of an inch wide and flat, of a regular form, half as thick as wide. If not so large you might think they had passed through the creature. The ring of this dust or chewings is not more than two inches wide, and yet it is a hollow semicylinder, more or less regular. I think that I can explain it thus: The mice — of course deer mice — had a gallery in the snow around the stump, from hole to hole. When they began to gnaw away the stump underground they brought up their gnawings, and, of course, had no place to cast them but in the gallery through which they ran . Can it be that they eat any of this wood? The gnawings and dust were abundant and fresh, while that made by worms under the bark was old and dirty and could not have been washed into this position, though some of it might have been made by worms beneath the ground. March 25, 1860
April 7. A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow's meadow east of railroad, on the surface. Just like those seen in the rye-field some weeks ago, but this in lower ground has a distinct gallery running from it, and I think is the nest of the meadow mouse. April 7, 1855
April 8. Found beneath the surface, on the sphagnum, near wrinkled shells, a little like nutmegs, perhaps bass nuts, collected after a freshet by mice! April 8, 1856
April 8. 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. April 8, 1861
April 16. I could not dig to the nest of the deer mouse in Britton's Hollow, because of the frost about six inches beneath the surface . . . As far as I dug, their galleries appeared at first to be lined with a sort of membrane, which I found was the bark or skin of roots of the right size , their galleries taking the place of the decayed wood. An oak stump. April 16, 1855
April 24. Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within. April 24, 1857
The Mouse as prey of owls and hawks.
May 1. [Garfield] found in a red-tailed hawk nest "] three or four white-bellied or deer mouse (Mus leucopus)" May 1, 1855
May 12. [ In a red owl's nest ] a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the [owl] eggs. May 12, 1855.
May 13. Under the hop-hornbeam below the monument, observed a large pellet, apparently dropped by some bird of prey, consisting of mouse-hair, with an oat or two in it undigested, which probably the mouse had swallowed. This reminded me that I had read this kind of birds digested the flesh of the animals they swallowed, but not the vegetable food in the stomachs of the latter. May 13, 1855
Two live mice.
May 27.* Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches. May 27, 1856
May 31.* 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 – for it rests a long time on the rail within a rod– but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. It finally runs, with a slight hop– the tarsus of the hind legs being very long while the fore legs are short and its head accordingly low-down the bank to the meadow. May 31, 1858
Summer memories of mice.
June 24. Melvin was there with his dog, which had just caught a woodchuck. M. said that he once saw a fox jump over a wall with some thing in his mouth, and, going up, the fox dropped a woodchuck and a mouse, which he had caught and was carrying home to his young. He had eaten the head of the woodchuck. When M. looked there the next morning they were gone. June 24, 1857
July There are scores of pitch pines in my field, from one to three inches in diameter, girdled by the mice last winter. A Norwegian winter it was for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they had to mix much pine meal with their usual diet. July 1845
August 1. Two months ago the maple swamp was red with maple seed falling in showers around, but now only a very small number of maple seeds are to be found. Indeed, almost every seed that falls to the earth is picked up by some animal or other whose favorite and perhaps peculiar food it is. They are daily busy about it in the season, and the few seeds which escape are exceptions. There is at least a squirrel or mouse to a tree. They ransack the woods. These little creatures must live, and this apparently is one of the principal ends of the abundance of seeds that falls. August 1, 1860
August 6. I see the sunflower's broad disk now in gardens . . .I once saw one as big as a milk-pan, in which a mouse had its nest. August 6, 1853
August 25. How much life is drowned out that inhabits about the roots of the meadow-grass! How many a family, perchance, of short-tailed meadow mice has had to scamper or swim! August 25, 1856
A live meadow mouse.
August 25.* I see a mouse on the dry hillside this side of Clamshell. It is evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally 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. It endeavors to escape down the hill to the meadow, and at first glides along in a sort of path (?), methinks. It glides close to the ground under the stubble and tries to conceal itself. August 25, 1858
Fox dung.
September 23. I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries. I saw exactly the same beyond Goose Pond a few days ago, on a rock,-- except that the tooth was much smaller, probably of a mouse. September 23, 1860 [Compare February 26, 1855 ("Examined with glass some fox-dung (?) from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. It appeared to be composed two thirds of clay, and the rest a slate-colored fur and coarser white hairs, black-tipped, too coarse for the deer mouse.")]
A Mus musculus, Common Mouse?
September 25.*. Looking over the shoulder of the miller, I drew his attention to a mouse running up a brace. “Oh, yes,” said he, “we have plenty of them. Many are brought to the mill in barrels of corn, and when the barrel is placed on the platform of the hopper they scamper away.” September 25, 1857
Nests, middens and other signs of mice.
October 8. Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest in the prinos swamp, while surveying on the new Bedford road to-day, topped over with moss, and a hole on one side, like a squirrel-nest. October 8, 1853
October 8. Observed in the woods a very large, perhaps owl pellet, or possibly fox stercus, of gray fur and small bones and the jaw of a rodent, apparently a wild mouse. October 8, 1856
November 14. 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 14, 1857
November 15. It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves . November 15, 1857
November 25. Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse. November 25, 1857
A dead mouse? in the road.
November 26. What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? Brown above, gray beneath, black incisors, five toes with claws on each foot, long snout with small blunt black extremity, many mustachios, eyes far forward feet light or dirty white, tail 1 1/2 inches long, whole length 3 3/4 inches; on causeway. November 26, 1854
Snow the great revealer.
November 29. I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks, and crows sit silent on a bare oak-top. November 29, 1858
December 6. No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. Thus it is alternate snow and seeds. December 6, 1859
A live jumping mouse?
December 13.* I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher's), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (?) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, perhaps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse. December 13, 1852 {See February 16, 1855 ( "The Gerbillus is a 'yellowish cream color' beneath.")
See Davies, Thomas (6 June 1797). "An Account of the Jumping Mouse of Canada. Dipus Canadensis" .("It always took progressive leaps of from three to four, and sometimes of five yards, although seldom above 12 or 14 inches from the surface of the grass; but I have frequently observed others in shrubby places and in the woods, amongst plants, where they chiefly reside, leap considerably higher. When found in such places, it is impossible to take them, from their wonderful agility, and their evading all pursuit by bounding into the thickest cover they can find. With respect to the figure given of it in its dormant state, . . . I never could observe these animals in any parts of the country after the beginning of September, I conceive they lay themselves up some time in that month, or beginning of October, when the frost becomes sharp; nor did I ever see them again before the last week in May, or beginning of June. From their being enveloped in balls of clay, without any appearance of food, I conceive they sleep during the winter, ")
The Meadow Jumping Mouse (Zapus hudsonius) has elongated hind feet and a distinctively long tail, which is 1½ times the total body length. The long, coarse fur is yellowish-orange along the sides with a wide, darker brown band along the center of the back. There are some variations in fur color, but dark brown broad dorsal stripe is always present. Feet and belly color are whitish to pale yellow. Some black hairs are mixed in with the fur on the back and the tip of the tail has a tiny tuft of black hair. The meadow jumping mouse resembles the woodland jumping mouse (Napaeozapus insignis) but is duller in color and the tail is not usually tipped with white. See Thompson ("General color, yellowish brown above, {grayish )yellow on the sides, and yellowish white on the belly ; tail tapering, longer than the body, sparsely covered with very short hair, and the tuft at the end very small; head small, narrrow and pointed; fore legs very short; hind legs very long"]
Countless mice revealed by snow
December 14. By the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell. December 14, 1855
December 18. I see a few squirrels’ tracks in the woods and, here and there in one or two places, where a mouse’s gallery approached the surface. December 18, 1854
December 27. The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.
December 27. It is surprising what things the snow betrays. 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 and larger animals. I see where the mouse has dived into a little hole in the snow, not larger than my thumb, by the side of a weed, and a yard further reappeared again, and so on alternately above and beneath. A snug life it lives. December 27, 1853
December 27 Mice have been abroad in the night We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks. I see where, by the shore of Goose Pond, one has pushed up just far enough to open a window through the snow three quarters of an inch across, but has not been forth. Elsewhere, when on the pond, I see in several places where one has made a circuit out on to the pond a rod or more, returning to the shore again. Such a track may, by what we call accident, be preserved for a geological period, or be obliterated by the melting of the snow. December 27, 1857
December 31. I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. December 31, 1854
December 31. To Partridge Glade. I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night. December 31, 1855
January 1. In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice. Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately. January 1, 1856
January 4. See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. What if you could witness with owls' eyes the revelry of the wood mice some night, frisking about the wood like so many little kangaroos? Here is a palpable evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen, — such populousness as commonly only the imagination dreams of. January 4, 1860
January 7. It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown . . . The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. January 7, 1858
January 7. I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him. A little further was a similar hole with some fur in it. Did he smell the dead or living mouse beneath and paw to it, or rather, catching it on the surface, make that hollow in his efforts to eat it? It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him! You would say that he need not make such a hole in order to eat the mouse. January 7, 1860
January 9. To Beck Stow’s . . . I wade through the swamp, where the snow lies light eighteen inches deep on a level, a few leaves of andromedas, etc., peeping out. (I am a-birds’-nesting.) The mice have been out and run over it. January 9, 1856
January 10. I found thirty-five chestnuts in a little pile under the end of a stick under the leaves, near — within a foot of — what I should call a gallery of a meadow mouse. These galleries were quite common as I raked. January 10, 1853
January 10. We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice. January 10, 1856
January 11. Observed that the smooth sumachs about the north side of the Wyman meadow had been visited by partridges and . . . they had tracked the snow from bush to bush, visiting almost every bush and leaving their traces. The mice, also, had run from the base of one sumach to that of another on all sides, though there was no entrance to the ground there. Probably they had climbed the stems for berries. Most of the bunches now hang half broken off, by time, etc. . . . Animals that live on such cheap food as buds and leaves and bark and wood, like partridges and rabbits and wild mice, never need apprehend a famine. January 11, 1856
January 13. I see no tracks but of mice, and apparently of foxes, which have visited every muskrat-house and then turned short away. January 13, 1857
January 15. The tracks of the mice near the head of Well Meadow were particularly interesting. There was a level surface of pure snow there, unbroken by bushes or grass, about four rods across, and here were nine tracks of mice running across it from the bushes on this side to those on the other, the tracks quite near together but repeatedly crossing each other at very acute angles, but each particular course was generally quite direct. The snow was so light that only one distinct track was made by all four of the feet, five or six inches apart, but the tail left a very distinct mark. A single track, thus stretching away almost straight, sometimes half a dozen rods, over unspotted snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new pattern; and then they suggest an airy lightness in the body that impressed them. Though there may have been but one or two here, the tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. Such is the delicacy of the impression on the surface of the lightest snow, where other creatures sink, and night, too, being the season when these tracks are made, they remind me of a fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors were here. I can easily imagine all the rest. Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves. Yet I should like much to see by broad daylight a company of these revellers hopping over the snow. There is a still life in America that is little observed or dreamed of. Here were possible auditors and critics which the lecturer at the Lyceum last night did not think of. How snug they are somewhere under the snow now, not to be thought of, if it were not for these pretty tracks! And for a week, or fortnight even, of pretty still weather the tracks will remain, to tell of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse who was not beneath the notice of the Lord. So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance. The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. January 15, 1857
January 18. I am pretty sure to find tracks under the last-named bank, in the edge of the low swamp white oak wood, either of rabbits or mice, crows or fox. The two former generally keep close under the bank, as the safest beat for them, but sometimes I see where they hopped across the river several times last night, and I can imagine how shyly they looked back from the opposite side. The mice occasionally hop out a rod and back, making a semicircle; more rarely quite across. January 18, 1859
January 22. Where the sedge grows rankly and is uncut, as along the edge of the river and meadows, what fine coverts are made for mice, etc., at this season! It is arched over, and the snow rests chiefly on its ends, while the middle part is elevated from six inches to a foot and forms a thick thatch, as it were, even when all is covered with snow, under which the mice and so forth can run freely, out of the way of the wind and of foxes. January 22, 1860
January 23. I see where the squirrels have torn the pine cones in pieces to come at their seeds. And in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow. January 23, 1852
January 25. Saw A. Hosmer . . . He says that he has seen that little bird (evidently the shrike) with mice in its claws. January 25, 1860
A Frozen Mouse.
January 29. 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. January 29, 1853
More tracks in the snow.
January 30. I saw the other day (apparently) mouse(?)-tracks which had been made in slosh on the Andromeda Ponds and then frozen, — little gutters about two inches wide and nearly one deep, looking very artificial with the nicks on the sides. January 30, 1860
January 31. Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. Here is where one has come down the bank and hopped meanderingly across the river. Another an inch and a quarter wide by five, six, or seven apart from centre to centre. The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side. January 31, 1856
February 2. I see where some meadow mouse — if not mole — just came to the surface of the snow enough to break it with his back for three or four inches, then put his head out and at once withdrew it. We walked, as usual, on the fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river. He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button-bushes and willows, smelling in the snow. Not appearing to regard us much, he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus, half-way round it; at Pleasant Meadow, evidently looking for mice (or moles?) in the grass of the bank, smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble, often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots. He was eagerly searching for food, intent on finding some mouse to help fill his empty stomach. He had a blackish tail and blackish feet. Looked lean and stood high. The tail peculiarly large for any creature to carry round. He stepped daintily about, softly, and is more to the manor born than a dog. It was a very arctic scene this cold day, and I suppose he would hardly have ventured out in a warm one. The fox seems to get his living by industry and perseverance. He runs smelling for miles along the most favorable routes, especially the edge of rivers and ponds, until he smells the track of a mouse beneath the snow or the fresh track of a partridge, and then follows it till he comes upon his game. After exploring thus a great many quarters, after hours of fruitless search, he succeeds. There may be a dozen partridges resting in the snow within a square mile, and his work is simply to find them with the aid of his nose. Compared with the dog, he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to a noble family which has seen its best days, — a younger son. Now and then he starts, and turns and doubles on his track, as if he heard or scented danger. (I watch him through my glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of only sixty rods. I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably he has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years. February 2, 1860
February 3. Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice. February 3, 1856
February 9. I see a few squirrel-tracks, but no mice-tracks, for no night has intervened since the snow. February 9, 1856
February 12. I observe no mouse-tracks in the fields and meadows. The snow is so light and deep that they have run wholly underneath, and I see in the fields here and there a little hole in the crust where they have come to the surface. February 12, 1855
A trapped deer mouse.
February 16. I have caught a mouse at last, where were tracks like those of February 12th, but it is eaten half up, apparently by its fellow (?). All the flesh is eaten out and part of the skin; one fore foot eaten off, but the entrails left . No wonder we do not find their dead bodies in the woods. The rest of the trap is not moved or sprung, and there is no track of a large animal or bird in the snow . . . The mouse is so much torn that I cannot get the length of the body and its markings exactly. Entire length, 8 inches; length of head to base of ears, 1 inch ; body , 3( ? ; tail, 3½.
Brown or reddish-brown above; white beneath; fur slate above and beneath; tail also darker above, light beneath; feet white; hind legs longest, say 1 inches long; fore; hind foot more than inch long five toes on hind feet, four on front, with rudiment of thumb without claw, with little white protuberances on the soles of all; ears large, almost bare, thin, slaty-colored, inch long on outside; upper jaw + inch longer than lower; tail round, hairy, gradually tapering, dimly ringed; longest mustachios 13 inches; incisors varnish or dry maple-wood color.
From Emmons's account I should think it the Arvicola Emmonsii of De Kay, or deer mouse, which is thought a connecting link between the Arvicola and Gerbillus. The Gerbillus is the only other described much like it, and that is a "yellowish cream color" beneath.
Where snow is left on banks I see the galleries of mice (?) or moles (?) unroofed. The mouse I caught had come up through the snow by the side of a shrub oak, run along a rod, and entered again, i.e. before I set the trap. February 16, 1855
February 17. The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal in their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored with them. I see, too, where they have run over the ice in the swamp, there is a mere sugaring of snow on it, ever trying to make an entrance to get beneath it. You see deep and distinct channels in the snow in some places, as if a whole colony had long travelled to and fro in them, a highway, a well-known trail, — but suddenly they will come to an end; and yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for you see where the single traveller who did it all has nimbly hopped along as if suddenly scared, making but a slight impression, squirrel like, on the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will make a channel for a short distance. These mice tracks are of various sizes, and sometimes, when they are large and they have taken long and regular hops nine or ten inches apart in a straight line, they look at a little distance like a fox-track. I suspect that the mice sometimes build their nests in bushes from the foundation, for, in the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were, at the same height and also on prinos bushes, - plainly the work of mice wholly. February 17, 1854
The nest of a different mouse?
February 18. 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? February 18, 1857
[See Thompson (Meadow mouse nests are sometimes constructed in their burrows, and are also found at the season of hay harvest, in great numbers, among the vegetation upon the surface of the ground. They are built of coarse straw, lined with fine soft leaves, somewhat in the manner of a bird's nest, with this difference, that they are covered at the top, and the passage into them is from beneath.") Compare March 6, 1855 ("a nice warm globular nest some five inches in diameter, amid the sphagnum and cranberry vines , etc., -made of dried grass and lined with a still finer grass. The hole was on one side, and the bottom was near two inches thick . There were many small paths or galleries in the meadow leading to this from the brook some rod or more distant."); March 13, 1855 ("Corning through the stubble of Stow's rye-field in front of the Breed house, I meet with four mice-nests in going half a dozen rods. They lie flat on the ground amid the stubble, are flattened spheres, the horizontal diameter about five inches, the perpendicular considcrably less, composed of grass or finer stubble, and on taking them up you do not at once detect the entrance with your eye, but rather feel it with your finger on the side; lined with the finest of the grass. These were undoubtedly-probably-made when the snow was on the ground, for their winter residence, while they gleaned the rye-field, and when the snow went off they scampered to the woods . I think they were nude by the mus leucopus, i. e. Arricola Emmonsii. Similar to that of March 6th in meadow, except that was thicker against wet.") and March 22, 1855 ("A (probably meadow) mouse nest in the low meadow by stone bridge, where it must have been covered with water a month ago; probably made in fall. Low in the grass, a little dome four inches in diameter, with no sign of entrance, it being very low on one side. Made of fine meadow-grass.")
A second trapped deer mouse.
February 20. I have caught another of those mice of February 16th and secured it entire , — a male Whole length Head , from the nose to the ears 6 inches 1 inch
Tail • • Longest of the whiskers - · 31 inches 66 1 / Hind legs the longest , though only the feet , about three quarters of an inch in length , are exposed , with- out the fur . Of the fore legs a little more is exposed than the hands , or perhaps four to five eighths of an inch , claws concealed in tufts of white hair . The upper jaw projects about half an inch beyond the lower .
The whole upper parts are brown, except the ears, from the snout to the tip of the tail, dark-brown on the top of the head and back and upper side of the tail, reddish-brown or fawn or fox (?) colored on the sides. Tail hairy and obscurely ringed. The whole lower parts white, including the neat white feet and under side of tail. The irregular waving line along the sides, forming the boundary between the brown and the white, very sharply defined from side of the snout to the tip of the tail. Above brown, beneath white very decidedly.
The brown of the sides extends down by a triangular point to the last joint or foot of the fore legs and to the same or heels of the hind ones , or you may say the white of the belly extends upward on the sides between the legs in a broad bay. The ears are large , broad and roundish , five eighths of an inch long , ash or slate - colored , thin and bare except at base.
The reddish brown and the white are the striking colors. It is in the attitude of hopping, its thighs drawn up and concealed in the fur and its long hind feet in the same plane with its buttocks , while the short fore feet appear like hands. Fur dark slate, under both brown and white hair. The droppings black, say one sixth inch long , cylindrical . Some of the whiskers are dark, some whitish. It has a rather large head , apparently curving forward or downward. A very slight and delicate tinge of yellowish beneath between the fore legs .
It is undoubtedly the Arvicola Emmonsii of De Kay. It is a very pretty and neat little animal for a mouse, with its wholesome reddish-brown sides distinctly bounding on its pure white belly, neat white feet, large slate-colored ears which suggest circumspection and timidity, — ready to earth itself on the least sound of danger, long tail, and numerous whiskers.
This was caught in a dry and elevated situation, amid shrub oaks. It apparently, like the other, came up through a hole in the snow at the foot of a shrub oak (Quercus ilicifolia ).
– This tawny or reddish-brown color which belongs to the king of beasts and to the deer, singular that it should extend to this minute beast also! February 20, 1855 [Vide March 12, & 10]
A catalog of mice.
February 20. The quadrupeds which I know that we have here in Concord are ( vide Emmons , p . 5 ) . . . MUSCIDE ( altered to MURIDE on Arvicola hirsutus, p . 59 ) Meadow Mouse, probably. ( His albo-rufescens only a variety according to Audubon and Bachman.) Arvicola Emmonsii [Mus leucopus], Mus musculus , Common Mouse . . . Have we the Gerbillus Canadensis, Jumping mouse? . . .
We have here in Concord . . . three families of the Order Rodentia . . . Nearly half of our quadrupeds belong to the Muridoe, or Rat Family, and a quarter of them to the Mustelidoe, or Weasel Family. Some[quadraped]s though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. Others are very rare, like the otter and raccoon. The striped squirrel is the smallest quadruped that we commonly notice in our walks in the woods, and we do not realize, especially in summer, when their tracks are not visible, that the aisles of the wood are threaded by countless wild mice, and no more that the meadows are swarming in many places with meadow mice and moles . . . We see the tracks of mice on the snow in the woods, or once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them. February 20, 1855
A third trapped deer mouse.
February 21. Another Arvicola Emmonsii , a male; whole length six inches, tail three inches. This is very little reddish on the sides, but general aspect above dark-brown; though not iron-gray, yet reminding me of that; yet not the less like the hue of beasts in a menagerie. This may be a last year's mouse. Audubon and Bachman say that when "it sheds its hair late in spring . . . it assumes a bluish gray tint, a little lighter than that of the common mouse. " . . .
When I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching . The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along. February 21, 1855
Winter Nests and Habits Revealed.
February 24. I saw yesterday in Hubbard's sumach meadow a bunch of dried grass with a few small leaves inmixed, which had lain next the ground under the snow, probably the nest of a mouse or mole . . . [Minott says his cat] sometimes catches a little dark- colored mouse with a sharp nose. February 24, 1855
March 6. Observed a mouse or mole's nest in the Second Division Meadow , where it had been made under the snow , a nice warm globular nest some five inches in diameter , amid the sphagnum and cranberry vines , etc. , -made of dried grass and lined with a still finer grass . The hole was on one side , and the bottom was near two inches thick . There were many small paths or galleries in the meadow leading to this from the brook some rod or more distant . March 6, 1855
March 7. Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss (forming a firm bed about an inch high, like little pines, surmounted by a fine red stem with a green point, in all three quarters of an inch high), which they had fed on to a great extent, evidently when it was covered with snow, shearing it off level. March 7, 1855
Their droppings could be collected by the hand probably, a light brown above, green next the earth. There were apparently many of their holes in the earth about the stump. They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter. March 7, 1855 (See March 14th)
Researching the deer mouse.
March 10. Audubon and Bachman call my deer mouse Mus Leucopus , Rafinesque , " American White - Footed Mouse ; call it " yellowish brown above " and give these syno- nyms : " Mus Sylvaticus , Forster , Phil . Trans . , vol . lxii . , p . 380 . Field - Rat , Penn . , Hist . Quad . , vol . ii . , p . 185 . Field - Rat , Arctic Zoöl . , vol . i . , p . 131 . Musculus Leucopus , Rafinesque , Amer . Month . Review , Oct. 1818 , p . 444 . Mus Leucopus , Desmar . Mamm . , esp . 493 . Mus Sylvaticus , Harlan , Fauna , p . 151 . Mus Agrarius , Godm . , Nat . Hist . , vol . ii . , p . 88 . Mus Leucopus , Richardson , F. B. A. , p . 142 . Arvicola Nuttallii , Harlan , variety . Arvicola Emmonsii , Emm . , Mass . Report , p . 61 . Mus Leucopus , Dekay , Nat . Hist . N. Y. , pl . 1 , p . 82. " By fur he does not mean the short inner hair only . Says they are larger in Carolina than in the Eastern States , but he does not describe any larger than mine . " Next to the common mouse, this is the most abundant and widely diffused species of mouse in North America . We have received it . from · • every State in the Union, and from Labrador , Hudson's Bay , and the Columbia River. "Has found it" taking up its abode in a deserted squirrel's nest , thirty feet from the earth ." 66 - ' They have been known to take possession of deserted bird ' nests such as those of the catbird, red-winged starling, song thrush, or red-eyed fly-catcher . " " We have also occasionally found their nests on bushes , from five to fifteen feet from the ground . They are in these cases constructed with nearly as much art and ingenuity as the nests of the Baltimore Oriole . " Of some he has , says , " They are seven inches in length and four in breadth , the circumference mea- suring thirteen inches ; they are of an oval shape and are outwardly composed of dried moss and a few slips of the inner bark of some wild grape - vine ; other nests are more rounded , and are composed of dried leaves and moss . Thinks two pairs live in some very large ones . ' The entrance in all the nests is from below , and about the size of the animak " 66 99 ! Female sometimes escapes with her young adhering to her teats . " Nocturnal in its habits . " Only sound he has heard from them " a low squeak . " Not so carnivorous as " most of its kindred species . " Troubles trappers by getting their bait . Lays up " stores of grain and grass seeds , " acorns , etc. In the North , wheat ; in the South , rice . Eats out the heart of Indian corn kernels . Thinks it produces two litters in a season in the North and three in the South . Foxes , owls , etc. , destroy it . Thinks the ermine weasel its most formidable foe . Thinks it sometimes occupies a chipping squirrel's hole . Thinks that neither this nor the mole does much injury to garden or farm , but rather " the little pine- mouse ( Arvicola pinetorum , Le Conte ) , or perhaps Wilson's meadow - mouse ( Arvicola Pennsylvanica , Ord , A. hirsutus , Emmons , and Dekay ) . " Yet Northern farmers complain that the deer mouse gnaws young fruit trees , etc .; maybe so . Avoids houses , at least those where there are wharf rats and cats . March 10, 1855
March 11. C. observes where mice (?) have gnawed the pitch pines the past winter. Is not this a phenomenon of a winter of deep snow only? as that when I lived at Walden, a hard winter for them. I do not commonly observe it on a large scale. March 11, 1861
March 12. See a large mouse on the snow near the edge of the wood. March 12, 1854
4 Day-Nests of the deer mouse?
March 13. Corning through the stubble of Stow's rye-field in front of the Breed house, I meet with four mice-nests in going half a dozen rods. They lie flat on the ground amid the stubble, are flattened spheres, the horizontal diameter about five inches, the perpendicular considcrably less, composed of grass or finer stubble, and on taking them up you do not at once detect the entrance with your eye, but rather feel it with your finger on the side; lined with the finest of the grass. These were undoubtedly-probably-made when the snow was on the ground, for their winter residence, while they gleaned the rye-field, and when the snow went off they scampered to the woods. I think they were made by the mus leucopus. , i. e. Arricola Emmonsii. Similar to that of March 6th in meadow, except that was thicker against wet. March 13, 1855
A fourth trapped deer mouse.
March 14. At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). So this was the kind, undoubtedly, that fed on the moss, It is in very good condition; extreme length six and a half, tail three inches. It is a less reddish brown on the sides and cheeks than my whole skin, and a darker brown above, mixed with a little reddish; no yellow tinge on breast. Some whiskers, as usual, are white, others black, and I count the "six tubercles on each palm." There are no tracks about the stump, for they are not abroad by day, i . e . since the last of this snow, but probably there will be tracks to-morrow morning. Thus it is generally. If it ceases snowing in the morning, you see few, if any, tracks in your walk, but the next morning many. March 14, 1855
A Meadow Mouse with Young.
March 15. Mr. Rice tells me that when he was getting mud out of the little swamp at the foot of Brister's Hill . . . he heard a squeaking and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a " field mouse," – by his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and, while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself. March 15, 1855
*****
Notes on the "mouse" and Thoreau's catalog.
The term mouse includes not only the typical mouse and other members of genus Mus, but also other species or genera such as the vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus ) sometimes called the field mouse or meadow mouse, and the deer mouse (Peromyscus).
The modern classification includes:
- family Muridae
- typical mice, the genus Mus
- family Cricetidae
- pennsylvanicus – "Field or Meadow mice".
- Peromyscus [from Greek meaning "booted mouse"] deer mice
- maniculatus group
- Eastern deer mouse − P. maniculatus
- leucopus group
- White-footed mouse– P. leucopus\
- family Zapodidae.
- The meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius)
Heinrich (Winter World) says only experts can distinguish the two types of deer mouse. The common name of "deer mouse" (coined in 1833) is a reference to its agility. Unlike meadow voles, deer mice have long legs that allow them to bound like deer. Deer mice are nocturnal in winter and may be torpid in daylight. Meadow mice and jumping mice hibernate in winter.
Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, catalogs the common mouse (mus musculus), the (jumping mouse (Gerbillus canadensis ), the white bellied jumping mouse (Mus leucopus) and the meadow mouse ( Arvicola riparius) -- the latter of which "we have doubtless as many as two or three species belonging to this genus":
Meadow mice are quite common in most parts of the state, and at times they become so greatly multiplied as to do much injury to the meadows and to the stacks of hay and grain(. They have their burrows in the banks of streams, and under old stumps, logs and fences ; and in neighbor- hoods where they are plenty, numerous iurrows may be seen along tlie roots of the grass, forming lanes in which they may travel in various directions from their burrows. Their nests are sometimes constructed in their burrows, and are also found at the season of hay harTest, in great numbers, among the vegetation upon the surface of the ground. They are built of coarse straw, lined witli fine soft leaves, somewhat in the manner of a bird's nest, with this difference, that they are covered at the top, and the passage into them is from beneath. These nests frequently contain 6 or 8 young ones. The meadow mice, though very prolific, have many enemies which serve in a measure to check their undue multiplication. Large numbers of them are destroyed by owls, hawks, foxes, cats &c., and the country people, when at la- bor in the field, are vigilant in putting ihem to death")
Another Ninteeenth Century source describes the deer mouse (Mus leucopus):
The white footed or deer mouse is familiar to every farmer's boy and claims admiration not only on account of its graceful form and spirited appearance but by its pretty though subdued coloration and sprightly movements The soft brown pelage of the upper parts contrasts nicely with the pure white of the feet and under parts The origin of the name deer mouse is found partly in the fawn color which is the normal color of the back and partly also in the long leaps by which the mouse escapes its pursuers . In the young the shade is less bright and is more like that of the house mouse while the dorsal coloration extends downward on the outside of the legs . That the animal is subject to interminable variations in color is seen from the long list of synonyms given.
Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota , 179 (1892) See Thoreau's specimen of February 20, 1855 ("It is undoubtedly the Arvicola Emmonsii of De Kay. It is a very pretty and neat little animal for a mouse, with its wholesome reddish-brown sides distinctly bounding on its pure white belly, neat white feet, large slate-colored ears . . . long tail, and numerous whiskers.")
Most of Thoreau's observations of wild mice are either the meadow mouse or deer mouse. Thoreau calls the meadow mouse or "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta -- now known as Microtus pennsylvanicus, meadow Vole. Thoreau usually identifies the wood or deer mouse or white-bellied mouse as Mus leucopus. He lists mamy synonyms for this deer mouse on March 10, 1855, including Mus Leucopus, Mus Sylvaticus, Musculus Leucopus, Mus Agrarius, Arvicola Nuttallii and Arvicola Emmonsii. Thoreau also refers at least once to a “white-footed mouse”-- presuambly Mus leucopus.
Thoreau makes one possible observation, December 13, 1852, of the jumping mouse (Gerbillus Canadensis ), but later questions whether it inhabits Concord. Still later he observes possible a "long-tailed" meadow mouse running with short hops on May 31, 1858. While there is a western long-tailed vole, the only common voles in Massachusetts other than the short-tailed meadow mouse are the woodland vole (Microtus pinetorum) and the southern red-backed vole (Myodes gapperi) -- both of which have short tail. It seems likely, then, that Thoreau's tawny almost golden brown "hind-legs-being-very -long-while-the-fore-legs-are-short" long- tailed mouse of May 31, 1858, was a jumping mouse.
And on November 26, 1854, Thoreau finds a dead, otherwise unspecified, "long-sharp-nose mouse" ( brown above, gray beneath, black incisors, five toes with claws on each foot, forward feet light or dirty white). Minott 's cat ( February 24, 1855) also catches a little dark-colored mouse with a sharp nose. This is certainly not the meadow mouse, whose nose Thoreau says is not sharp -- but what is it? Although Thoreau often identifies the shrew [e.g. July 12, 1856 (" a short-tailed shrew (Sorex brevicaudus of Say), dead after the rain. I have found them thus three or four times before . . . Lead-color above, somewhat lighter beneath, with a long snout, 3/8 inch beyond lower jaw, incisors black"], the black-incisor-five-toed-long-sharp-nose mouse of November 26, surely is a shrew -- "small, mole-like mammals that look a bit like long-nosed mice." Voles and deer mice have four toes on their front feet and five toes on their rear feet. Shrews have five toes on their front and five on their rear feet.
*****
Thoreau rarely saw a live mouse. In addition to the possible jumping mouse of December 13, 1852, Thoreau observed live wild mice on four other occasions: May 27, 1856 (deer mouse), November 15, 1857 ("I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me."); May 31, 1858 (the so-called long-tailed meadow mouse) and August 25, 1858 (short-tailed meadow mouse). See also March 12, 1854 ("See a large mouse on the snow near the edge of the wood")
Once in a year one glances by
like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet,
and that is for the most part all that we see of them.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
This is Thoreau's catalog:
- Wood or deer mouse (Mus leucopus). See February 20, 1855 ("" It is a very pretty and neat little animal for a mouse, with its wholesome reddish - brown sides distinctly bounding on its pure white belly , neat white feet , large slate - colored ears which suggest circumspection and timidity, — ready to earth itself on the least sound of danger , long tail , and numerous whiskers. ); 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.")
- "White-bellied mouse"(Mus leucopus). See May 12, 1855 ("a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) . . .its tail curled round one of the [owl] eggs..");November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse");
- "White-footed mouse." See 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.")
- Short-tailed meadow mouse (Avicola hirsuta). See August 25, 1856 ("How much life is drowned out that inhabits about the roots of the meadow-grass! How many a family, perchance, of short-tailed meadow mice has had to scamper or swim! "); August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally 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 nose is not sharp.”)
- Jumping mouse (Gerbillus Canadensis). See 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"); February 20, 1855 ("Have we the Gerbillus Canadensis, Jumping mouse?")
- "Long-tailed meadow mouse." May 31, 1858 ("I see . . . 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. ")
Compare the Vermont fish and wildlife list:
Peromyscus leucopus White-footed Deermouse
Peromyscus maniculatus North American Deermouse
Clethrionomys gapperi Southern Red-backed Vole
Microtus chrotorrhinus Rock Vole
Microtus pennsylvanicus Meadow Vole
Microtus pinetorum Woodland Vole
Napaeozapus insignis Woodland Jumping Mouse
Zapus hudsonius Meadow Jumping Mouse
Mus musculus House Mouse
http://tinyurl.com/hdtwildmice
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