It was a morning like most others I’ve had this autumn. I was up early and I was out filling up the birdfeeders before heading off to work. The feeders were all where they were supposed to be, but I soon realized that I was not alone. Eyes were peering at me, assessing my potential as a threat. Judgements were being made, and strategies were being weighed. Drat!
For the mouse that was caught in the act of raiding my feeders, this certainly must have been among the thoughts passing through its mind. The mouse was in no danger from me, but from its perspective it must have felt extremely vulnerable. The feeder was suspended from an iron shepherd’s crook about 4 feet off the deck. To flee meant to climb up, closer to my head and though the mouse was clearly desperate to get away it simply couldn’t bring itself to make a run for it.
The perch supporting the mouse was a flange of metal that circled the bottom of the feeder and it was too narrow to fully accommodate the mouse’s body. Imagine yourself on a narrow platform at the top of a telephone pole while you try to hide from a Tyrannosaurus rex as it walks by. Quite a pickle!
So, to ease the mouse’s fears I stepped back into the kitchen doorway. The moment I was no longer casting a shadow from the porch light the little creature made its move. With amazing ease the mouse climbed up the feeder, up the thin wire loop from which the feeder hung, and up the iron shepherd’s crook. The mouse paused at the top and then shimmied down the iron post until it came to the porch railing. Again it paused and looked around before finally disappearing into the dark.
Anyone who feeds birds is used to seeing the tracks of small mammals that also come looking for food. You need just the right kind of snow to see mouse tracks and it is interesting to see that they gallop around their world in the same way that squirrels and rabbits do. But what if there is no snow? How could you detect the presence of little animals whose main motivation is to remain unobtrusive?
Well, I found all sorts of evidence last weekend as I struggled to get my firewood moved before a snowstorm arrived. Prior stacking the loose wood I had to remove a brown tarp that had been draped over the remains of last year’s stacked wood for several months. As soon as I moved the tarp I started seen shed snake skins everywhere. This was surely evidence that snakes liked my woodpile, but how did the skins betray the presence of mice?
Well, the simple fact is that the skins had been collected into little piles. Snakes shed their skins by rubbing themselves against rough surfaces and cracking the old skin. A pile of splintery pieces of firewood is clearly an attractive spot for this activity. The skin dries, starts to separate from the rest of the snake’s body and then the snake will attempt to glide past an object that can hook or snag part of it. Then, the snake moves forward as the old skin slowly peels off and turns itself inside out. Imagine you’re pulling your socks off and you’ve got the idea.
Anyway, the skins had been broken up into small pieces and had been collected into piles that looked like they were going to possibly serve as nests. In one particularly large pile I found the tail-end of a snake skin that was still intact. In another I found a huge ball of grasses that had been supplemented with about fifty percent snake skin. That particular object didn’t highlight the skins, however, so I chose to share a photo of one of the other piles.
After the camera had recorded everything of interest I set it down, put on my gloves, and got to work. It didn’t take long for me to come across another trace of mouse activity and this one was particularly “mousy.” I found an acorn lying in a little cranny on a nice chunk of oak and it was the quintessential example of the way mice do things.
You can do quite a lot of forensic analysis when looking at how an object like an acorn is opened. A raccoon or a bear would just chew is up and mangle it. A squirrel might crack it and split the shell like a human opening a peanut, but mice, because they are so small, have to take a different approach. Rather than splitting the acorn mice are forced to nibble away at the smooth shell until they create a little scratch that can be expanded. This is usually easiest at the flat end of an acorn and once they gain a little purchase they nibble their way around the end of the acorn, essentially attacking it the way a can opener opens a can. Then they can hollow out the shell without any further resistance.
So, I leave you with this: Twas two weeks before Christmas and by the wood pile I came across something that gave me a smile. For there, on the wood that would soon heat my house, were myriad clues to the presence of a mouse!
Bill Danielson has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the Massachusetts State Parks. He has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 19 years and he also teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.