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By Root 1251 0

insulation. I had not been warned that Peromyscus systematically shreds Styrofoam into chips. The chips drift down like unmeltable snow through cracks between the boards and fly up into the air when one tries to sweep them up. The mice, once inside, also raid one’s dry goods, and use one’s shoes, and bed, to hide them in. The Hermit of Gloucester, who lived before the age of Styrofoam, had dozens around him simultaneously. He was entertained by them, yet even he acknowledged, “A few mice for company on winter evenings would not be objectionable, but I draw the line when I am forced to eat and sleep with them.” Relocating them, Walton learned, has little effect. One night he caught twenty-eight deer mice in his cabin and released them a mile distant. The whole crowd returned by the second night, noisily announcing their presence with the drumming of their tiny feet (a sound by now familiar to me). Deer mice, which utter no vocal sounds perceptive to our ears, use these drumrolls to communicate messages to one another—messages that remain undeciphered by man.

Deer mice are cute, and grudgingly I admire their liveliness and resourcefulness. They live full-time in the woods, where even without the handy materials of Styrofoam or crumpled sweaters, they manage to build excellent nests. At our home in Vermont, they have neither, and most stay outside. Recently at least one set up housekeeping inside the brain cavity of a moose skull that has long hung on the chicken house. (The skull is an eighteen-year-old memento. It came from the poached moose whose carcass attracted a crowd of ravens that started my study of ravens in the wild.) The entire nest in the cramped quarters of the moose skull was a solid ball of Rhode Island red chicken feathers no doubt gathered from inside the chicken house. On December 6, 2001, the skull was unoccupied, and I checked the birdbox in the woods adjacent to the raven aviary to see if the mice had changed residence. It seemed that the roomy log birdbox might be preferable to a moose skull, as woodpecker holes make natural nesting places for the mice. The birdbox consists of a small section of hollow log drilled through with a hole with one board nailed over the base and another board set on the top and secured with wire so that it could be opened.

I worked clumsily to remove the top. When I was finally able to look inside I saw the typical domed-over nest of a deer mouse. This one was made almost entirely of fur. Nothing stirred in the nest, so I started pulling out felted wads, when two Peromyscus immediately shot straight up and almost into my face and then bolted for the woods in long bounds. A third mouse poked its head through what was left of its nest, looking at me intently with its large black eyes. I replaced the cover at once and stepped back. The remaining mouse then poked its head out of the hole before running off as well.

No food was stored in either the skull or the birdbox, nor in any of the dozens of others that I have examined. Yet deer mice do cache their food. I have found their hoards of seeds not only in shoes in the cabin, but also under loose bark in the woods and in abandoned bird nests that were specifically domed over to hide the seeds (see Chapter 5). Why don’t they store their food more conveniently, right in their own nests? I suspect it has to do with private property. Deer mice in the winter huddle not only with relatives, but also with nonkin. Not even deer mice are interested in working hard for an investment that others (especially nonrelatives) might reap as their own.

Deer mice have been intensively studied for more than a half century: everyone wants to know how they survive northern winters. Researchers are in agreement that deer mice don’t hibernate. The relevant question then becomes how such animals weighing only about 20 grams each manage to survive without hibernating? As is usually the case when an animal is up against a difficult problem, it uses every trick available to solve that problem.

As we’ve seen with birds, amphibians, even insects, the key