Old Mother Ann. 
My Old Mother Ann was a mouse that I 
named after the stone lady that guards the en¬ 
trance to Gloucester’s harbor. She belonged to 
the family known as the “white-footed mice.” 
Years ago I gave the life history of these mice 
in Forest and Stream, and called attention to 
the fact that they communicate by rapping with 
their feet. So far as I know, it was the first 
time that this peculiar trait had been published. 
Old Mother Ann was born April 29, 1900. 
She died Oct. 3, 1909, reaching the age of nine 
years, five months and four days. Her mother 
had made a nest in a haversack that hung on 
the wall of my log cabin. At the time, I 
thought the selection of such a nesting site 
worth jotting down, so I know to a day the 
age of my pet mouse. 
When the baby mice from the haversack 
were large enough to run about, I noticed that 
one had two marks which were unusual. There 
was a flat space in the middle of the nose, and 
a white space on the end of the tail. These 
peculiar marks caused me to select the baby 
mouse for a pet. 
We were chums from the first. I fed her 
many dainties, and during her life I rescued her 
hundreds of times from weasels and snakes. 
When pursued by an enemy at night, she would 
run to my head and under the bed clothes, 
knowing that the pursuer would follow her trail 
and then it would be up to me. 
When the mouse was two months old it was 
shifting for itself and moved into my sleeping 
quarters, outdoors, at first making a nest under 
papers, or in a box which I provided. Later 
she always made a nest under my heading and 
moved into the cabin when I did, about Christ¬ 
mas time. This is the mouse No. 3, which I 
wrote about in Forest and Stream Dec. 29, 
1900. At that time I called her Pet, and did 
not christen her Old Mother Ann until she was 
four years of age. When the mouse was three 
years old I built a new cabin on a hill, out of 
sight of the old cabin. I thought to finish it 
so as to move in in May, and did not go into 
my outdoor sleeping quarters at the usual time, 
April first. I supposed the mouse would move 
out, but she did not. When I got ready to 
cement the cabin floor, I opened a half barrel 
of cement and found my mouse had taken 
possession. Her nest was made of cotton 
batting, which she had brought, from the'old 
cabin. 
It woujd seem that the mouse had noticed 
my failure to move into my summer quarters, 
and had heard me pounding at the new cabin. 
She must have investigated and concluded that 
I was building a new sleeping place, so moved 
in ahead of my date. 
The white-footed mice are remarkably in¬ 
telligent. They seem to understand the mechan¬ 
ism of traps after a brief inspection. I bought 
a rat-trap, the wire kind with a trencher. Old 
Mother Ann seemed to think that the trencher 
was a door to be used in entering or leaving 
the trap. Scores of times I have had her call 
the baby mice into the trap and keep them 
there until they had devoured the last bit of 
food. Then she would pull down the trencher, 
hold it with one foot, and drum on it with the 
toes of the other. The young mice understood 
the signal and scampered out of the trap. To 
my surprise I found that any adult white-footed 
mouse would go in and out of this trap at will. 
Now, a word in explanation. I do not care 
to be classed with the nature fakirs; that is, with 
MTJ 
THE PRESENT NORTHWEST GATEWAY AT FORT GARRY. 
the peddlers of impossible animal stories. I 
have always confined my writings to facts. Let 
it be understood that the intelligent acts related 
in this paper have been observed by hundreds 
of my visitors. About four thousand people 
register at my cabin each year, and I have had 
the pleasure to point out numerous intelligent 
acts of the wild things. There is no incident in 
this paper that has not been witnessed by many 
of my visitors. 
I often see intelligent acts of the wild things 
which I do not mention, because said acts have 
not been witnessed by others. A woodchuck in 
my door-yard, when surprised by dogs, some¬ 
times climbed an oak tree. There was a hori¬ 
zontal limb eight feet from the ground, on 
which the woodchuck perched, out of reach of 
the dogs. It was such an unusual thing for 
woodchucks to climb trees that I did not dare 
to mention what I had frequently seen. At last 
three visitors, well known people, witnessed the 
act, and I made a memorandum of the fact with 
witnesses’ names. After that I boldly claimed 
that woodchucks climb trees. 
I had a friend who did not take any stock 
in animal intelligence. He saw Old Mother 
Ann go in and out of the rat trap, and hinted 
that it was the result of training. “I can invent 
a trap,” said he, “which your wise mouse, or 
any other mouse, cannot escape from. Only 
human intelligence can understand the working 
of such a trap.” 
The trap was constructed. It was a simple 
affair. It was a box fifteen inches in length, 
five inches in height and width. Wire netting 
formed the cover. One end of the box was re¬ 
moved and a door of wire netting substituted. 
This wire door was hinged at the top and was 
long enough to reach nearly to the center of 
the box inside. A mouse could enter by raising 
the lower end of the door, but in going out 
would naturally run up the slanting door and 
try to get out at the top. To make escape more 
difficult, a piece three -fourths of an inch square 
and five inches long was nailed across the bot¬ 
tom, inside, so that the end of the wire door 
would fall down behind it. 
We baited the trap and Mother Ann lifted the 
door three times before she ventured in. When 
ready to go out she went to the door but did 
not run up. Instead she seized the door, gave 
it a toss upward and thrust her head under¬ 
neath. The wire door fell on her neck. She 
tried in vain to go out. After a few efforts she 
backed in and again gave the door a toss up¬ 
ward. This time the wire ends fell pn her 
shoulders; she turned on to her back and with 
her forefeet raised the door. Then she swung 
her hind parts outward and dropped the door 
hehind her. 
My friend was excited. He jumped to his 
feet, shook hands with me and exclaimed, “You 
win! That mouse has a mechanical mind.” 
I found that any white-footed mouse could get 
out of the trap. Other mice and moles were 
fast prisoners. Red squirrels could get out but 
chipmunks could not. 
Six years ago, after I had moved into my new 
cabin, I used to take Mother Ann’s children 
into the woods and lose them. She seemed to 
understand my reason, after the first year. 
Then she took the young mice outside and es¬ 
tablished them in a home of their own. There 
was food enough in the door-yard for all. 
Sometimes a young mouse would come in at the 
open door. Old Mother Ann immediately 
mauled him about the cabin, until he was glad 
to escape. 
In the early years from eight to ten made up 
a family, but during the last two years the num¬ 
ber had dwindled to not more than three, and 
often there was only one baby mouse at a 
birth, showing that old age decreased Old 
Mother Ann’s fecundity. During the spring, 
summer and fall months my mouse reared a 
