I Love Animal Stories. Aesop

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      DANNY MEADOW MOUSE. He kills young trees by gnawing off the bark under the snow.

      “It isn't how we look, but what we are and what we do and how we fit into our particular places in life that count,” said she. “Now, Danny is a homely little fellow, but I know, and I know that he knows that he is just fitted for the life he lives, and he lives it more successfully for being just as he is.

      “Danny is a lover of the fields and meadows where there is little else but grass in which to hide. Everything about him is just suited for living there. Isn't that so, Danny?”

      “Yes'm, I guess so,” replied Danny. “Sometimes my tail does seem dreadfully short to look well.”

      Everybody laughed, even Danny himself. Then he remembered how once Reddy Fox had so nearly caught him that one of Reddy's black paws had touched the tip of his tail. Had that tail been any longer Reddy would have caught him by it. Danny's face cleared and he hastened to declare, “After all, my tail suits me just as it is.”

      “Wisely spoken, Danny,” said Old Mother Nature. “Now it is your turn to tell how you live and what you eat and anything else of interest about yourself.”

      “I guess there isn't much interesting about me,” began Danny modestly. “I'm just one of the plain, common little folks. I guess everybody knows me so well there is nothing for me to tell.”

      “Some of them may know all about you, but I don't,” declared Jumper the Hare. “I never go out on the Green Meadows where you live. How do you get about in all that tall grass?”

      “Oh, that's easy enough,” replied Danny. “I cut little paths in all directions.”

      “Just the way I do in the dear Old Briar-patch,” interrupted Peter Rabbit.

      “I keep those little paths clear and clean so that there never is anything in my way to trip me up when I have to run for safety,” continued Danny. “When the grass gets tall those little paths are almost like little tunnels. The time I dread most is when Farmer Brown cuts the grass for hay. I not only have to watch out for that dreadful mowing machine, but when the hay has been taken away the grass is so short that it is hard work for me to keep out of sight.

      “I sometimes dig a short burrow and at the end of it make a nice nest of dry grass. Sometimes in summer Mrs. Danny and I make our nest on the surface of the ground in a hollow or in a clump of tall grass, especially if the ground is low and wet. We have several good-sized families in a year. All Meadow Mice believe in large families, and that is probably why there are more Meadow Mice than any other Mice in the country. I forgot to say that I am also called Field Mouse.”

      “And it is because there are so many of your family and they require so much to eat that you do a great deal of damage to grass and other crops,” spoke up Old Mother Nature. “You see,” she explained to the others, “Danny eats grass, clover, bulbs, roots, seeds and garden vegetables. He also eats some insects. He sometimes puts away a few seeds for the winter, but depends chiefly on finding enough to eat, for he is active all winter. He tunnels about under the snow in search of food. When other food is hard to find he eats bark, and then he sometimes does great damage in young orchards. He gnaws the bark from young fruit trees all the way around as high as he can reach, and of course this kills the trees. He is worse than Peter Rabbit.

      “Danny didn't mention that he is a good swimmer and not at all afraid of the water. No one has more enemies than he, and the fact that he is alive and here at school this morning is due to his everlasting watchfulness. This will do for to-day. To-morrow we will take up others of the Mouse family.”