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Updated: June 2, 2025
Having, of course, the pistol with me, and wanting to dissect a water-vole, I proceeded to aim at the animal. This was not so easy as it looked.
So Lewisham had to find a place fit for her descent, where a friendly tree proffered its protruding roots as a convenient balustrade, and down she clambered with her hand in his. Then a water-vole washing his whiskers gave occasion for a sudden touching of hands and the intimate confidence of whispers and silence together.
For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some tiny mouse or shrew or water-vole might lurk half drowned in some cranny or crevice of the bark or trunk. But it was all in vain.
To my astonishment, it remained in the same position. Finding that it did not stir, I reloaded, and again fired and missed. Four times did I fire at that water-vole, and after the last shot the animal slowly crawled off the stump, slid into the river, and made off.
A short two-round contest ensued, during which the water-vole must have felt as if he had taken on a bit of black lightning. Then the water-vole went away, somewhat bewildered, to turn some smaller water-vole out of his winter bed; and the rats curled themselves up, heads between hindlegs, tail encircling all, with only their ever-ready, elfin ears poking out to give the alarm, and they slept.
The little grey creature was one of the most timorous of the feeble folk dwelling in the pleasant wilderness of the Valley of Olwen. His life, like that of Brighteye, the water-vole, was beset with enemies; but Nature had given to him, as to the water-vole, acute senses of sight, and smell, and hearing, and a great power of quick and intelligent action.
But in answer to all my shouts there never was any sound at all, except of a rocky echo, or a scared bird hustling away, or the sudden dive of a water-vole; and the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grew darker above me, until I thought that the fishes might have good chance of eating me, instead of my eating the fishes.
Now and then he could hear a splash in the moat made by fish or water-vole, and once or twice he saw the star-bejewelled surface twinkle and move as if some creature were swimming across; but soon that was all calm again, and the booming, buzzing noise of some great beetle sweeping by on reckless wing sounded quite loud. "It's as lively as keeping the middle watch," said Hilary impatiently.
Yet, with nothing to direct it except instinct, the water-vole can, though working in darkness, drive its burrow in any direction and emerge from the ground exactly at the spot which it has selected. The mole can do the same, and by means equally mysterious.
Bunches of grapes on outdoor vines are sometimes nipped off the branches by the teeth of the water-vole, and the animal has been seen to climb beans and peas, split the pods, and devour the contents. Although not a hibernating animal, it lays up a store of food in the autumn. Mr. Groom Napier has the following description of the contents of a water-rat's storehouse:
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