The Flying Mouse
By Julia McNair Wright
Annotations by Kathryn T. Burt
Little Tom ran to me, crying: “Oh, I have found a “flying mouse’!”
That night as we sat on the porch we heard a little squealing sound above our heads. Cora put her hands over her ears, screaming, “Oh, the bat! the bat.” I went out in the gravel-walk and saw a little thing running along in a slow, queer way. “It is only a flitter mouse[1],” said the gardener, who was looking at the night-blooming flowers.
Let us look at this little creature that is called a “flitter mouse,” a “bat,” a “leather mouse,” a “flying mouse.”
You see the body is very like that of a small mouse. The bat has four legs. The two front legs answer to your arms, or to a bird’s wings. Stretch out your arm. Fancy that it is very short, and that your fingers are very long. Spread out your fingers.
A bat has four fingers and a thumb on its front limb, just as you have. Now, the bat has a thin, tough skin stretched between all its long fingers.
Have you ever noticed the skin stretched between the toes of ducks and geese? From the fingers of the bat this skin or membrane stretches down the sides of the body, and along the hind legs to the ankle-joints. In many bats, also, this skin reaches around the tail. This skin can be stretched out wide, like wings, to hold up the bat in the air.
The thumb of the bat is left free, and has a strong, hooked claw. This claw holds his food and also serves as a hook by which he can hang himself up. A bat rests and sleeps hanging up.
The bat has good eyes, but they are sensitive to light, and, like the owl, he prefers to fly and hunt by night.
He catches night-flying insects for food. In the daytime the bats like to hide in caves, hollow trees, church towers, or the high dark roofs of barns.
A bat is not a pretty creature, but it is very harmless. Also it is frail and easily killed.
You should handle a bat gently. It is a clean animal. It spends much time cleaning its fur and wings.
Look at its mouth. Do you see the thick shining upper lip? That is as elastic as India rubber[2].
The bat can stretch it out. This big lip is the bat’s clothes-brush for cleansing its skin. The bat has some sharp, strong, little teeth, and strong jaws. It can break up and eat large beetles.
In hot lands there are very big bats which live mostly on fruit. The bat makes a shrill chirping cry as it flies. It flies past not in a straight line, but flitting here and there, as it sees insects to catch. The bat can fold up its wings and walk, but it is clumsy in walking, as its limbs are short.
Most bats have very short ears like mice. But there is one called the “long-eared bat,” who is a funny looking fellow, indeed. Bats are fond of company and do not live alone. They live in flocks or parties. They are friendly, and do not quarrel. When the day dawns they go to their dark cave, and hang themselves up by taking hold of the rock or wall with the claws of their hind feet.
So they hang head downwards. That would kill you if you tried it very long, but the bats find it very comfortable.
A mother bat is very good to her baby. She rubs and brushes it clean with her big lip. Then she tucks the baby bat into a fold of the skin about her body. The baby bat at once clings fast to its mother with its little hooked claws.
Wright, Julia Mcnair. “The flying mouse.” Youth: an illustrated magazine for boys and girls 4, no. 5 (March 1905): 169-170.
[1] The term “flitter mouse” likely comes from the German word for bat, fledermaus.
[2] “India rubber” or “natural rubber” is the stretchy material found in the sap of some trees. The name “rubber” comes from the substance’s ability to rub out pencil marks on paper.
Contexts
In the preface of the first volume of Nature Readers: Sea-Side and Way-Side, Wright included a brief letter to her juvenile audience:
To the Boys and Girls,
Do you know that there are cities on your path to school, and under the trees in your garden? Do you know that homes
with many rooms in them hang in the branches above your head? Do you know that what you call "little bugs" hunt and fish,
make paper, saw wood, are masons and weavers, and feed and guard and teach their little ones, much as your papa and mamma
take care of you? This sounds like a fairy story, but it is a true fairy story.
In this book you will read some of these wonders. And when you have read this book well, you shall have one or two more.
These books will not try to tell you all that there is to tell of these things. They are only to wake up your minds,
so that you will think and study and notice these things for yourselves.
Your eyes will be worth many times as much to you as they now are, when you learn to observe with care and to think
about what you see.
J.M.N.W.
Resources for Further Study
- You can access Wright’s four-volume, illustrated natural sciences for children, Nature Readers: Sea-Side and Way-Side. No. 1-4. online through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. Included in the fourth volume is a longer and more detailed column about bats entitled: “Lesson XLV: A Flying Mammal.”
- Wright was a tireless advocate for children’s education, and she argued that it was crucial for parents, teachers, and librarians to work together to expose children to literary and scientific texts and to encourage curiosity and exploration. You can find her essay on the subject, “The Cultivation in Young Children, of a Taste for the Literary and Scientific (1888),” at Log College Press.
