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The suspicious eyes will be all around you. Perhaps it may be a tiny wood-mouse peering from under a root two or three steps behind you. You have been perfectly still, say, for ten minutes, and the mouse is just beginning to think that you may be something quite harmless.
Then you have me." "Yes, if only I had you!" said the brown rat. "Then I should eat you straight away. But you are too clever for me." Then he began to nibble at the dead black rat. "What's this?" said the wood-mouse. "Are you eating your dead cousin?" "Yes, I can't help her not being alive!" said the rat. A little after, the black rat was gone, bones and all.
And beaks snapped at him more menacingly as he went on, and gray shapes floated over his head, and now and then he heard the cries of dying things the agonized squeak of a wood-mouse, the cry of a day-bird torn from its sleeping place by a sinuous, beady-eyed creature of fur and claw, the noisy screaming of a rabbit swooped upon and pierced to the vitals by one of the gray-feathered pirates of the air.
The house-mouse felt horribly cold, because of her bare tail, and the wood-mouse wished her cousin would go away, so that she might run down to her warm nest. "Tell me," said the wood-mouse. "How is our cousin from Copenhagen doing over in the barn? Haven't you talked to her?" "No, I haven't," said the house-mouse.
And once in a long time even a wood-mouse, hard pressed and panic-stricken, would leap in to swim across to the meadow shore. The first time this occurred the trout had risen slowly, and followed below the swimmer till assured that there was no peril concealed in the tempting phenomenon.
Well ... and then they have the cat and the mouse-trap and all the rest of their cunning, so they're all right. A poor mouse has to think very hard and to risk her life pretty well every hour of the day if she is to provide herself with food." "Just so," said the wood-mouse. "It's not you. Then who is it? Is it I? No, I mind my business as you mind yours.
And I won't deny I may eat a bit of root once in a way, in the spring, when the roots are quite fresh. But what then? The forester himself is fond of vegetables, so he really need not grudge me a few." "Certainly not," said the house-mouse. "You are quite right, cousin. You only do what we all do." "Thank you for that kind word, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "I think it's only fair.
When these and other delicacies fail, he knows where to dig for edible roots. A big caribou, wandering near his hiding place, is pulled down and stunned by a blow on the head. Then, when the meat has lost its freshness, he will hunt for an hour after a wood-mouse he has seen run under a stone, or pull a rotten log to pieces for the ants and larvæ concealed within.
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