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Updated: May 9, 2025
This was because of his peculiar somber color. Had he been light of dress, like an ordinary song-thrush, any eye could have picked him up in that spot. Now, that kestrel was in a bad temper and vicious. She was cursing the snow which covered the doings of the field-mice, which ordinarily were her "staff of life"; and she had not killed since dawn.
The things he had to tell about otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds' nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working.
There were mice astride salt tongues. Field-mice were swimming in the pots, and the most cunning of them were carrying the corn into their private holes, profiting by the confusion to make ample provision for themselves. No one passed the quince confection of Orleans without saluting it with one nibble, and oftener with two. It was like a Roman carnival.
Except, perhaps, of the Arcadians and Athenians, who, I presume, dreading that this great act of retribution might one day arrive, pretend that they were sprung from the earth, like so many field-mice.
He was so happy, and he poured forth such delightful notes, so clear and thrilling, that the little ants who were carrying grains to their burrow stopped and put down their burdens to listen; and the doves ceased cooing, and the little field-mice came and sat in the openings of their holes; and the Fairy, who had just begun to doze, woke up delighted; and a pretty brown Lark, who had been sitting under some great foxglove leaves, peeped out and exclaimed, "I never heard such a beautiful song in my life never!"
A few fleecy clouds sped rapidly overhead, driven by a light breeze which swept across the long plains, from the distant Atlantic. The sun peeping forth at intervals, illumined all the fresh young verdure of the countryside. An entire world animated the woods through which we passed. From before our equipage fled squirrels, field-mice, parroquets of brilliant colors and deafening loquacity.
Owls will eat raw meat, but their favourite food consists in young mice, and they may often be seen at twilight, hunting like sporting dogs round the meadow paths for field-mice which come out at that hour, and going back every five minutes or so to their nests, to see that all is well at home.
Nothing had happened he had seen nothing, heard nothing, save for the passing of an occasional vehicle or pedestrian on the road, and he himself had never stirred or moved, so that he seemed one with the night and one with the shadows where he crouched, and a pair of field-mice that had come from the common opposite went to and fro about their busy occupations at his feet without paying him the least attention.
She remained his most intimate friend to the last hour of her life, and he survived her but six years. Louis's love of natural history showed itself almost from infancy. When a very little fellow he had, beside his collection of fishes, all sorts of pets: birds, field-mice, hares, rabbits, guinea-pigs, etc., whose families he reared with the greatest care.
I asked the man why he kept him, and he replied that they had quite good sport in the trenches when they allowed the hawk to hunt small birds and field-mice. In one small cantonment where 200 poilus sang, shouted, ate, drank, and danced together to the strain of a wheezy gramophone, or in one word were "resting," I started to investigate the various kinds of pets owned by the troopers.
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