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Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse

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75 <h2>XIV</h2><h3>MAKING READY FOR WINTER</h3> After his escape from Solomon Owl and Simon Screecher, Dickie Deer Mouse never felt quite so care-free as he always had before, when wandering through the woods at night. And he never stayed inside his house after dark without wondering whether Solomon or Simon could by any chance discover his snug home in the last year's bird's nest. It was not a pleasant thought. And the oftener it popped into Dickie's head the less he liked it. Sometimes, when summer had ended and fall brought a night that was rainy76 and cold, he liked to go home after he had finished his supper, and burrow deep into his soft bed of cat-tail down. But even after he had dried his wet coat and warmed himself well, at such times Dickie Deer Mouse started whenever he heard the slightest noise. Somehow, he couldn't get the Owl family out of his mind. As the days grew shorter—and the nights longer—he began to find that his summer home was not so cozy as it might have been. The cold wind searched him out, even under his soft covering; and the driving rains trickled annoyingly through his roof of moss. So at last Dickie Deer Mouse made up his mind that he would move once more. And since he was not the sort to put off the doing of anything that had to be77 done, he set out at once to see what kind of place he could find. Now, Dickie Deer Mouse liked the woods in which he had always lived. So one might think it strange that when he set forth on his search he headed straight for Farmer Green's pasture. But there is no doubt that he knew what he was about. For some time he crept cautiously about the pasture, peeping under big rocks, and moving among the roots of the trees which dotted the hillside here and there. And since his eyes were of the sharpest, what he was looking for he found in surprising numbers. Most people, strolling through the pasture, would have noticed little except grass and bushes, trees and rocks and knolls. But those were not the things that Dickie Deer Mouse discovered, and78 sniffed at. What he was hunting for was holes. For Dickie had decided that when winter came, with its ice and snow, its cruel gales and its piercing cold, he would be far more comfortable underground than he could ever hope to be in a last year's bird's nest that was fastened to a tree. He had found it no easy matter to pick out a summer home. And now there were reasons why his search for a winter one was even harder. It is true that at the beginning of summer, when Dickie Deer Mouse climbed the tall elm where Mr. Crow lived, he found the old gentleman asleep in the nest that he had hoped to take for his own. But on the whole it was easy to discover whether a nest was deserted. One look into it usually told the story. Eggs in a bird's nest meant that somebody79 must live there. And of course if Dickie saw a bird sitting on a nest he knew right away that he couldn't live there without having a fight first. But a hole is different. One can't see what's at the bottom of it without going inside it. And that is not always a pleasant thing to do. <div class='figcenter' style='width: 342px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <ANTIMG src='images/p079.png' alt='' title='' width = '342' height = '276'/> </div> <hr class='major' /> <div class='figcenter' style='width: 354px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <ANTIMG src='images/p080.png' alt='' title='' width = '354' height = '143'/> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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