XXXVII

THE MICE AND THE SCREECH-OWL

(BOOK XI.--No. 9)


It is not always wise to say to your company, "Just listen to this joke"
or "What do you think of this for a marvel?" for one can never be sure
that the listeners will regard the matter in the same way that the
teller does. Yet here is a case that makes an exception to this good
rule, and I maintain that it is in truth wonderful, and, although it has
the appearance of being a fable, it is in reality absolute fact.

There was once an extremely old pine-tree which an owl, that grim bird
which Atropus[18] takes for her interpreter, had made to serve as his
palace. But there were other tenants lodging in its cavernous and
time-rotted trunk. These were mice, well fed, positive balls of fat, but
not one of them had a foot. They had all been mutilated. The owl had
nipped their feet off with his beak, whilst feeding and fostering them
with wheat from neighbouring stacks.

It must be confessed that this bird had reasoned.

Doubtless, in his time, when hunting mice, he had found that after
bringing them home they escaped again from the trunk, and to prevent
the recurrence of such a loss the artful rascal had thenceforth nipped