White-footed Mouse 



coffee-like berry that grows abundantly everywhere in the swamps. 

 I believe that those living in the evergreen woods are in the way of 

 searching for hemlock and spruce seeds scattered by the pine finches 

 and cross-bills and other northern birds in their feeding. 



As I have already hinted at, the winter sleep of the white-footed 

 mouse does not stretch along unbroken from winter until spring. 

 Many of them undoubtedly sleep for periods varying from a few 

 days to several weeks perhaps, though it is probable they oftener 

 contend themselves with naps of less duration, wakening two or 

 three times a day to nibble at the nuts and seeds in their 

 granaries, like Esquimaux on the edge of their frozen sea, content 

 with narrow quarters and each other's society so long as they are 

 warm and have enough to eat. 



Few of them, however, are so limited for room as are the 

 Esquimaux, whether they winter underground or in hollow trees 

 and logs buried beneath the snow; every woodchuck's burrow 

 forsaken by its original owner and not yet appropriated by some 

 other dweller of the woodland, makes a winter home for several 

 families of wood mice who are all the better pleased if the entrance 

 has become partially closed and blocked up by the trampling feet of 

 cattle, and the slower yet more effective work of frost and rain and 

 melting snow. The rest of the burrow remains open and un- 

 obstructed for years, one hundred feet or more of warm, dry subway, 

 with its chamber stuffed with soft grass for the mice to curl up in as 

 they please. 



Yet these little, tender, round-bodied, white-footed mice in no 

 way fear the cold; on the bitterest nights of winter when the thick- 

 set stars seem close down among the tree-tops, and the frozen wind 

 hisses through the stiff branches and the dry snow is piled high 

 around the stems of the pines, they are still out in the wind in 

 numbers, skipping along the snow from tree to tree. 



In the autumn the lindens furnish them with an abundant 

 harvest of little round nuts which they pack away in large quantities 

 among the roots of the trees that bear them. Living on these 

 and their other stores which they are able to pick up from day to day, 

 they generally manage to keep in good condition while the snow and 

 cold weather lasts, but they are tremendous eaters and evidently find 

 it difficult to get enough once their supplies begin to run short; at any 

 rate they get thin and shabby during the spring months before insects 

 and berries begin to get abundant again. 



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