Oh, where, now, was a cranny into which she might fit — some hole sweet and snug, with firm walls, a secret entrance, so placed that winds would not blow, nor moisture drain, into it? Lowland deer mice dug burrows, and in some other places they made nests in trees, but the Beetle Rock deer mice searched for their nooks instead of building them. The Mouse would begin at the log.
She found a knothole and started into it, eager and pleased until she discovered a scent of other mice. She turned down towards the ground. A strip of bark, loosened by beetles, hung away from the wood. The Mouse crept under and felt the space, its size and shape, not with her paws or nose but with her vibrissae, the whiskers of various lengths which she moved like fingers over an object to give her information about it. Around this pocket went the spray of her tactile hairs, quivering into every crack. At the far end she turned. The wood and bark touched her all over, as she liked, yet some instinct warned her that this could not be a permanent home.
Now she looked up the moon-spangled gully. Almost irresistible was her wish to return to the thicket above. The shadow of a cloud fell upon the gravel, and gave her the chance to go.
Back in the manzanita thicket, the Mouse slipped under the dead leaves beneath. As she pattered along, ears flattened and vibrissae down her sides, she was hidden from any searching eye, although the leaves kept whispering:
“She is here.”
She was making her way towards one of the root-crowns, but when she reached it she found that a family of juncos lived at the center of that bush. The Mouse crept close to their cup of woven grasses, so softly that the mother bird continued to sleep. She climbed up on the rim of the nest. Most of the junco’s feathers were the color of a night shadow, but the sides of her tail gleamed white, and so did her ivory beak. The Mouse touched her tactile hairs over the wings and tail, outspread to cover four nestlings. She was sniffing, too, scenting the birds’ light breaths, and their flesh, delicate with the sweetness of seed-food. Once more she felt over the strong walls of the birds’ home, over the mother, and the nestlings’ down at the edges of her wings. Then the Mouse dropped again into the brittle, rustling leaves.
At an opening in the brush she came to a mound of the leaves, pawed together by a deer. She scrambled through them, but they all flew; nothing here was strong enough to support a nest. The next manzanita bush had been home. The Mouse sped past. A short way beyond, she came to a braid of scents left by the Weasel and her five kits when the pack of little hunters crossed the thicket. The Mouse dodged away towards the open ground under the trees.
Her home-range extended on one side as far as a spring, and on the other to the foot of an open slope. In the space between grew three pines and an ancient fir. The Mouse knew the exposed part of the trees only as circular trunks and a vague overhead thicket; trees, to her, were underground things. She had her own view, too, of the earth’s surface. That was not the smooth mat of needles it looked to a human eye. Chains of small shelters led almost everywhere.
Here was this tumbleweed, only a tuft of dry twigs but a mouse could hide under it. One leap from there and she reached a fallen branch. The tiny foliage of staghorn lichen covered it. Beneath the lichen she ran to the other end, her feet spinning like the feet of a house mouse. A bound, then, to a piece of bark, and from that to a root of the fir — she must let this search for her nook take her wherever it would. Most animals looked in particular kinds of places for their home-sites, but a deer mouse’s cranny was accidental, an earth pocket washed out by the rain, a stump just enough decayed, a log fallen aslant a rock.
The cloud passed; moonlight slid out upon the forest floor. Now the Mouse must go underground, down into other animals’ burrows, hoping to find an abandoned one. Deer mice often did appropriate such homes, whose owners had disappeared, having suddenly, unexpectedly, no more use for the patiently dug tunnel, the nest chamber, and the storeroom filled with seeds.
She would begin with the burrows of the meadow mice, who lived in the grass near the spring. She crept into the stems, moving over a web of runners and dry fallen stalks. In it was the ground-litter of this tiny wilderness — petals of the grass flowers, seed husks, skeletons of dead insects, and living insects, sleeping or numb with cold. When she found these, the Deer Mouse stopped to nibble them up, while the wavy currents of the grass stirred above her, the sound in the moist green blades as harmless as the song of gnats.
Before she had gone far she reached one of the meadow mice’s surface roads, which led to all parts of the grass patch, in a curving network, regular as a cobweb but more graceful. Underfoot was a smooth pavement, kept clear by the industrious owners. The Deer Mouse passed two at work on the roads, chewing off new shoots which might be food in some places but here were troublesome weeds. She went into each side-path, and soon found one that ended at a burrow entrance.
Down she sped into the clean little tube, just mouse-width, now straight, now curving to pass a root, a path all dark but impossible to lose. With the smell of the soil was mixed the meadow-mouse odor, grass juice crushed into fur, and musk, and here an extra odor, that of milk. The Deer Mouse followed a branch tunnel to a nest chamber. There she found five new-born young. They cried to her with appealing squeaks; perhaps they thought her their mother. She felt all over the little mice, then returned to the main burrow.
She saw mice eating, carrying nest fibres, and sleeping, for meadow mice worked either night or day. At the opening of each tunnel she sniffed the mouse scent and everywhere found it fresh; there was no vacant home for her in the grass patch. She was not anxious, anyway, to live where a road through the stems might lead snakes or weasels direct to one’s nest.
Each time she had left a burrow, she had shaken the dirt out of her fur. Now she washed all over. When she felt clean she was ready for a new exploration.
She bounded to a break in the matted fir needles, but it led to no cave, only to the emerging stalk of a snow plant. She crouched there briefly, above the roots of the tree. She knew that a crook of its largest root was sheltering a chipmunk family, parents and young, whose burrow was the cleanest of all the underground neighborhood. It had even a separate space for empty seed husks. Twice while the owners slept, the Mouse had prowled through their home, one to envy but never likely to be hers. Chance hardly would remove seven chipmunks at one time.
Meshing into the roots of the fir, too, was an underground village of digger squirrels, a labyrinth of hiding places, nests for families and single squirrels, and places for the stores of seeds packed in dry sand. Sometimes the squirrels deserted old nests, but the Deer Mouse would not investigate now. Morning was too near. The waking squirrels would not be friendly to mice.
Among these tunnels were others that the Mouse did not know. Her last search took her into one. The entrance was a well-concealed hole between stones. Beyond the Mouse crept down and down, much lower into the earth than she had been before. Finally the tunnel turned and wound beneath the tree’s root-platform.
Strange and remote was the smell here, of very old soil, powdered fibres of ancient plants, and the dust of rocks. Even the roots above the tunnel smelled of the past, for the tree’s food and drink came now from newer roots, pushed out into fresher humus. The Mouse knew the odor of the occupant; she had smelled it behind the lively heels of the golden-mantled squirrels. The air in the burrow was very cold, but the Mouse, delicate though she was, could hold away the chill. In fact, when the winter snows would fall, her little white feet would be running over the frosty white crystals, while the owner of this home, much larger than she, would have retreated into sleep.
The Mouse reached the nest chamber, where the squirrel lay sleeping, coiled in his fur. From here several tunnels radiated to a passageway that half circled the nest — a whole web of roads for escape. The Mouse went into a tunnel beyond and abruptly found herself in the open air. She had come out at the foot of the fir trunk, through an emergency exit disguised in the bark.
Now daylight was lifting th
e night away. The ground had a yellow-gray cast on it, too bright for safety. The Mouse would spend the day behind the loose bark on the gully log, not a trustworthy niche, but the best she knew. She started towards it. But why did this strange deer mouse lie on the needles, warm, alive, yet surely not sleeping? The Mouse found the hole in its skin, smelling of the poison transferred with a shrew’s bite. And here came the shrew, smaller than the Mouse but with venom for her, too, in its pointed snout. The Mouse escaped the death-sleep; practice in racing had made her feet faster than the shrew’s. Soon she had curled up between the bark and the log, her panting already becoming lighter, and her round eyes narrower, now but gleaming black lines, and now lost in fur.
A few times she roused, but only briefly, until late morning. Then a strange sound reached in and loosened her sleep. The wind had shifted and was driving the sand in gusts, like minute, sharp rain, against the bark. Soon real rain was dropping in coarse thuds on the log. All damp things smelled strongly of their dampness.
The Mouse pushed back against the walls of the niche. The rain was becoming a roar. A sudden thunderclap startled her to a blank. Her ears had not begun to rise again, nor her forepaws to relax, when a stream of cold water began to flow over her tail.
She climbed higher in the nook, and the water rose. She crept along to the end of the bark. A turbulent brook now entirely circled the log. The Mouse did what she must — plunged into it and spun over the top. Soon the current whirled her against a branch. She raced back upon it to the gully-side, then bounded in pelting rain up through the thicket, to the trunk of the fir and the burrow exit of the golden-mantled squirrel. In his tunnel she shook herself vigorously, made herself as flat as a turtle, and pushed into the soft soil of the wall. Here her own heat would make her dry. She fell asleep.
After the Deer Mouse woke, she slipped out into the tunnel and, perched on the sloping floor, washed and groomed her fur. No place more practical than this cranny could be found for a deer mouse’s nest. But of course she could not stay; a golden-mantled squirrel would not allow his exit to be revealed by the path to a nest of mice. The squirrel already had smelled her there. She heard him coming up to drive her away, so she slipped out into the daylight.
Now sunshine fell in most places where the rain had fallen, making the earth steamy. The Deer Mouse crouched between the fir trunk and a fallen cone. Her eyes were flicking over the ground, trying to find a better shelter, when the Coyote came prowling from under the thicket. He walked towards the fir.
His scent was almost as tangible as the pierce of sharp teeth. How keen was his hunting; he was not living lightly; for him this instant might have been the storm’s peak, so intense were his nerves. His nose was at the ground and his feet moved forward compactly. He was following a scent trail, perhaps of the Mouse herself.
Of course he would find her here. She had no chance to escape — yet she must make that last, desperate leap. But when the instant came that she would have jumped, the bit of buff shadow lay instead a trifle lower between the cone and the fir trunk. The Mouse had slipped into a faint, perhaps thus saving her life, for if she had sprung from her refuge the Coyote certainly would have seen her.
When her speck of consciousness drifted back, the Coyote was gone and the Mule Deer Buck had come under the tree. He stood looking across the gully, apparently also aware of the Coyote, for his feet shifted in a strained way and his head was high, his ears pointing stiffly forward. What a great, powerful creature he was — yet he shared with the Deer Mouse a fear of their common enemy.
With the Deer there, the Mouse felt more safe. He would not harm her. When he relaxed, she ran out from her hiding place and examined branches and tufts of lichen torn down by the storm. One might be large enough to give her a refuge. But while she searched, another deer came, a doe in so nervous a temper that soon the Buck’s hoofs and the doe’s were stomping wildly. The Mouse must leave.
As the Grouse fluttered down from one of the fir boughs, the Mouse looked up. At once she raced for the trunk. In a hole up in the tree she had seen the face of a flying squirrel, a gentle creature that she had met at night on the ground. Now the Mouse reached the hole and stopped, clinging to the bark. The squirrel turned its mellow eyes upon her. The Mouse crept over the rim of the hole and down into the nest cavity. At the bottom lay four young flying squirrels, piled together as the Mouse had slept with her family. She pushed between the fur of one and the bed of shredded cedar bark.
During the afternoon the screams of a red-tailed hawk woke the innocent creatures in the tree. There was a brief, startled stir as each tried to creep in deeper, and then they lay still. When the fearful cries came no more, the squirrels moved slightly, easing their tension, and the Deer Mouse slipped farther into her furry refuge.
The next time she opened her eyes she backed out of the squirrel’s coat. Now she was sharply awake. The hole at the top of the nest cavity shone but faintly. She ran up. The night’s darkness had drawn to the western horizon, but the star-brightened sky cast a soft light into the trees bordering Beetle Rock.
On a branch outside the hole the flying squirrel crouched, ready to glide to the ground. Looking like a furry leaf, with her legs and their connecting membranes spread, the squirrel dropped into an air current that took her lightly to the ground. The Deer Mouse ran down the trunk of the tree. Families of deer mice sometimes shared the nests of flying squirrels, but the Mouse still preferred to find her own niche. Besides, she had no family.
Perhaps tonight she would explore the slope above her home-range. The air was so still that no stalk or leaf stirred against another. She nibbled through the bases of several lupines so they would fall, and then ate the succulent tips. When her hunger was satisfied, she made herself dainty and neat, and bounded off into the grasses.
Near the top of the slope the grasses thinned, finally coming to an end. The Mouse continued on among the trees. Ahead she saw the speeding, white, upcurved tail of another deer mouse. He led towards something that was new to her — a cabin, a nook of human beings. He ran into its open door and the Deer Mouse went in, too.
The human creatures were not there. But upon everything lay their scent, the scent of predators but not of animals that preyed upon mice. The Deer Mouse did not belong to the unclean species of mice who lived in the dark corners of human homes, but she felt no terror here, only her natural wariness in a strange place. The other deer mouse had climbed at once to a shelf and was gnawing a box, apparently familiar with the cabin and not frightened. The Deer Mouse began to explore.
Everywhere she found corners, and they gave her confidence. Few were completely covered, but they were nooks that she could back into and feel the shelter-touch. The room itself had corners and there were others around the shelves, luggage, books, and many more objects, mysterious to a mouse. She liked the fact that nothing moved. Since hunters must always move to catch prey, mice’s eyes were alarmed by most motions, even of leaves. Here all was pleasantly still.
The Mouse smelled and touched many curious things. While she was examining a cold metal flashlight, she seemed suddenly overwhelmed by all the strangeness and sat up, clenching a small forepaw against her breast and quivering her ears to find the other mouse. His gnawing had ceased. The Deer Mouse raced down the table-leg and towards the door, but discovered her companion eating at a pile of oats which had poured from his hole in the box and onto the floor. She stopped and tasted the oats. Delicious! Now she sat beside the other mouse, rapidly nibbling pawfuls of the new food.
Outside, sounds approached — a man and woman talking, walking towards the cabin. They entered and shut the door. The Deer Mouse zigzagged across the floor, hunting one of the room’s crannies. Dimly she saw her companion’s tail slipping behind a dustpan. She glided along the edge of the wall and joined him.
Now the darkness was destroyed, not gradually as when the dawn comes, but instantaneously. The man exclaimed over the spilled oats, came striding towards the mice, and lifted the dustp
an away. Silent as shadows the mice moved behind an ax. The man swept up the oats and threw them into the stove, hitting the dustpan on the iron with a noise so sharp that both mice winced.
The people’s voices were tremendous, and might have been frightening, but curiously were not. For all their loudness, they had no angry tones, as animals’ growls did. The Mouse could hear only the higher tones, and therefore caught more of the woman’s voice than the man’s. Both people were getting undressed, and the mice watched. After the human beings had taken off their shoes and part of their clothes they sat on the beds, across the room from each other, still talking.
As abruptly as the light had come on, it went out. There was a creaking of springs, shrill in the Mouse’s ears, when the people got into their beds. Their voices continued. The other mouse returned to the food shelves as soon as the room was dark, and the Deer Mouse followed. Now he was gnawing a new hole in the box of oats, for the man had turned the other hole to the top. The Deer Mouse helped with the gnawing. The man said:
“Do you hear something?”
Then both people were silent, and the mice, too, kept quiet. When the voices began again the mice chewed once more at the box. Soon the oats were spilling onto the shelf and the mice were eating them.
Finally the people talked no longer. First one, then the other, breathed more deeply and slowly. For the male mouse this was a sign that he could make more noise. He began to gnaw at a crack under the door. He was a little knot of energy, now flat, his mouth turned straight up as he chewed at the bottom of the door, now huddled against the crack so that nothing of him showed but his furry haunches, and now a mound that pivoted from side to side while his hind feet kept a steady grip on the floor. While he worked, he held his tail straight out, its tip upturned with eagerness. But occasionally he became tired or bored, and pattered around the cabin.
A large splinter came away and the male mouse slid out. The Deer Mouse followed. She leapt from the sill to the ground airily and ran to the base of a tree, where she crouched. The other mouse came out of a burrow hole under a stone, and bounded towards her.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 12
