These mice are resourceful little beings and when danger threatens they will take to the water without hesitation; and when the muskrat has gone the way of the beaver, our ditches and ponds will not be completely deserted, for the little meadow mice will swim and dive for many years thereafter.
Not only in the meadows about our inland streams, but within sound of the breakers on the seashore, these vigorous bits of fur find bountiful living, and it is said that the mice folk inhabiting these low salt marshes always know in some mysterious way when a disastrous high tide is due, and flee in time, so that when the remorseless ripples lap higher and higher over the wide stretches of salt grass, not a mouse will be drowned. By some delicate means of perception all have been notified in time, and these, among the least of Nature's children, have run and scurried along their grassy paths to find safety on the higher ground.
These paths seem an invention of the meadow mice, and, affording them a unique escape from danger, they doubtless, in a great measure, account for the extreme abundance of the little creatures. When a deer mouse or a chipmunk emerges from its hollow log or underground tunnel, it must take its chances in open air. It may dart along close to the ground or amid an impenetrable tangle of briers, but still it is always visible from above. On the other hand, a mole, pushing blindly along beneath the sod, fears no danger from the hawk soaring high overhead.
The method of the meadow mice is between these two: its stratum of active life is above the mole and beneath the chipmunk. Scores of sharp little incisor teeth are forever busy gnawing and cutting away the tender grass and sprouting weeds in long meandering paths or trails through the meadows. As these paths are only a mouse-breadth in width, the grasses at each side lean inward, forming a perfect shelter of interlocking stems overhead. Two purposes are thus fulfilled: a delicious succulent food is obtained and a way of escape is kept ever open. These lines intersect and cross at every conceivable angle, and as the meadow mice clan are ever friendly toward one another, any particular mouse seems at liberty to traverse these miles of mouse alleys.