THE MOLE
Uncle Paul had just trapped a mole that for some days had been
uprooting young vegetables and unearthing newly planted seeds in a
corner of the garden. He called the children’s attention to the
animal’s black coat, softer than the finest velvet; showed them its
snout and made them note its peculiar fitness for digging; pointed to
its fore paws, shaped like wide shovels for moving the earth with
astonishing rapidity; and remarked on its eyes, so small as to be
well-nigh useless, and its jaws armed with savage-looking teeth.
“It is a great pity,” said he, “that we are prejudiced against the mole
on account of its habit of mining, for there is not in all the world a
more pitiless destroyer of vermin.”
“I had always heard,” Louis remarked, “and had believed until now, that
moles lived on a vegetable diet, chiefly of roots, and that they
tunneled under the ground to get them.”
“To forewarn you of the errors so widely current on the subject of the
diet of certain animals, I described to you in some detail the
formation of teeth, which always indicate the kind of food eaten. I
showed you that one has only to examine an animal’s teeth in order to
determine whether it is carnivorous or herbivorous. Remember the adage
that summed up our talks on the subject: Show me its teeth and I will
tell you what the animal eats.
“The mole is a good illustration: it has forty-four sharply pointed
teeth, not including the incisors. Do they look like millstones for the
leisurely grinding of grain and roots, or sharp tools for making
mincemeat of torn flesh?”
“They are certainly the teeth of an animal that lives on prey,” Louis
admitted; “the hedgehog and the bat haven’t sharper ones.”
“To make you sure of this fact,” Uncle Paul went on, “I will tell you
about some experiments made on the diet of moles. We owe them to a
learned French naturalist, Flourens. If after you are grown up you ever
have a chance to read his remarkable works, you will find them very
interesting and valuable.
“Flourens put two live moles into a cask and, believing them to be
herbivorous, gave them for food a supply of roots, carrots, and
turnips. As you see, the illustrious naturalist shared the accepted
opinion, the false notion just repeated by Louis. But Flourens was soon
undeceived. The next morning the vegetables were found untouched, while
one of the moles had been devoured by its companion and there was
nothing left of it but the skin, turned inside out.”
“One of the moles had eaten the other?” cried Emile. “Oh, what a fierce
creature!”
“It had feasted on its own kind, a thing that hardly any other animal
does. In devouring its comrade it had in the course of the night eaten
its own weight of food; and yet the next morning it seemed restless and
very hungry. Flourens threw it a live sparrow whose wings he had just
clipped. The mole smelt it, walked around it, received a few hard pecks
from its beak, then, pouncing on the bird, tore its stomach open and
enlarged the opening with its claws so as to plunge its head into the
midst of the entrails. With its pointed snout the horrible creature
bored into them with frantic delight. In less than no time it had
devoured half the contents of the skin, which with its feathers was
left whole. Flourens then lowered into the cask a glass full of water
and saw the mole stand up against the glass, cling to the edge with its
fore claws, and drink eagerly. When it had had enough, the animal
returned to the sparrow, ate a little more of it, and finally,
completely full, lay down to sleep in a corner. The glass and the
remains of the bird were then taken out of the cask.
“Hardly six hours later the mole, hungry again, began to smell around
the bottom of the cask in search of something to eat. A second sparrow
was thrown to it. The mole immediately tore open the stomach to get at
its entrails. When it had eaten most of the bird and taken another big
drink of water, it appeared satisfied and remained quiet. This was its
last meal for the day. Just think, boys, what a quantity of reeking
flesh it took to satisfy one mole’s hunger! In the night its companion
in captivity, and the next day two sparrows! The weight of the food
eaten in twenty-four hours was nearly twice that of the eater.
“Was the animal satisfied for long? By no means. The next morning the
mole was wandering restlessly about in the bottom of its cask,
apparently wild with hunger. Food, quick, quick! or it will die of
starvation. The remains of the sparrow left over from the evening
before, with a frog which it promptly disemboweled, quieted it for a
while. Finally, a toad was thrown to it. As soon as the mole approached
to rip it up the toad inflated its body, hoping perhaps to frighten the
enemy with its repulsive appearance. At any rate, it succeeded. After
sniffing at it, the mole turned away in disgust. Ah! you don’t want the
toad, you greedy creature; then you shall have turnips, cabbages, and
carrots. Plenty of these were given it. But fie on roots! Rather perish
than eat turnips! The next morning the mole was found to have starved
to death amid the vegetables. It had scorned to touch them with so much
as a tooth.
“Had this animal an exceptional appetite, a taste for unusual things,
that it should have preferred to die of hunger rather than touch
vegetable food? Not at all; it merely followed the preferences of all
its kind. Many other experiments have been performed both by Flourens
and by other observers. All the moles they have tried to feed with
vegetable substances—with bread, lettuce, cabbages, roots, herbage of
any description—have starved to death without touching their
provisions. On the other hand, those that were fed with raw flesh,
worms, larvæ, and insects of various kinds, remained alive.
“Another very simple way to determine positively the kind of food eaten
by this animal is to examine the contents of its stomach as it lives in
the freedom of its customary haunts. Everything eaten by it must find
its way to the stomach. Let us catch a mole, cut it open, and
investigate. The stomach is found to contain, sometimes, red pieces of
common earthworms, or it may be a pap of beetles, recognizable from the
scaly remains that have not been digested; or still again, and rather
oftener, we find a marmalade of larvæ, especially the larvæ of
June-bugs—undigested bits of mandibles and the hard shell of the skull.
In short, one is likely to come upon a mixed hash of all the small
creatures inhabiting the soil, such as wood-lice, millipeds, cutworms,
moths in the chrysalis state, caterpillars, and subterranean nymphs;
but no matter how carefully we search we cannot find a bit of vegetable
matter.
“All possible observation points to the same conclusion: despite what
is believed by so many it is certain that the mole’s diet is confined
to animal substances. And could it, I ask you, be otherwise? Would the
stomach’s contents belie the savage set of teeth you have just seen in
the picture? Do not its teeth show that it is a flesh-eater?
“Yes, the mole eats flesh and nothing else; everything proves this.
Besides, remember its big appetite, if one may call appetite the raging
demands of a stomach that in twelve hours requires a quantity of food
equal to the weight of the animal. The mole’s existence is a gluttonous
frenzy. This frenzy seizes the creature three or four times a day, and
it dies of starvation if it has to go without food for more than a few
hours. To satisfy its appetite, when its food melts away and disappears
almost as soon as swallowed, what can the mole count on? Live sparrows,
which it devoured with such zest in the experiments of Flourens, are
evidently not for a hunter that burrows underground; at most, some
stray frog, found in the field, may fall into its clutches. What, then,
is left for it to count on? The larvæ buried underground, and
especially those of the June-bug, tender and fat as bacon. That is very
little, I admit, for such hunger; but the number to be had will make up
for the smallness of the prey. What a slaughter of white worms must
take place when the soil abounds in this small game! Scarcely is one
meal finished when another begins, and each time, no doubt, other small
insects are eaten by the dozen. To free a field of these destroyers of
our crops there is no helper equal to the mole.
“A valued destroyer of vermin—that is what we defend when we take the
mole’s part and give to it, even if somewhat reluctantly, the honorable
title of helper. That title, in truth, it only partly deserves. To
catch the crickets, the larvæ, the white worms, and the insects of all
kinds that it feeds on, the mole is obliged to disturb the roots amid
which its prey is to be found. Many that interfere with it in its work
are cut; plants have their roots laid bare and are even uprooted
altogether; and, finally, the earth dug up by this untiring miner is
piled on the surface in little mounds or mole-hills. With such
upturning of the soil a field of vegetables may be speedily ruined and
a crop of grain badly damaged. One night is enough for a mole to
undermine a large tract; for the famished creature is singularly quick
in boring the soil where it hopes to find something to eat.
“It is well equipped for making its underground galleries, which often
are hundreds of meters long. The body is stubby and almost cylindrical
from one end to the other, so as to slip with the least resistance
through the narrow passages bored by the animal. The fur is short,
thick, and carefully curried so that it shall not catch the dust and
may be kept perfectly clean even in the most dusty soil. The tail is
very short and the external ears are wanting, although the hearing is
remarkably acute. Ears like those of animals that live in the open,
would be in the way underground; in the mole they are made very tiny,
for the animal’s greater convenience. No luxurious outfit does it ask
for, but only what is strictly necessary for its work of mining. Eyes
wide open so that the dirt could get into them would be a perpetual
torment to the creature; and, besides, what use could it make of them
in the total darkness of its abode? The mole is not exactly blind, as
is generally believed; it has two eyes, but these are very small and
set so deep in the surrounding fur that they can be of little use. It
is guided by the sense of smell, in which it rivals the pig; and like
the pig it has a snout of the right shape for digging up a toothsome
morsel. With its snout the pig finds and roots out the savory titbit
buried in the ground; the mole in like manner discovers and digs up the
plump white worm. To reach it amid a network of roots and under a
considerable thickness of soil, the animal has its fore paws, which
spread out like large strong hands with exceptionally tough nails.
These hands—stout shovels which, if need be, can open a passage through
tufa, a soft sort of rock—are the mole’s principal tools. As the animal
advances, digging with its snout and clearing away with its hands, the
earth is thrown to the rear by its hind feet, which are much weaker
than the hands but strong enough for the far lighter task. If the mole
proposes to return by the same road, the track must be kept clear;
accordingly, the earth dug up is thrown outside to form mole-hills at
intervals.
“For the present these details will suffice. Now let us take up the
much-discussed question of the mole’s usefulness. Should we,
considering the undoubted services it renders us, let it live in our
fields, or ought we rather, on account of its destructive digging, to
look upon it as an enemy and wage war on it? Most people seem to feel
we should make war on it—war to the death. Some persons make it a
practice to destroy every mole they find and there is small pity
bestowed upon the little creature unearthed by the spade. But I should
like to remind the mole’s pitiless enemies that insects do far worse
damage, and that for ridding a field of insects nothing is equal to
this bloodthirsty hunter. Notwithstanding all opinion to the contrary,
I believe that moles in moderate numbers are needed in a field, that it
is unwise to destroy them all. Indeed, experience has proved this. I
know of regions where the moles have been hunted down and destroyed
until not one was left. Now, do you know what was the result? The white
worms multiplied so that they ate up everything in the fields. To get
rid of the worms it was necessary to let the moles come back and to let
them stay so long as they did not become too numerous.
“And there is something else to be said for the mole. Mole-hills are
formed of well-worked earth which, when spread about with the rake, is
very good for young grass. Further, the creature’s subterranean
galleries serve as drains for keeping the soil in a sanitary condition,
letting off the extra water just as regular drains would do. On the
whole, then, after weighing the arguments on both sides, I am of the
opinion that the mole ought not to be banished from our fields unless
it multiplies to excess.”
“And how about gardens?” queried Louis.
“That is another question. In a few hours a mole can almost ruin a
garden. Who would want such a digger among his growing vegetables? You
carefully sow your seeds, set out your young plants, even off the
ground, and make water-channels; the very next morning—plague take the
creature! it has turned everything topsy-turvy. Quick, a spade, a trap,
and let us get rid of the pest as soon as possible! Suppose, however,
that cutworms and other destructive vermin abound; shall we gain
anything by killing the mole? Certainly not. The insects will speedily
do more harm than the mole has just wrought; greater mischief is in
store, and that is all there is about it. If I had a garden infested
with destructive insects, here is what I should do. In the spring I
should let loose in my garden half a dozen moles taken alive in the
field, and I should then leave them to pursue their hunting in peace.
Their work done, the ground cleaned, I should take the moles away.”
“You can catch them whenever you want to?” asked Louis.
“Nothing easier. You shall see for yourself.”