The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal ObservationsHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Science
The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Animal behavior
Out of the vast mass of the great order of the gnawing animals of
the world it is possible here to consider only half a dozen types.
However, these will serve to blaze a trail into the midst of the
grand army.
The White-Footed Mouse, or Deer Mouse. On the wind-swept divides
and coulees of the short-grass region of what once were the
Buffalo Plains of Montana, only the boldest and most resourceful
wild mice can survive. There in 1886 we found a white-footed mouse
species (_Peromyscus leucopus_), nesting in the brain
cavities of bleaching buffalo skulls, on divides as bare and
smooth as golf links.
In 1902, while hunting mule deer with Laton A. Huffman in the
wildest and most picturesque bad-lands of central Montana, we
pitched our tent near the upper waterhole of Hell Creek.
[Footnote: A few months later, acting upon the information of our
fossil discoveries that we conveyed to Professor Henry Fairfield
Osborn, an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History
ushered into the scientific world the now famous Hell Creek fossil
bed, and found, about five hundred feet from the ashes of our
camp-fire, the remains of _Tyrannosaurus rex._]For the
benefit of our camp-fire, our cook proceeded to hitch his rope
around a dry cottonwood log and snake it close up to our tent.
When it was cut up, we found snugly housed in the hollow, a nest,
made chiefly of feathers, containing five white-footed mice.
Packed close against the nest was a pint and a half of fine, clean
seed, like radish seed, from some weed of the Pulse Family. While
the food-store was being examined, and finally deposited in a pile
upon the bare ground near the tent door, the five mice escaped
into the sage-brush. Near by stood an old-fashioned buggy, which
now becomes a valuable piece of stage property.
The next morning, when Mr. Huffman lifted the cushion of his
buggy-seat, and opened the top of the shallow box underneath, the
five mice, with their heads close together in a droll-looking
group, looked out at him in surprise and curiosity, and at first
without attempting to run away. But very soon it became our turn
to be surprised.
We found that these industrious little creatures had gathered up
every particle of their nest, and every seed of their winter
store, and carried all of it up into the seat of that buggy! The
nest had been carefully re-made, and the seed placed close by, as
before. Considering the number of journeys that must have been
necessary to carry all those materials over the ground, plus a
climb up to the buggy seat, the industry and agility of the mice
were amazing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account