A rather strange parcel from California reached me by post some years
ago. It was marked "Live animals with care," and consisted of a box,
containing several divisions, each having fine wire-work to admit air.
In one I found a spiny creature called a Gecko, in another a beautiful
lizard which had not survived the journey, and in the third a very rare
species of mouse known as _Perognathus Pencillatus_. It has a soft silky
coat of silver grey and fawn colour, and a long tail with a little tuft
at the end, very large black eyes and white paws. It was alive, but weak
and tired with its journey of ten days and all the jars and shocks it
must have had by the way. I gave it warm milk and soaked bread, which it
seemed to enjoy, and some hours later it was supplied with wheat grains,
the food upon which it lives in its native country.
True to his natural instinct, mousie soon began to fill both his cheek
pouches with the corn, and tried to hide it away as a supply for the
future. In a few days the little creature was in perfect health, and he
has been a great pet now for several years; perfectly tame and gentle,
he will run about on the table and amuse himself happily wherever he is
placed.
Being entirely inodorous he is kept in the drawing-room in a mahogany
cage which was made specially to meet his small requirements. He is a
busy little creature at night, as he likes daily to make a fresh bed of
cotton-wool, and fusses about with his mouth full of material until he
has arranged his little couch.
In his own country, where the cold is very severe in winter, its habit
is to become perfectly unconscious, exactly as if dead, and in that
state it can endure the rigour of the climate and wake up when the
temperature rises. It was once left in a cold room and became in this
apparently lifeless state. I was not alarmed, as I knew of its
peculiarity, but it really was difficult to believe it ever could
revive; there was no trace of warmth, or any apparent beating of the
heart, and so it lay for some days, but on bringing it into a warm room
it became as bright and active as ever. It seems a more intense form of
hibernation than that of our squirrel and dormouse.
The naturalist at San Bernardino, from whom I obtained this mouse, told
me he had kept one as a pet for many years, and his specimen lived
entirely without water; as there was sufficient moisture in the wheat
grains on which it fed to supply its need; but I think it is cruel to
keep anything without the means of quenching thirst which might arise
from an artificial mode of life, so my little pet has always a small jar
of water to which I know it resorts from its requiring to be refilled
from time to time.
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