WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



sometimes. When the bank voles heard a 

 squeak they would rush out of their nest, 

 glance here and there, eager for the fray, and 

 evidently thinking that strangers had invaded 

 their quarters. After watching one of them 

 sit up with pricked ears and listen to the 

 quarrelling next door, one could not doubt 

 that, like the Irishman, they loved a shindy. 

 Once being short of a cage for a newly captured 

 bank vole, I put it in with the three, but they 

 went for it with such fury, and all three at once, 

 that I had to take it out again for fear they 

 should kill it. 



.Despite their bad temper the three bank 

 voles shared one bed. They scratched a hole 

 under a sod of grass and carried into it leaves, 

 dry grass, and fibre, which they shredded up 

 until it was very fine and made a most warm 

 and comfortable lining. It was most interest- 

 ing to watch them gathering bedding material. 

 A mouse would come out, look about it, sniff 

 the air, and then begin to gather up any 

 rubbish that might be lying around, until it 

 had a bundle. The way the sorting into a 

 bunch of equal lengths was done was quite 

 funny, for the vole held the bundle against its 

 stomach in exactly the same manner as a man 

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