Connecticut western news., 1877-08-24
The Homes of Mice.

stumps, under logs, inside stacks of corn and bundles of straw dig out gal leries below the grass roots occupy the abandoned nests of birds and the holes made by other animals; and even weave nests of their own in weeds and bushes. They live we'll in captivity, and you can easily see them at work if you supply materials.
 In tearing down old buildings the carpenters often find between the walls lot of pieces of paper, bits of cloth, sticks, fur, and such stuff, forming a great bale, and know it was once the home of a house-mouse. You have heard anecdotes of how a shop-keeper missed small pieces of money from his till, and suspected his clerk of taking it |; how the clerk was poor boy who was supporting a widowed mother, or sis ter at school, and the kind-hearted shop- keeper shut his eyes to his suspicious, and waited for more and more proof be- fore being convinced that his young clerk was the thief; but, as the money kept disappearing, how at last he ac- cused the clerk of taking it. Then the story tells how, in spite of the boys ve- hement and fearful denial, policeman was called in to arrest him, and when everything had been searched to no purpose, and he was about being taken to the police. station, how, away back in corner was discovered mouse's nest made of stolen pieces of ragged currency-ten, twenty-five and fifty cent pieces. Then everybody was happy, and the story ended with capital moral.
 More than one such stolen house the mice have really built, and sometimes their work has destroyed half hundred dollars, and caused no end of heartaches. Their little teeth are not lo be despised, assure you. l believe one of the most disastrous of those great floods which in past years have swept over the fer tile plains of Holland was caused by mice digging through the thick banks of earth, called dykes, which had been piled up to keep the sea back. In this case, of course, the mice lost their lives by their misdeeds, as well as the people, sharing in the general catastrophe. They hardly intended this; but
 "Tne bestlaid plans O mice and men
 Gang aft agley.'
 It was by the gnawing of ridiculous little mouse, you remember, that the lion in the fable got free from the net in which the king of beasts found him. self caught.
 Sometimes the house-mouse goes out of-doors to live, and forgets his civiliza- tion; while, on the other hand. the woodland species occasionally come in- doors and grow tame. At the fur-tra- ding posts about Hudson Bay, wild mice live in the traders houses.
 All mice are full of curiosity. They poke their noses into all sorts of places, where there is prospect of something to eat, and often meet the fate which ought to be the end of all poking of noses into other peoples affairs-they get caught. l remember one such case which MT. Frank Buckland has related. When oysters are left out of water for any length of time, especially in hot weather, they always open their shells little way, probably seeking drink of water. A mouse hunting about for food found such an oyster in the larder, and put his head in to nibble at the oysters beard; instantly the bivalve shut his shells, and held them together so tightly by his strong muscles, that the poor mouse could not pull his head out, and so died of suffocation. Other similar cases have been known.-St. Niobo7oo