Musical Mice of Tioga.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue III, 20 July 1901, Page 107

Musical Mice of Tioga.

A Tioga family is mourning the loss of two musical mice which have been its beloved pets for some months past. They were not captive mice, and their native talents were quite uneducated. They were to all appearances the usual grayish-brown enterprising, scary little rodents for* whose destruction housekeepers set traps, and were very small, being only half grown. Every evening they would steal from a crevice behind the window curtains in the sitting-room when the family would gather there after supper, and would make short excursions about the floor in search of food, singing blithely as they did so. Their song was the clearest, most melodious sort of whistling ever heard, resembling very much the strain of a female eanary.

The first time they performed they were looked upon with alarm rather than admiration, so startingly did their song contrast the shadowy silence of theif movements; but on their second appearance they were warmly greeted, and thereafter table dainties were pressed upon them in appreciation of the powers which made them the Patti and Melba of the mouse world. Under these circumstances they soon grew very tame, and the family grew to love them stanchly. Any one suggesting the introduction of a mouse trap into that house would have been considered an assassin! Very often no one knew the little vocalists were present until that silvery sweet sound was heard, and then arrested in various attitudes, every one would listen attentively until the strain had ceased. The proverbial pin might have been heard to drop in the silence. The baby of the family is the possessor of a toy piano, the sound of which seemed to attract the mice. They

weald steal out and remain still, as though in their turn listening; when the piano ceased they would sing either singly or together. Quite recently this happy state of things terminated. The mice grew so tame that they ran fearlessly about the floor, and some one, unconscious of the little creature's vicinity, stepped on one of them, crushing it to death. For a few evenings the other appeared as usual, but did not sing. It then disappeared, and the family is obliged to conclude that it has pined to death. While the singing mice paid their visits a white mouse and one peculiarly piebald were noticed occasionally, but they never sang, and seemed as wild as their grey brethren usually are.

[We have tried salt with this story, but still it won’t quite digest.]