Rat hole

I spent an afternoon looking at rat burrows. I sat under a sheet of white grass, about twenty meters from the rat hole. This is as close as the rats will allow me to get. Half a step closer, and the rats will flee into their burrows, and I won't be able to see anything.

The mousehole was built on a mound in the ground with seven or eight openings. I wonder why the rats chose this higher ground. Perhaps he learned to build his cave high up after it was flooded many times. But this height how it was determined. How can a mouse judge the terrain of a large area by its narrow eye? It chose a mound, climbed up and looked, thinking it was high up, but did not know that the little mound was in a big pit. Even humans can't avoid this kind of ridiculously short-sighted behavior, and rats.

But the rat's hole was really high up. In my opinion, this is also the best terrain for dozens of miles around. No flood will threaten it.

There lived about a hundred mice in this honeycomb hole, and in and out of every opening came mice, some carrying out husks and crumbs, others carrying in ears and grains. The busy scene made it seem like they were the real harvesters.

There were times when I took my shovel and wanted to dig a rat's hole to see how much wheat it had stored. But I still didn't do it. There are three levels of the rat hole. The rats carry the ears of wheat back from the field and store them in the upper chamber. The middle level is the processing workshop. The mice stripped the grains off the ears one by one, carried the husk and residue out of the hole, and the clean, plump grains tumbled through a vertical opening into the lowest barn.

Each job has a strict division of labor, I do not know how to complete this division of labor and internal management. I do not know which of these hurried mice is their king. I watched all afternoon, but I didn't see a rat walking around with a square foot and a hand behind his back.

I once saw a small mouse in the wheat field as a transport tool. It lay on its back on the ground, holding a few ears of wheat tightly with its limbs. Another big mouse bit its tail with its mouth and pulled it along like a cart. As I approached, the other one left him and ran away. This one did not know what had happened, and lay on the ground in a daze with his ear in his arms. I kicked it, only to react, suddenly got up, dropped the wheat and ran. I saw that his back was red and hairless. He ran sideways, like he was in pain.

I had seen several dead mice in the field with no hair on their backs, and I thought they had torn each other to death, but now I understood.

In the wheat field, often can meet a few hurried running mice, it let me stop, think about their busy big "mouse", and busy from day to night what the meaning. As long as I live, I will never enter the rat's deep cave, like a guest, to look at the clean grain piled up in the bottom barn.

Rats should have such a good harvest. This is also the land of rats.

When we were not cultivated, this piece of wasteland full of dwarf wormwood was full of rat holes. Rats lived on grass seeds and stalks and lived a rich and comfortable life. We burned the wormwood and the bushes, destroyed the rat holes, turned the ground over and planted wheat. We thought the rats were all buried in the ground. When we came to cut wheat, we found that the field was full of rat holes, and they had started the busy harvest before us. These mice have no seeds to eat, but live on wheat grains. The hard grain of wheat, which we call fine grain, does not agree with the taste of mice, who eat it and feel uncomfortable.

These hurried harvesters make people feel the harvest and joy is not only for people, but also for all things.

All around us, another animal is also celebrating the wheat harvest. We can't hear their laughter, but we can feel it.

They are looking forward to a spring and a long summer as much as the people in the village. Their expectations have not been disappointed. We didn't miss out. They live very well with their little paw, which can only hold two grains at a time, and take a little of our bountiful harvest. And we, almost every year, are so close to being happily fed.