BAILEY — CAPTUKING SMALL MAMMALS 
67 
doors are easily made and prove the most satisfactory of any I have 
tried. These can be kept on a table in your library where you can 
watch the animals, play with them in your spare moments, and learn 
much of their habits in captivity that you will never learn in the field. 
It is a fascinating study. I have had a pocket gopher, a meadow 
mouse, six white-footed mice of three species, and four pocket mice on 
a table in my library all winter and am finding out new habits every 
few days^ — new at least to me. 
The little pocket mice are especially gentle and easily handled. 
With their silky coats and quiet ways they are the favorites with the 
children who love to hold and play with them. The white-footed 
mice are still too nervous and sensitive to be handled much and it may 
take a second generation to make them sufficiently domestic for good 
pets. They are the most beautiful, graceful, and animated of the lot. 
The meadow mouse has more individuality than I ever credited it 
with. A female in my collection is not afraid, but objects to being 
handled or petted, and will bite if caught and held. She will sit in 
my hand and run over my arms and clothes, but prefers her independ- 
ence. She is quick and skillful but cautious. For over six weeks her 
cage door stood open and she ran over the table and among the cages 
as she pleased but never fell or jumped off. Then the cages were 
moved so she got onto the window sill and down to the floor and she 
soon learned to get down, even if she had to jump. 
The pocket gopher has undergone the most surprising reformation. 
Instead of trying to eat me up as he did at first he often begs me to 
take him up out of his box of earth and will climb into my hand and 
scratch my arm and pull at my sleeve, and is happiest when I hold 
him and stroke his glossy coat. He is too full of energy to be quiet 
for long, and soon wants to get down to run round and round the room 
or out in the yard where he can burrow in the ground, or in his barrel 
of earth where he digs furiously by the hour. We have to be careful 
not to touch him until he knows who is there, for he does not see well 
and when surprised his first impulse is to bite whatever comes within 
reach. But even the children have learned to play with him safely 
and have great fun watching him dig in the ground and push out loads 
of earth, and fill his capacious cheek pouches with food. 
All of these animals were caught when practically full grown and it 
has taken a long time to get them gentle. Still there are advantages 
in studying their habits which had become fixed and natural in the 
wild state. There will be other advantages in studying young raised 
in captivity as they will be free from any restraint or nervous tension. 
