read
descriptions of moles, the living creature was as unexpected as if one
had come on it silent upon a peak in Darien. I had never expected it
to look so black and glossy in the midday sun or to have that little
pink snout that made me think of it as a small underground pig. I had
always been told, too, that the sound of a footstep would frighten a
mole, but this mole only began to show fright at the sound of voices.
Then it began to tear its way into the undergrowth with paws and snout
ever trying to overtake each other. Mr Blunden has described how

The lost mole tries to pierce the mattocked clay
In agony and terror of the sun.

I got much the same impression of agony and terror as this poor
creature dug its way into the grass and ferns and, coming out at the
far end of the clump, bolted under a tree like a frightened pig. And
yet, they say, this poor little coward is a fierce animal enough. He
is, we are told, impelled by so cruel a hunger that he would die of it
were it to go unsatisfied for even twenty-four hours. If he can find
nothing else to eat, he will kill and eat a fellow-mole. So the
authorities tell us, but I wonder how many of the authorities have
even seen a mole in the very act of cannibalism. How many of them have
followed him on his long journeys through the bowels of the earth? He
certainly looked no South Sea monster on the Sunday morning on which
for a few seconds I watched him. Nor would John Clare have written
affectionately about him had he been entirely bloody-minded.

Then there was the hedgehog. The charm of hedgehogs is that we do not
see them every day--that their appearance is a secret and an accident.
They are a part of the busy life that goes on all about us as
mysteriously as the movements of spirits. Consequently, when I was
looking over a sloping field the other evening and, hearing a
crackling as of sticks being trodden on, turned my eyes and saw a
living creature making its way out of a wood into the grass, I was
delighted to find that it was a hedgehog and not a man or a rat. I
could see it only dimly in the twilight, and it was difficult to
believe that so small an animal had made so great a noise. The
pleasure of recognition, unfortunately, was not mutual. No sooner did
the hedgehog hear a foot pressing on the road than it gave up all
thoughts of its supper of insects and hobbled back into the thicket. I
regretted only that I had not made a greater noise, and sca