House Mouse 
Mice are notorious for their versatility in selecting their rest- 
ing places, empty coffee pots and bottles being often used by 
them in this manner. Almost anything in fact that has an entrance 
smaller than the cavity inside. 
Once exploring the cellar of an old farmhouse I came across 
something made of tin, which I was told was an old-fashioned 
sausage filler. It was bottle-shaped and open at both ends, and 
into the larger one was thrust a piece of wood which just 
fitted it. The remaining space was occupied by a mouse’s nest 
of rags and scraps of paper, the funnel-shaped opening serving 
as an entrance, through which the mother mouse had probably 
come and gone hundreds of times in ministering to the needs 
of her family. The nest was abandoned when I found it, but 
if any one had chanced to pick it up when the little lodgers 
were at home and attempted to put it to its legitimate use he 
would very probably have been a good deal surprised at the 
result. 
In most old houses there are mice living in the walls 
between the wainscoting and the plaster, their runways usually 
permitting them to go literally all over the house in compara- 
tive safety. On stormy winter nights particularly they may be 
heard scurrying excitedly about from place to place with no 
apparent cause. 
Too often they penetrate to those forbidden parts of the 
house where food is kept and make themselves decidedly 
troublesome, until their fate in the guise of pussy, or the trap, 
overtakes them. 
But it is my opinion that in cold weather at least most 
of them live almost wholly upon insect food, flies, spiders, 
wasps and the like, that have packed themselves away snugly 
for the winter in secret crannies between the boards, sometimes 
hundreds of them closely huddled together. 
Norway Rat 
Mus norvegicus Erxleben 
Called also Common Rat, Brown Rat. 
Length. 18 inches. 
Description. Heavily built with thick head and moderate ears, 
tail medium, always shorter than the head and _ body. 
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