On a perfect summer-like day of autumn, it is strange to think that
hedgehogs are going to their winter quarters, and that sleep is
overtaking so many creatures--bats that hang amid the dark rafters of
the barn roofs; toads in the mud of the ponds; field-mice, water-voles,
lizards, badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs curled in the ditches, snugly
rolled up in a great ball of dry grass and leaves; and the dormouse,
"seven sleeper," as it is called locally, or "dorymouse," "sleeper," or
"sleeping-mouse." Much country weather-lore, in all parts of the world,
is based on the storing of nuts by squirrels, the building of winter
houses by musk-rats, the early or late cutting of winter supplies of
wood by beavers, the working of moles, who are supposed before winter
comes to prepare basins for the storage of worms, and the laying up
of food on the part of bears. "The hedgehog," said the writer of
"Husbandman's Practice," "commonly hath two holes or vents in his den
or cave, the one toward the south and the other toward the north, and
look which of them he stops; thence will come great storms and winds
follow." The badger in his winter retreat certainly will block up holes
from which draughts blow.
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