ANIMALS' BEDS 3 



ing cotton with their teeth.* As soon as the prairie- 

 dog has filled its mouth till it cannot hold any more, it 

 drops on all-fours and gallops off into the sleeping-box, 

 arranges the cut straw, and rushes out again for a fresh 

 supply. Each seems to watch the others severely, as 

 they sit up straw-cutting, to see that they do not shirk. 

 From time to time they all jump into the air and 

 bark, as if suddenly projected upwards by a spring 

 in the boards of the floor. Dormice also make beds, 

 though they are not so particular as the prairie-dogs 

 about a change of blankets. When wild, they often 

 fit a roof to an old bird's nest, and fill the inside 

 with moss and wool, in which they curl up and 

 sleep through the winter. But when kept in a 

 warm house, only the bed needs to be provided. 

 The best selection of bedding by a dormouse which 

 the writer has known was made by one which had 

 escaped, and remained for some weeks in the house 

 before being recaptured. When winter wraps were 

 once more coming into season, some jackets were 

 taken out of a drawer, and under the astrachan 

 collar of one of these the dormouse was found fast 



* In the spring of 1896, Mr Jannach kindly presented the writer's wife with 

 a prairie-dog. It preferred sleeping under some heavy piece of furniture to using 

 its own bed. If any pieces of paper or string had fallen behind a bureau or chest 

 of drawers, it carefully carried them out and laid them on the carpet, treating 

 them as 'old bedding.' It burrowed into a sofa among the springs, where it 

 would bark when anyone sat down. Two others, the writer hears, burrowed into 

 a chest of drawers in a house, and tore up dresses to make beds. 



