The gentle, graceful little jumping-mice, white-footed mice, short-tailed meadow-rats, and flying squirrels are all to be found inside the city limits of Greater New York, and some of their relatives are to be found in almost any rural place in this country. These interesting little creatures can be captured with ordinary box-traps, figure fours, or the square or round wire mouse-traps. The white-footed mice or deer-mice may be found in the abandoned nests of other rodents, in hollow logs, in old corn-stacks, in holes in the fence-rails, and under clods of old ploughed fields, or beneath brush-heaps in the fence corners. In the late autumn, before the first snow comes, they have a very pretty way of Utilizing Last Summer’s Birds’-Nests by filling them with the soft down from the cat-tails of a neighboring marsh, or with moss and wood fibres, thistledown, or the silky feathers from the seed of the milk-weed. Like flying-squirrels, the little deer-mice bury themselves in the soft nests, and sleep away the day, emerging at night for food and exercise. [Illustration: FIG. 12.] If the branch upon which the nest is located is but touched, the brown-backed, nimble-footed little squatter will poke his head from the middle of the nest, look inquiringly around, and if no danger appears the head is withdrawn, and the mouse resumes its slumbers; but if it is deemed that there is cause for serious alarm, it will spring from the nest, and with the agility of a squirrel run lightly up a branch, and from this point of vantage turn its bright eyes on the intruder with a sort of “please don’t” expression. If further frightened it will hastily leap to the ground and disappear in the brush and dry leaves. Sometimes I have found birds’-nests with a neatly laid thatch roof over the bowl, and a round doorway gnawed through the side of the nest for a means of access to the interior, where, snugly curled up in a warm bed of down, the little white-footed mouse was sleeping. White-Footed Mice as Pets. Once, while skating on a pond, I discovered a pair of deer-mice keeping house in the walls of the mound of mud and roots reared by musk-rats for their winter quarters. [Illustration: FIG. 12A.--The Old Figure-Four Trap.--Any old box will do for a figure-four trap; but much trouble is avoided by using a box with a large lid for live game, as shown in Fig. 12. This is set upside down, as shown above. The lid is considerably larger than the box, and attached to it by a couple of leather hinges which are tacked to the lid and the box, as shown in the illustration. Fig. 9 is the spindle or trigger, and shows the manner in which the notches are cut. Fig. 10 is the catch, and Fig. 11 is the upright. In Fig. 12A you see this old-fashioned trap, set and ready for business. A small door in the box will make it easy to remove captives.]