Mouse peak. Encyclopedia of fairy-tale characters: "Mouse Peak"

Information for parents: Peak the Mouse is a long tale that tells about a little mouse. He was caught and released into the sea in a small boat. The tale describes his most dangerous journeys, which brought him back to the place where he started his journey. The fairy tale "Mouse Peak" is one of the best fairy tales of the writer Vitaly Bianchi. It can be read to children aged 6 to 10 years. Enjoy reading.

Read the fairy tale Mouse peak

How the mouse got into the sailors

The boys were sailing boats down the river. My brother carved them with a knife from thick pieces of pine bark. My sister was adjusting sails from rags.
The largest ship needed a long mast.
- It must be from a straight branch, - said the brother, took a knife and went into the bushes.
Suddenly he shouted from there:
- Mice, mice!
The little sister rushed over to him.
- He chopped a branch, - said the brother, - and how they crackle! A whole bunch! One over here under the root. Wait, I'm her now...
He cut a root with a knife and pulled out a tiny mouse.
- Yes, he is tiny! - the little sister was surprised. - And yellow-mouthed! Do such things happen?
- This is a wild mouse, - the brother explained, - a field mouse. Each breed has its own name, but I don't know what it's called.
Then the little mouse opened its pink mouth and squeaked.
— Peak! He says his name is Peak! sister laughed. "Look how he's trembling!" Ay! Yes, he has blood in his ear. It was you who wounded him with a knife when you got him. He hurts.
"I'll kill him anyway," the brother said angrily. - I kill them all: why do they steal our bread?
“Let him go,” the little sister pleaded, “he’s small!”
But the boy did not want to listen.
“I’ll throw it into the river,” he said and went to the shore.
The girl suddenly figured out how to save the little mouse.
- Stop! she screamed at her brother. - You know? Let's put him in our largest ship, and let him be a passenger!
The brother agreed to this: anyway, the mouse will drown in the river. And with a live passenger, it’s interesting to let the boat go.
They set the sail, put the mouse in a dugout boat and let it go with the flow. The wind picked up the boat and drove it away from the shore. The little mouse clung tightly to the dry bark and did not move.
The boys waved to him from the shore.
At this time they were called home. They still saw how a light boat in full sail disappeared around a bend in the river.
“Poor little Peak! - the girl said when they returned home. “The ship will probably be capsized by the wind, and the Peak will sink.
The boy was silent. He thought about how he could kill all the mice in their closet.

Shipwreck

And the little mouse carried and carried on a light pine boat. The wind drove the boat further and further from the shore. High waves splashed all around. The river was wide - a whole sea for a tiny Peak.
Peak was only two weeks old. He did not know how to find food for himself, nor to hide from enemies. On that day, the mother mouse took her mice out of the nest for the first time - for a walk. She was just feeding them her milk when the boy scared the whole mouse family.
Peak was still a sucker. The guys played a cruel joke on him. It would be better if they killed him at once than to let him alone, small and defenseless, on such a dangerous journey.
The whole world was against him. The wind was blowing, as if it wanted to overturn the boat, the waves threw the boat, as if they wanted to drown it in their dark depths. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish - all were against him. Everyone was not averse to profiting from a stupid, defenseless little mouse.
The first to notice Peak were large white gulls. They flew up and circled over the ship. They screamed in annoyance that they could not finish off the mouse at once: they were afraid from the fly to break their beak on the hard bark. Some sank into the water and swam to catch up with the boat.
And a pike rose from the bottom of the river and also swam after the boat. She was waiting for the seagulls to throw the mouse into the water. Then he can not escape her terrible teeth.
Peak heard the predatory cries of seagulls. He closed his eyes and waited for death.
At this time, a large bird of prey flew up from behind - an osprey fisherman. The seagulls scattered.
The fisherman saw a mouse on a boat and under him a pike in the water. He folded his wings and plunged down.
He fell into the river very close to the boat. With the end of the wing, he touched the sail, and the ship turned over.
When the angler rose heavily from the water with the pike in his claws, there was no one on the capsized boat.
The seagulls saw this from afar and flew away: they thought that the little mouse had drowned.
Peak didn't learn to swim. But when he got into the water, it turned out that he only had to work with his paws so as not to drown. He surfaced and grabbed the boat with his teeth.
He was carried along with the capsized boat.
Soon the ship was washed up by the waves to an unfamiliar shore.
The peak jumped onto the sand and rushed into the bushes.
It was a real shipwreck, and the little passenger could consider himself lucky that he was saved.

scary night

Peak is soaked to the last hair. I had to lick myself all over with my tongue. After that, the fur soon dried up, and he warmed up. He wanted to eat. But he was afraid to get out from under the bush: the sharp cries of seagulls could be heard from the river.
So, he sat hungry all day.
Finally it got dark. The birds calmed down. Only ringing waves crashed against the close shore.
Peak cautiously crawled out from under the bush.
Looked around - no one. Then he quickly rolled into the grass in a dark ball.
Then he began to suck on all the leaves and stems that came across his eyes. But there was no milk in them.
Out of vexation, he began to fumble and tear them with his teeth.
Suddenly, from one stem, warm juice splashed into his mouth. The juice was sweet, like the milk of a mother mouse.
Peak ate this stalk and began to look for others like it. He was hungry and did not see at all what was happening around him.
And over the tops of tall grasses the full moon was already rising. Quick shadows swept silently through the air: nimble bats were chasing night butterflies.
Quiet rustlings and rustlings were heard from all sides in the grass.
Someone was scurrying around there, sniffing in the bushes, hiding in the hummocks.
Peak ate. He gnawed through the stems near the ground. The stalk fell, and a rain of cold dew flew over the mouse. But at the end of the stem, Peak found a delicious spikelet. The little mouse sat down, lifted the stalk with its front paws, as if with hands, and quickly ate the spikelet.
Slap-slap! - hit something on the ground not far from the mouse.
Peak stopped nibbling and listened.
The grass rustled.
Slap-slap!
Someone jumped on the grass right at the little mouse. We must hurry back to the bushes!
Slap-slap! - jumped from behind.
Slap-slap! Slap-slap! resounded from all sides.
Plop! - sounded quite close ahead.
Someone's long, outstretched legs flashed over the grass, and - slap! - right in front of Peak's nose, a goggle-eyed little frog plopped down on the ground.
He stared fearfully at the mouse. The mouse looked with surprise and fear at his bare slippery skin ...
So they sat in front of each other, and neither one nor the other knew what to do next.
And all around you could still hear - plop-slap! plop-slap! - like a whole herd of frightened frogs, escaping from someone, jumped on the grass.
And closer and closer I heard a light, quick rustle.
And for a moment the little mouse saw: behind the frog, the long flexible body of a silver-black snake shot up.
The snake slid down, and the frog's long hind legs jerked and disappeared into its open mouth.
What happened next, Peak did not see.
The mouse rushed headlong away and did not notice how he found himself on a branch of a bush, high above the ground.
Here he spent the rest of the night, since his belly was tightly stuffed with grass.
And all around before dawn rustles and rustles were heard.

Tail - hooker and invisible fur

Starvation no longer threatens Peak: he has already learned how to find food for himself. But how could he alone be saved from all enemies?
Mice always live in large flocks: it is easier to defend themselves from an attack. Someone will notice the approaching enemy, whistle, and everyone will hide.
And Peak was alone. He had to quickly find other mice and stick to them. And Peak went on a search. Wherever he could, he tried to make his way through the bushes. There were many snakes in this place, and he was afraid to go down to them on the ground.
He learned to climb very well. Especially helped him tail. His tail was long, flexible and tenacious. With such a hook, he could climb thin twigs no worse than a monkey.
From branch to branch, from branch to branch, from bush to bush - this is how the Peak made his way for three nights in a row.
Finally, the bushes are gone. Next was the meadow.
Pik did not meet mice in the bushes. I had to run through the grass.
The meadow was dry. The snakes didn't come across. The mouse took courage and began to travel in the sun. Now he ate everything he came across: grains and tubers of various plants, beetles, caterpillars, worms. And soon he learned a new way to hide from enemies.
It happened like this: Peak unearthed the larvae of some beetles in the ground, sat down on his hind legs and began to eat.
The sun shone brightly. Grasshoppers chirped in the grass.
Peak saw a small shaking falcon in the distance over the meadow, but he was not afraid of him. The shaker - a bird the size of a dove, only thinner - hung motionless in the empty air, as if suspended on a rope. Only her wings shook a little and she turned her head from side to side.
He did not know what sharp eyes the shaker had.
Peak's breast was white. When he sat, she could be seen far away on the brown earth.
Peak realized the danger only when the shaker immediately rushed from its place and rushed towards him like an arrow.
It was too late to run. The little mouse was paralyzed with fear. He pressed his chest to the ground and froze.
The shaker flew up to him and suddenly hung in the air again, slightly perceptibly fluttering with sharp wings. She couldn't figure out where the little mouse had gone. Now only she saw his bright white chest, and suddenly he was gone. She vigilantly peered at the place where he sat, but saw only brown clods of earth.
And Peak lay there, in front of her eyes.
On the back, his fur was yellow-brown, exactly the same color as the earth, and from above it was impossible to make out in any way.
Just then a green grasshopper jumped out of the grass.
The shaker rushed down, picked him up on the fly and sped away.
Invisible fur saved Peak's life.
From the moment he noticed the enemy from afar, he immediately clung to the ground and lay without moving. And the invisible fur did its job: it deceived the most keen eyes.

"The Nightingale the Robber"

Day after day, Peak ran through the meadow, but he did not find any traces of mice anywhere.
Finally, the bushes began again, and behind them Peak heard the familiar lapping of the river waves.
The mouse had to turn around and head in the other direction. He ran all night, and in the morning he climbed under a large bush and went to bed.
He was awakened by a loud song. Peak looked out from under the roots and saw a beautiful bird with a pink chest, a gray head and a red-brown back above his head.
The mouse really liked her cheerful song. He wanted to listen to the singer closer. He climbed up the bush towards her.
Songbirds never touched Peak, and he was not afraid of them. And this little girl was a little bigger than a sparrow in height.
The silly little mouse did not know that it was a Shrike Shrike and that, although he is a songbird, he trades in robbery.
Peak did not even have time to come to his senses, as the shrike pounced on him and painfully hit him in the back with a hooked beak.
From a strong blow, Peak flew head over heels from a branch. He fell into the soft grass and didn't hurt himself. Before the shrike had time to pounce on him again, the little mouse had already scurried under the roots. Then the cunning "robber nightingale" sat down on a bush and waited for Peak to peek out from under the roots.
He sang very beautiful songs, but the mouse was not up to them. From the place where Peak now sat, he could clearly see the bush on which the shrike was sitting.
The branches of this bush were planted with long sharp thorns. Dead, half-eaten chicks, lizards, frogs, beetles and grasshoppers stuck out on the thorns, like on pikes. Here was the robber's air pantry.
To sit on a thorn and a mouse if he came out from under the roots.
The whole day the shrike guarded Peak. But when the sun went down, the robber climbed into the thicket to sleep. Then the little mouse crawled out from under the bush and ran away.
Maybe in a hurry he lost his way, only the next morning he again heard the splashing of the river behind the bushes. And again he had to turn and run in the other direction.

Journey's end

Peak was now running across the dry swamp.
Only dry moss grew here; it was very difficult to run along it, and most importantly, there was nothing to eat; neither worms, nor caterpillars, nor juicy grass came across.
On the second night, the mouse was completely exhausted. With difficulty, he climbed another hillock and fell. His eyes drooped. My throat is dry. To freshen up, he lay down to lick drops of cold dew from the moss.
Beginning to light up. From the hillock Peak could see the moss-covered valley far away. Behind her, the meadow began again. Juicy grasses stood there in a high wall. But the mouse did not have the strength to get up and run to them.
The sun came out. From its hot light, dew drops quickly began to dry.
Peak felt that he was coming to an end. He gathered the rest of his strength, crawled, but immediately fell down and rolled down the hill. He fell on his back, paws up, and now he saw only a hummock overgrown with moss in front of him.
Directly opposite him, in a tussock, was a deep black hole, so narrow that Peak could not even stick his head in it.
The little mouse noticed that something was stirring in the depths of it. Soon a shaggy thick bumblebee appeared at the entrance. He crawled out of the hole, scratched his round belly with his paw, spread his wings and rose into the air.
Having made a circle over the hummock, the bumblebee returned to its mink and landed at its entrance. Then he got up on his paws and worked his stiff wings so hard that the wind smelled like a mouse.
“Zzhzhuu! - the wings hummed. - Zzhzhuu! .. "
It was a trumpet bumblebee. He drove fresh air into a deep mink - ventilated the room - and woke up other bumblebees who were still sleeping in the nest.
Soon, one after another, all the bumblebees got out of the mink and flew to the meadow to collect honey. The trumpeter was the last to leave. Peak was left alone. He understood what he had to do to be saved.
Somehow, crawling, with respite, he reached the bumblebee mink. From there, a sweet smell hit his nose.
Peak dug his nose into the ground. The earth gave way.
He dug again and again until he dug a hole. Large cells of gray wax appeared at the bottom of the hole. Some contained bumblebee larvae, others were full of fragrant yellow honey.
The little mouse greedily began to lick the sweet delicacy. He licked all the honey, set about the larvae and quickly dealt with them.
Strength quickly returned to him: he had never eaten such hearty food since he parted with his mother. He tore the earth further and further - now without difficulty - and found more and more cells with honey, with larvae.
Suddenly something painfully pricked him on the cheek. The peak bounced off. A large bumblebee queen climbed out of the ground on him.
Peak was about to rush at her, but then wings hummed, buzzed over him: the bumblebees had returned from the meadow.
Their whole army attacked the mouse, and he had no choice but to rush to flight.
Peak launched from them with all his might. Thick fur protected him from the terrible bumblebee stings. But the bumblebees chose places where the hair is shorter, and pricked it in the ears, in the back of the head.
In one breath - where did the agility come from! - the little mouse rushed to the meadow and hid in the thick grass.
Then the bumblebees left him and returned to their plundered nest.
On the same day, the Peak crossed a damp, marshy meadow and again found himself on the river bank.
The peak was on an island.

building a house

The island Peak landed on was uninhabited: there were no mice on it. Only birds lived here, only snakes and frogs, for whom it cost nothing to cross the wide river here.
Peak was supposed to live here alone.
The famous Robinson, when he ended up on a desert island, began to think about how he could live alone. He reasoned that first he needed to build himself a house that would protect him from the weather and the attacks of enemies. And then he began to collect supplies for a rainy day.
Peak was just a mouse: he couldn't reason. And yet he did just the same as Robinson. The first thing he did was build a house for himself.
Nobody taught him to build: it was in his blood. He built as all mice of the same breed built with him.
In the swampy meadow, high reeds grew interspersed with sedge - an excellent forest for a mouse building.
Peak chose several reeds growing nearby, climbed on them, bit off the tops and split the ends with his teeth. He was so small and light that the grass easily held him.
Then he turned to the leaves. He climbed onto a sedge and gnawed off a leaf at the very stem. The leaf fell, the mouse climbed down, picked up the leaf with its front paws and held it out through clenched teeth. The little mouse dragged the soaked strips of leaves up and deftly wove them into the split ends of the reed. He climbed on such thin blades of grass that they bent under him. He tied them with tips one by one.
In the end, he got a light round house, very similar to a bird's nest. The whole house was the size of a child's fist.
From the side, the mouse made a move in it, laid out moss, leaves and thin roots inside. For the bed, he dragged soft, warm flower down. The bedroom turned out great.
Now Peak had a place to rest and hide from bad weather and enemies. From a distance, the most keen eye could not have noticed a grassy nest, hidden on all sides by high reeds and dense sedge. Not a single snake would have reached it: it hung so high above the ground.
The real Robinson himself could not have come up with a better one.

Uninvited guest

Day after day passed.
The little mouse lived quietly in his air house. He became quite an adult, but grew very little.
He was not supposed to grow anymore, because Peak belonged to a breed of baby mice. These mice are even smaller than our little gray house mice.
Peak often now disappeared from the house for long periods. On hot days, he bathed in the cool water of the swamp, not far from the meadow.
Once he left home in the evening, found two bumblebee nests in the meadow, and ate so much honey that he immediately climbed into the grass and fell asleep.
Peak returned home only in the morning. Downstairs, he noticed something amiss. A wide strip of thick mucus ran along the ground and along one of the stems, and a thick, curly tail protruded from the nest.
The mouse was seriously scared. The smooth, fat tail looked like a snake's. Only the tail of snakes is hard and covered with scales, and this one was naked, soft, covered in some kind of sticky mucus.
Peak plucked up courage and climbed up the stalk to take a closer look at the intruder.
At this time, the tail slowly moved, and the frightened little mouse rolled head over heels to the ground. He hid in the grass and from there saw how the monster lazily crawled out of his house.
First, the thick tail disappeared into the nest hole. Then two long soft horns with pimples at the ends appeared from there. Then two more of the same horns - only short. And behind them, finally, the whole disgusting head of the monster poked out.
The little mouse saw the naked, soft, slimy body of a giant slug crawl out of his house, slowly, as if spilled.
From head to tail, the slug was a good three inches long.
He began to descend to the ground. Its soft belly stuck tightly to the stalk, and a wide band of thick mucus remained on the stalk.
Peak did not wait for him to slide to the ground, and ran away. The soft slug could not do anything to him, but the little mouse was disgusted by this cold, lethargic, sticky animal.
Peak returned only a few hours later. The slug has gone somewhere.
The mouse climbed into its nest. Everything there was smeared with nasty slime. Peak threw out all the fluff and put in a new one. Only then did he decide to go to bed. Since then, leaving the house, he always plugged the entrance with a bunch of dry grass.

Pantry

The days were getting shorter, the nights colder.
Grains ripened on cereals. The wind dropped them to the ground, and flocks of birds flew to the mouse in the meadow to pick them up.
Piku lived very well. He grew fat every day. The fur was slick on him.
Now the little four-legged robinson set up a pantry for himself and collected supplies in it for a rainy day. He dug a hole in the ground and widened the end of it. Here he dragged grain, as in a cellar.
Then it seemed to him not enough. He dug another cellar nearby and connected them with an underground passage.
Everything was raining. The earth softened from above, the grass turned yellow, got wet and drooped. Peak's grass house had drooped and now hung low above the ground. There was mold in it.
Living in the nest became bad. The grass had completely fallen to the ground, and the nest hung like a perceptible dark ball on the reeds. It was already dangerous.
Peak decided to move to live underground. He was no longer afraid that a snake would crawl into his hole or that restless frogs would disturb him: snakes and frogs had long disappeared somewhere.
The little mouse chose a dry and secluded place under a hummock for his mink.
Peak arranged a passage to the mink from the leeward side, so that cold air would not blow into his dwelling.
A long, straight corridor led from the entrance. It expanded at the end into a small round room. Peak dragged dry moss and grass here - he arranged a bedroom for himself.
His new underground bedroom was warm and cozy.
He dug passages from it underground to both of his cellars so that he could run without going outside.
When everything was ready, the little mouse tightly plugged the entrance to his airy summer house with grass and moved into the underground one.

Snow and sleep

The birds no longer came to peck at the grain. The grass lay firmly on the ground, and a cold wind roamed freely around the island.
By that time Peak had grown terribly fat. A sort of lethargy came over him. He was too lazy to move much. He got out of the mink less and less.
One morning he saw that the entrance to his dwelling was blocked. He dug up the cold loose snow and went out into the meadow.
The whole earth was white. The snow sparkled unbearably in the sun. The little mouse's bare paws burned with cold.
Then the frosts began.
The mouse would have had a bad time if he had not stocked up food for himself. How to dig grains from deep frozen snow?
Sleepy lethargy increasingly seized Peak. Now he did not leave the bedroom for two, three days and slept all the time. Waking up, he went to the cellar, ate there and again fell asleep for several days.
Outside, he stopped walking at all.
He was fine underground. He lay on a soft bed, curled up in a warm, fluffy ball. His heart beat slower and slower. Breath became weak-weak. A sweet, long sleep completely overcame him.
Baby mice do not sleep all winter, like marmots or hamsters.
From a long sleep they lose weight, they become cold. Then they wake up and take on their supplies.
Peak slept peacefully: after all, he had two full cellars of grain.
He did not sense what unexpected misfortune would soon befall him.

Terrible awakening

On a frosty winter evening, the guys sat by the warm stove.
“It’s bad for the animals now,” the little sister said thoughtfully. “Remember little Pike? Where is he now?
- Who knows! - indifferently answered the brother. - It's been a long time, it's true, he fell into someone's claws.
The girl whimpered.
- What are you? - the brother was surprised.
- It's a pity for the little mouse, he's so fluffy, yellowish ...
- Found someone to pity! I'll put a mousetrap - I'll catch a hundred pieces for you!
I don't need a hundred! - sobbed my sister. - Bring me one of these small, yellow ...
“Wait, silly, maybe one will come across.
The girl wiped away her tears.
- Well, look: if you get caught - don't touch it, give it to me. Promise?
- All right, roar! brother agreed.
That same evening he set up a mousetrap in the closet.
It was the same evening that Peak woke up in his hole.
It wasn't the cold that woke him this time. Through sleep, the mouse felt something heavy press on his back. And now the frost pinched him under the fur.
When Peak woke up completely, he was already beating from the cold. From above it was crushed by earth and snow. The ceiling above him collapsed. The corridor was filled up.
It was impossible to delay even a minute: the frost does not like to joke.
It is necessary to go to the cellar and quickly eat grains: the well-fed is warm, the frost will not kill the well-fed.
The little mouse jumped up and ran through the snow to the cellars.
But all the snow around was pitted with narrow deep pits - traces of goat hooves.
The peak continually fell into the pits, climbed up and flew down again.
And when he got to the place where his cellars were, he saw only a large hole there.
The goats not only destroyed his underground dwelling, but also ate all his supplies.

On snow and on ice

Peak managed to dig out a few grains in the hole. The goats trampled them into the snow with their hooves.
The food strengthened the little mouse and kept him warm. Again began to cover his languid drowsiness. But he felt: if you succumb to sleep, you will freeze.
Peak shook off his laziness and ran.
Where? He himself did not know this. I just ran and ran wherever my eyes looked.
It was already night and the moon was high in the sky. The snow shone all around like small stars.
The mouse ran to the bank of the river and stopped. The coast was steep. Under the cliff lay a thick, dark shadow. A wide icy river sparkled ahead.
Peak sniffed the air uneasily.
He was afraid to run on ice. What if someone spots him in the middle of the river? You can even burrow into the snow if there is danger.
Turn back - there is death from cold and hunger. There is somewhere ahead, perhaps food and warmth. And Peak ran forward. He went down the cliff and left the island where he lived so peacefully and happily for a long time.
And evil eyes have already noticed him.
He had not yet reached the middle of the river, when a swift and noiseless shadow began to overtake him from behind. Only a shadow, a light shadow on the ice, he saw turning around. He didn't even know who was after him.
In vain he crouched on the ground with his belly, as he always did in a moment of danger: his dark fur stood out like a sharp spot on the sparkling bluish ice, and the transparent darkness of the moonlit night could not hide him from the terrible eyes of the enemy.
The shadow covered the mouse. Curved claws dug painfully into his body. Something hit hard on the head. And Peak stopped feeling.

From trouble to trouble

Peak woke up in total darkness. He lay on something hard and uneven. The head and the wounds on the body hurt a lot, but it was warm.
As he licked his wounds, his eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness.
He saw that he was in a spacious room, with round walls going up somewhere. There was no ceiling to be seen, although a large hole gaped somewhere above the mouse's head. Through this hole, the still quite pale light of the morning dawn penetrated into the room.
Peak looked at what he was lying on, and immediately jumped up.
He lay, it turns out, on dead mice. There were several mice, and they all became stiff; Apparently they have been here for a long time.
Fear gave the mouse strength.
Peak clambered up the rough sheer wall and peered out.
All around were only snow-covered branches. Below them were the tops of the bushes.
Peak himself was on a tree: looking out of a hollow.
Who brought it here and threw it to the bottom of the hollow, the little mouse never knew. Yes, he did not rack his brains over this riddle, but simply hurried to get away from here as soon as possible.
It was like this. On the ice of the river, he was overtaken by a long-eared forest owl. She hit him on the head with her beak, grabbed him with her claws and carried him into the forest.
Fortunately, the owl was very full: she had just caught a hare and ate as much as she could. Her goiter was so tightly packed that there was no room even for a small mouse. She decided to leave Peak in reserve.
The owl carried him into the forest and threw him into a hollow where she had a pantry. She has brought here a dozen dead mice since autumn. In winter, food can be difficult to obtain, and even such nocturnal robbers as an owl happen to starve.
Of course, she did not know that the mouse was only stunned, otherwise she would immediately crush his skull with her sharp beak! Usually she was able to finish off the mice with the first blow.
Pike was lucky this time. The peak descended safely from the tree and darted into the bushes.
Only then did he notice that something was wrong with him: his breath whistled out of his throat.
The wounds were not fatal, but the owl's claws hurt something in his chest, and now he began to whistle after a quick run.
When he rested and began to breathe evenly, the whistling stopped. The little mouse ate the bitter bark from the bush and ran again - away from the terrible place.
The little mouse ran, and behind him a thin double path remained in the snow: his footprint.
And when Peak ran to the clearing, where a large house with smoking chimneys stood behind the fence, a fox had already attacked his trail.
The scent of a fox is very delicate. She immediately realized that the mouse had just run through here, and set off to catch up with him.
Her fiery red tail flashed between the bushes, and, of course, she ran much faster than a mouse.

Unfortunate musician

Peak did not know that the fox was chasing him. Therefore, when two huge dogs jumped out of the house and rushed to him barking, he decided that he was dead.
But the dogs, of course, did not even notice him. They saw a fox that jumped out of the bushes after him, and rushed at her.
Lisa immediately turned back. Her fiery tail flashed for the last time and disappeared into the forest. The dogs rushed over the head of the little mouse in huge leaps and also disappeared into the bushes.
Peak made it home without incident and darted underground.
The first thing Peak noticed in the underground was the strong smell of mice.
Each breed of animal has its own smell, and mice distinguish each other by smell as well as we distinguish people by their appearance.
Therefore, Peak learned that mice not of his breed lived here. But still, they were mice, and Peak was a mouse.
He was as happy with them as Robinson was with people when he returned to them from his uninhabited island.
At once, Peak ran to look for mice.
But finding mice here was not so easy. Mouse tracks and their smell were everywhere, but the mice themselves were nowhere to be seen.
Holes had been gnawed into the ceiling of the underground. Peak thought that mice might live up there, climbed up the wall, climbed out through the hole and found himself in a closet.
There were large, tightly stuffed bags on the floor. One of them was gnawed at the bottom, and the grits spilled out of it onto the floor.
And along the walls of the closet there were shelves. Wonderful delicious smells came from there. It smelled of smoked, and dried, and fried, and something else very sweet.
The hungry mouse greedily pounced on the food.
After the bitter bark, the groats seemed so tasty to him that he ate right to satiety. He ate so much that it became difficult for him to even breathe.
And then again his throat whistled and sang.
And at this time, a mustachioed sharp muzzle poked out of a hole in the floor. Angry eyes flashed in the darkness, and a large gray mouse jumped out into the closet, followed by four more of the same kind.
Their appearance was so formidable that Peak did not dare to rush towards them. He timidly stamped his feet and whistled louder and louder in excitement.
Gray mice did not like this whistle.
Where did this alien mouse-musician come from?
The gray mice considered the closet to be theirs. They sometimes took to their underground wild mice that came running from the forest, but they had never seen such whistlers before.
One of the mice rushed at Peak and bit him painfully on the shoulder. Others followed her.
Peak barely managed to slip away from them through a hole under some box. The hole was so narrow that the gray mice could not get through it. Here he was safe.
But he was very bitter that his gray relatives did not want to accept him into their family.

Mousetrap

Every morning my sister would ask her brother:
- Well, did the mouse get caught?
Her brother showed her the mice that he caught in a mousetrap. But they were all gray mice, and the girl did not like them. She was even a little afraid of them. She certainly needed a little yellow mouse, but in recent days, the mice have somehow ceased to come across.
The most surprising thing was that someone ate the bait every night. In the evening, the boy will plant a fragrant piece of smoked ham on a hook, alert the tight doors of the mousetrap, and in the morning he will come - there is nothing on the hook, and the doors are slammed. He looked at the mousetrap many times: is there a hole somewhere? But there were no big holes - such as a mouse could crawl through - in the mousetrap.
So, a whole week passed, and the boy could not understand in any way who was stealing the bait from him.
And on the morning of the eighth day, the boy ran out of the closet and shouted at the door:
- Got it! Look yellow!
- Yellow, yellow! sister rejoiced. “Look, this is our Peak: his ear has been slit.” Remember, you knifed him then? .. Run quickly for milk, and I'll get dressed for now.
She was still in bed.
Her brother ran into another room, and she put the mousetrap on the floor, jumped out from under the covers and quickly threw on her dress.
But when she looked again at the mousetrap, the mouse was no longer there.
Peak learned how to get out of the mousetrap a long time ago. One wire was slightly bent in it. Gray mice could not squeeze into this loophole, and he passed freely.
He fell into the trap through the open doors and immediately pulled the bait.
The doors slammed with noise, but he quickly recovered from fear, calmly ate the bait, and then left through the loophole.
On the last night, the boy accidentally placed the mousetrap right next to the wall, and just on the side where the loophole was, Peak was caught. And when the girl left the mousetrap in the middle of the room, he jumped out and hid behind a large chest.

Music

The brother caught the sister in tears.
- He ran away! she said through tears. He doesn't want to live with me!
The brother put the saucer of milk on the table and began to comfort her:
- Dissolved nurses! Yes, I'll catch him in my boot now!
- How about boots? - the girl was surprised.
- Very simple! I'll take off my boot and put it on the wall with the top of it, and you will chase the little mouse. He will run along the wall - they always run along the very wall - he will see a hole in the bootleg, he will think that it is a mink, and he will sniff there! Then I will grab him, in a boot.
My sister stopped crying.
— Do you know what? she said thoughtfully. We won't catch him. Let him live in our room. We don't have a cat, no one will touch him. And I'll put milk for him right here on the floor.
You are always thinking! - disgruntled said brother. - I don't care. I gave you this mouse, do with it what you want.
The girl put the saucer on the floor and crumbled bread into it. She sat aside and waited for the little mouse to come out. But he didn't come out until late at night. The guys even decided that he ran away from the room.
However, in the morning the milk turned out to be drunk and the bread eaten.
"How can I tame him?" - thought the girl.
Piku now lived very well. Now he always ate plenty, there were no gray mice in the room, and no one touched him.
He dragged rags and pieces of paper over the chest and made a nest for himself there.
He was wary of people and came out from behind the chest only at night, when the guys were sleeping.
But one day he heard beautiful music. Someone was playing the flute. The voice of the pipe was thin and so plaintive.
And again, as at the time when Peak heard the “robber nightingale” - the shrike, the mouse could not resist the temptation to listen to the music closer. He crawled out from behind the chest and sat down on the floor in the middle of the room.
The boy was playing the pipe.
The girl sat next to him and listened. She was the first to notice the mouse.
Her eyes were suddenly large and dark. She gently nudged her brother with her elbow and whispered to him:
— Don't move!.. You see, Peak came out. Play, play: he wants to listen!
The brother continued to blow.
The children sat quietly, afraid to move.
The little mouse listened to the sad song of the pipe and somehow completely forgot about the danger.
He even went up to the saucer and began to lap up the milk, as if there was no one in the room. And soon he drank so much that he began to whistle.
Do you hear? - the girl said quietly to her brother. - He sings.
Peak came to his senses only when the boy lowered the pipe. And now he ran for the chest.
But now the guys knew how to tame a wild mouse.
They blew softly into a pipe. Peak went to the middle of the room, sat down and listened. And when he himself began to whistle, they got real concerts.

Happy end

Soon the little mouse got used to the guys so much that he completely stopped being afraid of them. He began to go out without music. The girl even taught him to take bread from her hands. She sat on the floor, and he climbed onto her knees.
The guys made him a small wooden house with painted windows and real doors. In this house, he lived on their table. And when he went out for a walk, according to an old habit, he plugged the door with everything that caught his eye: a rag, crumpled paper, cotton wool.
Even the boy who did not like mice so much became very attached to Peak. Most of all, he liked that the mouse eats and washes with its front paws, as if with hands.
And my sister was very fond of listening to his thin, thin whistle.
“He sings well,” she said to her brother, “he loves music very much.
It never occurred to her that the little mouse was not singing for his own pleasure. She did not know what dangers little Peak had endured and what a difficult journey he had made before he came to her.
And it's good that it ended so well.

How the mouse got into the sailors

The boys were sailing boats down the river. Brother cut them with a knife from thick
pieces of pine bark. My sister was adjusting sails from rags.
The largest ship needed a long mast.
- It must be from a straight branch, - said the brother, took a knife and went into the bushes.
Suddenly he shouted from there:
- Mice, mice!
The sister rushed to him.
- He chopped a branch, - said the brother, - and how they crackle! A whole bunch!
One over here under the root. Wait, I'm her now...
He cut a root with a knife and pulled out a tiny mouse.
- Yes, he is tiny! sister was surprised. - And yellow-mouthed!
Do such things happen?
- This is a wild mouse, - the brother explained, - a field mouse. Each breed has its own
name, but I don't know what it's called.
Then the little mouse opened its pink mouth and squeaked.
— Peak! He says his name is Peak! sister laughed. — See how
he's trembling! Ay! Yes, he has blood in his ear. It was you who wounded him with a knife when
got. He hurts.
“I’ll kill him anyway,” my brother said angrily. - I kill them all: why
Are they stealing our food?
“Let him go,” the little sister pleaded, “he’s small!”
But the boy did not want to listen.
“I’ll throw it into the river,” he said and went to the shore.
The girl suddenly figured out how to save the little mouse.
- Stop! she screamed at her brother. - You know? Let's put him in our very
a big boat, and let it be for the passenger!
The brother agreed to this: anyway, the mouse will drown in the river. And with the living
it is interesting to let the boat as a passenger.
They set the sail, put the mouse in a dugout boat and let it go
flow. The wind picked up the boat and drove it away from the shore. Little mouse firmly
clung to the dry bark and did not move.
The boys waved to him from the shore.
At this time they were called home. They also saw how the light boat on
all sails disappeared around the bend of the river.
“Poor little Peak! the girl said when they returned
home. “The ship will probably be capsized by the wind, and the Peak will sink.
The boy was silent. He thought about how he could kill all the mice in their closet.

Shipwreck

And the little mouse was carried and carried on a light pine boat. The wind drove
the boat is getting farther from the shore. High waves splashed all around. The river was
wide - a whole sea for a tiny Peak.
Peak was only two weeks old. He did not know how to feed himself
seek out or hide from enemies. On that day, the mother mouse brought out for the first time
their mice from the nest - for a walk. She was just feeding them her milk
when the boy scared the whole mouse family.
Peak was still a sucker. The guys played a cruel joke on him. It would be better if they
killed him at once than to let one, small and defenseless, into such
dangerous journey.
The whole world was against him. The wind was blowing, as if it wanted to overturn the ship,
the waves tossed the ship, as if they wanted to drown it in their dark depths.
Animals, birds, reptiles, fish - all were against him. Everyone was not averse
profit from a stupid, defenseless little mouse.
The first to notice Peak were large white gulls. They flew up and swirled
over the ship. They screamed in annoyance that they could not finish off at once
little mouse: they were afraid from the fly to break their beak on hard bark. Some
sank into the water and swam overtook the boat.
And a pike rose from the bottom of the river and also swam after the boat. She was waiting
when the seagulls throw the mouse into the water. Then he can not escape her terrible teeth.
Peak heard the predatory cries of seagulls. He closed his eyes and waited for death.
At this time, a large bird of prey flew up from behind - an osprey fisherman. Seagulls
scattered in all directions.
The fisherman saw a mouse on a boat and under him a pike in the water. He folded
wings and rushed down.
He fell into the river very close to the boat. He touched the sail with the tip of his wing,
and the boat capsized.
When the angler rose heavily from the water with the pike in his claws,
there was no one in the capsized boat.
The seagulls saw this from afar and flew away: they thought that the mouse
drowned.
Peak didn't learn to swim. But when he hit the water, it turned out that
it was only to work with paws, so as not to drown. He jumped up and grabbed
teeth for the boat.
He was carried along with the overturned boat.
Soon the ship was washed up by waves to an unfamiliar shore.
The peak jumped onto the sand and rushed into the bushes.
It was a real shipwreck, and the little passenger could count
himself lucky that he was saved.

scary night

Peak is soaked to the last hair. I had to lick myself all over with my tongue.
After that, the fur soon dried up, and he warmed up. He wanted to eat. But
he was afraid to come out from under the bush: the sharp cries of seagulls could be heard from the river.
So he sat hungry all day.
Finally it got dark. The birds calmed down. Only loud waves
crashed on the nearby shore.
Peak cautiously crawled out from under the bush.
I looked around - no one. Then he quickly rolled into the grass in a dark ball.
Then he began to suck on all the leaves and stems that came across to him.
eyes. But there was no milk in them.
Out of vexation, he began to fumble and tear them with his teeth.
Suddenly, from one stalk, warm juice splashed into his mouth. The juice was sweet
like the milk of a mother mouse.
Peak ate this stalk and began to look for others like it. He was hungry and
I didn't see what was going on around him.
And over the tops of tall grasses the full moon was already rising. quick shadows
silently swept through the air: it was nimble chasing butterflies
the bats.
Quiet rustlings and rustlings were heard from all sides in the grass.
Someone was scurrying around there, sniffing in the bushes, hiding in the hummocks.
Peak ate. He gnawed through the stems near the ground. The stalk fell, and on the little mouse
it was raining cold dew. But at the end of the stem, Peak found a delicious spikelet.
The little mouse sat down, lifted the stalk with its front paws, as if with hands, and quickly
ate a spike.
Plop-slap! Something hit the ground not far from the mouse.
Peak stopped nibbling and listened.
The grass rustled.
Plop-slap!
Someone jumped on the grass right at the little mouse. We must hurry back to the bushes!
Plop-slap! jumped from behind.
Plop-slap! Plop-slap! resounded from all sides.
Plop! came from very close ahead.
Someone's long, outstretched legs flashed over the grass, and - slap! - before
A bug-eyed little frog flopped to the ground with the very nose of Peak.
He stared fearfully at the mouse. Little mouse with surprise and fear
looked at his bare, slippery skin...
So they sat in front of each other, and neither one nor the other knew that
do next.
And all around you could still hear - plop-slap! plop-slap! - exactly the whole
a herd of frightened frogs, escaping from someone, jumped on the grass.
And closer and closer I heard a light, quick rustle.
And for a moment the little mouse saw: behind the frog, a long
the flexible body of a silver-black snake.
The snake slid down, and the long hind legs of the frog jerked and
disappeared into her open mouth.
What happened next, Peak did not see.
The mouse rushed headlong away and did not notice how he found himself on
a branch of a bush, high above the ground.
Here he spent the rest of the night, since his belly was tightly stuffed.
grass.
And all around before dawn rustles and rustles were heard.

Tail-hook and fur-invisible

Starvation no longer threatens Peak: he has already learned to find himself
food. But how could he alone be saved from all enemies?
Mice always live in large flocks: it is easier to defend themselves from an attack.
Someone will notice the approaching enemy, whistle, and everyone will hide.
And Peak was alone. He had to quickly find other mice and stick to
him. And Peak went on a search. Wherever he could, he tried to make his way
bushes. There were many snakes in this place, and he was afraid to go down to them on
earth.
He learned to climb very well. Especially helped him tail. He has a tail
was long, flexible and tenacious. With such a hook, he could climb thin
twigs are no worse than monkeys.
From branch to branch, from knot to knot, from bush to bush - so he made his way
Peak three nights in a row.
Finally the bushes are gone. Next was the meadow.
Pik did not meet mice in the bushes. I had to run through the grass.
The meadow was dry. The snakes didn't come across. The little mouse took courage
travel in the sun. Now he ate everything he came across: grains and
tubers of different plants, beetles, caterpillars, worms. And soon learned something new
way to hide from enemies.
It happened like this: Peak unearthed the larvae of some beetles in the ground, sat down
on his hind legs and began to bite.
The sun shone brightly. Grasshoppers chirped in the grass.
Peak saw a small shaking falcon in the distance over the meadow, but he was not afraid of him.
The shaker, a bird the size of a dove, only thinner, hung motionless in
empty air, as if suspended by a string. She only has wings
slightly shaking and she turned her head from side to side.
He did not know what sharp eyes the shaker had.
Peak's breast was white. When he was sitting, she could be seen far away on the brown
earth.
Peak understood the danger only when the shaker immediately rushed from its place and
darted towards him.
It was too late to run. The little mouse was paralyzed with fear. He snuggled up
chest to the ground and froze.
The shaking flew up to him and suddenly hung in the air again, barely noticeable.
fluttering sharp wings. She couldn't figure out where she'd gone
mouse. Now only she saw his bright white chest, and suddenly he was gone.
She peered sharply at the place where he sat, but saw only brown
clods of earth.
And Peak lay there, in front of her eyes.
On the back, his fur was yellow-brown, exactly the same color.
earth, and from above it could not be seen in any way.
Just then a green grasshopper jumped out of the grass.
The shaker rushed down, picked him up on the fly and sped away.
Invisible fur saved Peak's life.
From the moment he noticed the enemy from afar, he immediately clung to the ground and
lay without moving. And the invisible fur did its job: it deceived the most
keen eyes.

"The Nightingale the Robber"

Day after day, Peak ran across the meadow, but found no footprints anywhere.
mice.
Finally, the bushes began again, and behind them Peak heard the familiar splash
river waves.
The mouse had to turn around and head in the other direction. He ran all
night, and in the morning he climbed under a large bush and went to bed.
He was awakened by a loud song. Peak looked out from under the roots and saw
overhead a beautiful bird with a pink chest, a gray head and
red-brown back.
The little mouse really liked her cheerful song. He wanted to listen
singer closer. He climbed up the bush towards her.
Songbirds never touched Peak, and he was not afraid of them. And this singer
and was slightly larger than a sparrow.
The stupid little mouse did not know that it was a shrike-zhuran and that, although he
a songbird, but hunts by robbery.
Peak did not even have time to come to his senses, as the shrike pounced on him and hit him painfully
hooked beak in the back.
From a strong blow, Peak flew head over heels from a branch. He fell into the soft grass and
don't break. Before the shrike had time to pounce on him again, as the mouse already
crawled under the roots. Then the cunning "robber nightingale" sat down on a bush and began
wait for Peak to peek out from under the roots.
He sang very beautiful songs, but the mouse was not up to them. From that place
where Peak now sat, he could clearly see the bush on which the shrike was sitting.
The branches of this bush were planted with long sharp thorns. On thorns
dead, half-eaten chicks, lizards,
frogs, beetles and grasshoppers. Here was the robber's air pantry.
To sit on a thorn and a mouse if he came out from under the roots.
The whole day the shrike guarded Peak. But when the sun went down, the robber
climbed into the thicket to sleep. Then the little mouse crawled out from under the bush and ran away.
Maybe in a hurry he lost his way, only the next morning he
again heard the splashing of the river behind the bushes. And again he had to turn and run
On the other side.

Journey's end

Peak was now running across the dry swamp.
Only dry moss grew here; it was very difficult to run along it, and most importantly -
there was nothing to eat; neither worms, nor caterpillars, nor juicy
grass.
On the second night, the mouse was completely exhausted. He climbed with difficulty
on some hillock and fell. His eyes drooped. My throat is dry. To
freshen up, he lay licking drops of cold dew from the moss.
Beginning to light up. From the hillock Peak could see the moss-covered valley far away. Behind
her meadow began again. Juicy grasses stood there in a high wall. But
the mouse did not have the strength to get up and run to them.
The sun came out. From its hot light, droplets quickly began to dry
dew.
Peak felt that he was coming to an end. He gathered the rest of his strength, crawled,
but then fell off and rolled down the hill. He fell on his back, paws up, and
now he saw in front of him only a hummock overgrown with moss.
Directly opposite him in the tussock was a deep black hole, so narrow
that Peake couldn't even stick his head in it.
The little mouse noticed that something was stirring in the depths of it. Soon at the entrance
a shaggy thick bumblebee appeared. He got out of the hole, scratched the round
abdomen, spread its wings and rose into the air.
Having made a circle over the tussock, the bumblebee returned to its mink and sank down beside it.
entrance. Then he got up on his paws and so earned his hard wings,
that the wind smelled like a mouse.
“Zzhzhuu! - the wings hummed. - Zzhzhuu! .. "
It was a trumpet bumblebee. He drove fresh air into a deep mink -
ventilated the room - and woke up other bumblebees still sleeping in the nest.
Soon, one by one, all the bumblebees got out of the mink and flew into the meadow -
collect honey. The trumpeter was the last to leave. Peak was left alone. He understood what he needed
do to be saved.
Somehow, crawling, with respite, he reached the bumblebee mink. From there
A sweet smell hit him in the nose.
Peak dug his nose into the ground. The earth gave way.
He dug again and again until he dug a hole. At the bottom of the hole appeared
large cells of gray wax. Some contained bumblebee larvae, others were
full of fragrant yellow honey.
The little mouse greedily began to lick the sweet delicacy. Licked all the honey, started
for the larvae and quickly dealt with them.
Strength quickly returned to him: he had never eaten such hearty food.
since he left his mother. He tore the earth further and further -
now without difficulty - and found all the new cells with honey, with larvae.
Suddenly, something painfully pricked him on the cheek. The peak bounced off. From underground
a large bumblebee queen climbed on him.
Peak was about to rush at her, but then they buzzed, buzzed over him.
wings: the bumblebees have returned from the meadow.
Their whole army attacked the little mouse, and he had no choice but to
take flight.
Peak launched from them with all his might. Thick fur protected him from
terrible bumblebee stings. But the bumblebees chose places where the hair is shorter, and pricked
in his ears, in the back of his head.
In one spirit - where did the agility come from! - the little mouse rushed to the meadow and
hid in the thick grass.
Then the bumblebees left him and returned to their plundered nest.
On the same day, the Peak crossed a damp, swampy meadow and again found himself on
riverbank.
The peak was on an island.

building a house

The island Peak landed on was uninhabited: there were no mice on it.
Only birds lived here, only snakes and frogs, which cost nothing
cross the wide river.
Peak was supposed to live here alone.
The famous Robinson, when he got to a desert island, began to think,
How can he live alone. He reasoned that first you need to build yourself a house,
which would protect him from the weather and the attacks of enemies. And then he began to collect
stocks for a rainy day.
Peak was just a mouse: he couldn't reason. And yet he
did exactly the same thing as Robinson. First of all, he began to build himself
house.
Nobody taught him to build: it was in his blood. He built it like
all mice of the same breed were built.
In a marshy meadow, tall reeds grew interspersed with sedge - an excellent
forest for mouse building.
Peak chose several reeds growing nearby, climbed on them, gnawed off
he split the tops and ends with his teeth. He was so small and light that the grass
was holding him.
Then he turned to the leaves. He climbed a sedge and gnawed off a leaf from
the stem itself. The leaf fell, the mouse climbed down, raised it with its front paws
leaf and held it out through clenched teeth. Crushed strips of leaves
the little mouse dragged them up and deftly wove them into the split ends of the reed. He
climbed on such thin blades of grass that they bent under him. He tied them
tops one after the other.
In the end, he got a light round house, very similar to
bird's nest. The whole house was the size of a child's fist.
On the side, the mouse made a move in it, laid out inside with moss, leaves and
thin roots. For the bed, he brought soft, warm floral down.
The bedroom turned out great.
Now Peak had a place to rest and hide from bad weather and enemies.
From a distance, the most keen eye could not have noticed a grassy nest, from all
sides hidden by high reeds and dense sedge. Not a single snake has reached
before him: so high it hung above the ground.
The real Robinson himself could not have come up with a better one.

Uninvited guest

Day after day passed.
The little mouse lived quietly in his air house. He became quite an adult
but grew very little.
He was not supposed to grow anymore, because Peak belonged to the breed
baby mice. These mice are even smaller than our little gray brownies.
mice.
Peak often now disappeared from the house for long periods. On hot days he bathed in
cool water swamps, not far from the meadows.
Once he left home in the evening, found two bumblebee nests in the meadow and
He ate so much honey that he immediately climbed into the grass and fell asleep.
Peak returned home only in the morning. Downstairs, he noticed something amiss.
On the ground and along one of the stems stretched a wide strip of thick mucus, and from
a thick, curly tail protruded from the nest.
The mouse was seriously scared. The smooth, fat tail looked like a snake's.
Only snakes have a hard and scaly tail, and this one was naked, soft, all over.
in some sticky slime.
Peak plucked up courage and climbed up the stalk to take a closer look at the uninvited
guest.
At this time, the tail slowly moved, and the frightened little mouse went head over heels
rolled down to the ground. He hid in the grass and from there he saw how the monster lazily
crawled out of his house.
First, the thick tail disappeared into the nest hole. Then from there it seemed
two long soft horns with pimples at the ends. Then two more of the same horns
- only short ones. And behind them finally stuck out the whole disgusting head
monsters.
The little mouse saw how, slowly, slowly crawled out, as if spilled, from his
at home, the naked, soft, slimy body of a giant slug.
From head to tail, the slug was a good three inches long.
He began to descend to the ground. His soft belly stuck tightly to
stem, and a wide band of thick mucus remained on the stem.
Peak did not wait for him to slide to the ground and ran away. Soft
the slug could not do anything to him, but the little mouse was disgusted by this cold,
sluggish, sticky animal.
Peak returned only a few hours later. The slug has gone somewhere.
The mouse climbed into its nest. Everything there was smeared with nasty slime.
Peak threw out all the fluff and put in a new one. Only then did he decide to go to bed.
sleep. Since then, leaving the house, he always plugged the entrance with a bunch of dry grass.

Pantry

The days were getting shorter, the nights colder.
Grains ripened on cereals. The wind dropped them to the ground, and flocks of birds
flocked to the little mouse in the meadow to pick them up.
Piku lived very well. He grew fat every day. fur on it
shiny.
Now the little four-legged robinson set up a pantry for himself and collected
in it stocks for a rainy day. He dug a hole in the ground and widened the end of it.
Here he dragged grain, as in a cellar.
Then it seemed to him not enough. He dug another cellar nearby and
connected them with an underground passage.
Everything was raining. The earth softened from above, the grass turned yellow, got wet and
drooped. Peak's grass house had slumped and hung low to the ground now. AT
it got mold.
Living in the nest became bad. The grass has completely fallen to the ground, the nest
hung on a reed like a noticeable dark ball. It was already dangerous.
Peak decided to move to live underground. He was no longer afraid that to him in
a snake will crawl into a mink or its restless frogs will disturb it: snakes and
the frogs have long since disappeared.
The little mouse chose a dry and secluded place under a hummock for his mink.
The move to the mink The peak arranged from the leeward side to let the cold air
did not blow in his dwelling.
A long, straight corridor led from the entrance. It expanded at the end into a small
round room. Peak dragged dry moss and grass here - he arranged for himself
bedroom.
His new underground bedroom was warm and cozy.
He dug passages from it underground to both his cellars, so that he could
was to run without going outside.
When everything was ready, the little mouse tightly plugged the entrance to his
air summer house and moved to the underground.

Snow and sleep

The birds no longer came to peck at the grain. The grass lay flat on the ground, and
a cold wind roamed freely around the island.
By that time Peak had grown terribly fat. A sort of lethargy came over him.
He was too lazy to move much. He got out of the mink less and less.
One morning he saw that the entrance to his dwelling was blocked. He tore the cold
loose snow and went out to the meadow.
The whole earth was white. The snow sparkled unbearably in the sun. bare paws
the mouse burned with cold.
Then the frosts began.
The mouse would have had a bad time if he had not stocked up food for himself. How to dig
grains from deep frozen snow?
Sleepy lethargy increasingly seized Peak. Now he didn't come out.
bedrooms for two, for three days and all slept. Waking up, went to the cellar,
I ate there and fell asleep again for several days.
Outside, he stopped walking at all.
He was fine underground. He lay on the soft bed, curled up in
warm, fluffy ball. His heart beat slower and slower. Breath
became weak. A sweet, long sleep completely overcame him.
Baby mice do not sleep all winter, like marmots or hamsters.
From a long sleep they lose weight, they become cold. Then they wake up
and take care of their supplies.
Peak slept peacefully: after all, he had two full cellars of grain.
He did not sense what unexpected misfortune would soon befall him.

Terrible awakening

On a frosty winter evening, the guys sat by the warm stove.
“It’s bad for the little animals now,” the little sister said thoughtfully. — Do you remember
little Pike? Where is he now?
- Who knows! brother replied indifferently. - A long time ago, right, got
someone in the claws.
The girl whimpered.
- What are you? brother was surprised.
- It's a pity for the little mouse, he's so fluffy, yellowish ...
- Found someone to pity! I'll set up a mousetrap - I'll catch a hundred pieces for you!
I don't need a hundred! my sister sobbed. - Bring me one of these.
little yellow...
“Wait, silly, maybe one will come across.
The girl wiped away her tears.
- Well, look: if you get caught - don't touch it, give it to me. Promise?
- All right, roar! brother agreed.
That same evening he set up a mousetrap in the closet.
It was the same evening that Peak woke up in his hole.
It wasn't the cold that woke him this time. Through sleep, the mouse felt how
something heavy pressed against his back. And now the frost pinched him under
wool.
When Peak woke up completely, he was already beating from the cold. Pressed down from above
earth and snow. The ceiling above him collapsed. The corridor was filled up.
It was impossible to delay even a minute: the frost does not like to joke.
It is necessary to go to the cellar and quickly eat up the grain: the well-fed is warm, the well-fed frost is not
will kill.
The little mouse jumped up and ran through the snow to the cellars.
But all the snow all around was pitted with narrow deep pits—traces of goats.
hooves.
The peak continually fell into the pits, climbed up and flew down again.
And when he got to the place where his cellars were, he saw there
just a big hole.
The goats not only destroyed his underground dwelling, but also ate all of it.
reserves.

On snow and on ice

Peak managed to dig out a few grains in the hole. The goats trampled them into
snow hooves.
The food strengthened the little mouse and kept him warm. Started to embrace it again
sluggish sleepiness. But he felt: if you succumb to sleep, you will freeze.
Peak shook off his laziness and ran.
Where? He himself did not know this. I just ran and ran wherever my eyes looked.
It was already night and the moon was high in the sky. small stars
snow glittered all around.
The mouse ran to the bank of the river and stopped. The coast was steep. Under
a thick, dark shadow lay over the cliff. A wide icy river sparkled ahead.
Peak sniffed the air uneasily.
He was afraid to run on ice. What if someone notices him in the middle
rivers? You can even burrow into the snow if there is danger.
Turn back - there is death from cold and hunger. Somewhere ahead
there may be food and warmth. And Peak ran forward. He went down the cliff
and left the island where he lived so peacefully and happily for a long time.
And evil eyes have already noticed him.
He had not yet reached the middle of the river, when she began to overtake him from behind.
fast and silent shadow. Only a shadow, a light shadow on the ice, he saw,
turning around. He didn't even know who was after him.
In vain did he crouch on the ground with his belly, as he always did in a minute
danger: his dark fur stood out like a sharp spot on the sparkling
bluish ice, and the transparent darkness of the moonlit night could not hide him from
terrible eyes of the enemy.
The shadow covered the mouse. Curved claws dug painfully into his body. Over the head
something hit hard. And Peak stopped feeling.

From trouble to trouble

Peak woke up in total darkness. He lay on something hard and uneven.
The head and the wounds on the body hurt a lot, but it was warm.
As he licked his wounds, his eyes gradually began to get used to
darkness.
He saw that he was in a spacious room, with round walls,
going up somewhere. The ceiling was not visible, although somewhere overhead
the little mouse gaped a large hole. Entered the room through this hole.
still very pale light of the morning dawn.
Peak looked at what he was lying on, and immediately jumped up.
He lay, it turns out, on dead mice. There were several mice, and all
they are numb; Apparently they have been here for a long time.
Fear gave the mouse strength.
Peak clambered up the rough sheer wall and peered out.
All around were only snow-covered branches. Below them were seen
tops of bushes.
Peak himself was on a tree: looking out of a hollow.
Who brought him here and threw him to the bottom of the hollow, the little mouse never
found out. Yes, he did not rack his brains over this riddle, but simply hurried
quickly get out of here.
It was like this. On the ice of the river, he was overtaken by a long-eared forest owl. She is
she hit him on the head with her beak, grabbed him with her claws and carried him into the forest.
Fortunately, the owl was very full: she had just caught a hare and
ate as much as she could. Her goiter was so densely packed that there was no
places even for a small mouse. She decided to leave Peak in reserve.
The owl carried him into the forest and threw him into a hollow where she had a pantry. She is
since the autumn I have brought here about a dozen dead mice. Get food in winter
it can be difficult, and even such night robbers as an owl happen to
starve.
Of course, she did not know that the mouse was only stunned, otherwise
crush his skull with her sharp beak! She usually succeeded
finish off the mice with the first blow.
Pike was lucky this time. Peak descended safely from the tree and sniffed
into the bushes.
Only then did he notice that something was wrong with him: breathing with
whistled out of his throat.
The wounds were not fatal, but the owl's claws had damaged something in his chest,
and now he began to whistle after a quick run.
When he rested and began to breathe evenly, the whistling stopped. little mouse
I ate the bitter bark from the bush and ran again - away from the terrible place.
The little mouse ran, and behind him a thin double path remained in the snow:
his trace.
And when Peak ran to the clearing, where behind the fence stood a large house with
smoking chimneys, a fox has already attacked his trail.
The scent of a fox is very delicate. She immediately realized that the mouse ran through here
just now, and set off to catch up with him.
Her fiery red tail flickered between the bushes, and, of course, she
ran much faster than a mouse.

Unfortunate musician

Peak did not know that the fox was chasing him. So when from home
two huge dogs jumped out and rushed to him barking, he decided that he was dead.
But the dogs, of course, did not even notice him. They saw a fox
jumped out of the bushes after him, and rushed at her.
Lisa immediately turned back. Her fiery tail flashed for the last time
and disappeared into the forest. The dogs rushed over the head of the little mouse in huge leaps and
also disappeared in the bushes.
Peak made it home without incident and darted underground.
The first thing Peak noticed in the underground was the strong smell of mice.
Each breed of animal has its own smell, and mice distinguish each other by
the smell is as good as we distinguish people by their appearance.
Therefore, Peak learned that mice not of his breed lived here. But still this
there were mice, and Peak was a little mouse.
He was as happy with them as Robinson was with people when
returned to them from his uninhabited island.
At once, Peak ran to look for mice.
But finding mice here was not so easy. Mouse tracks and smell
they were everywhere, and the mice themselves were nowhere to be seen.
Holes had been gnawed into the ceiling of the underground. Peak thought the mice might
maybe they live up there, climbed up the wall, climbed out through the hole and found themselves
in a closet.
There were large, tightly stuffed bags on the floor. One of them was gnawed
below, and the grits spilled out of it onto the floor.
And along the walls of the closet there were shelves. From there came wonderful delicious
smells. It smelled of smoked, and dried, and fried, and something else very sweet.
The hungry mouse greedily pounced on the food.
After the bitter bark, the cereal seemed so tasty to him that he ate
right to the edge. He ate so much that it became difficult for him to even breathe.
And then again his throat whistled and sang.
And at this time, a mustachioed sharp muzzle poked out of a hole in the floor.
Angry eyes flashed in the darkness, and a large gray mouse jumped out into the closet,
and behind it are four more of the same.
Their appearance was so formidable that Peak did not dare to rush towards them.
He timidly stamped his feet and whistled louder and louder in excitement.
Gray mice did not like this whistle.
Where did this alien mouse-musician come from?
The gray mice considered the closet to be theirs. They sometimes took in underground
wild mice running from the forest, but such whistlers have never been seen before.
One of the mice rushed at Peak and bit him painfully on the shoulder. For her
others flew in.
Peak barely managed to slip away from them through a hole under some box.
The hole was so narrow that the gray mice could not get through it. Here he is
was safe.
But he was very bitter that his gray relatives did not want to
take him into your family.

Mousetrap

Every morning my sister would ask her brother:
- Well, did the mouse get caught?
Her brother showed her the mice that he caught in a mousetrap. But these were
all gray mice, and the girl didn't like them. She was even a little afraid of them. Her
there was certainly a need for a little yellow mouse, but in the last days of the mouse
something stopped showing up.
The most surprising thing was that someone ate the bait every night. With
in the evening the boy will put a fragrant piece of smoked ham on a hook,
will alert the tight doors of the mousetrap, and in the morning he will come - there is nothing on the hook, and
the doors are slammed shut. He had already examined the mousetrap many times: is there somewhere
holes? But the big holes—the kind a mouse could crawl through—in
there was no mousetrap.
So a whole week passed, and the boy could not understand in any way who was stealing from
him bait.
And on the morning of the eighth day, the boy ran out of the closet and was still at the door
shouted:
- Got it! Look yellow!
- Yellow, yellow! sister rejoiced. - Look, it's
our Peak: his ear has been slit. Remember, you stabbed him then?.. Run
hurry for milk, and I'll get dressed for now.
She was still in bed.
Brother ran to another room, and she put the mousetrap on the floor,
She jumped out from under the covers and quickly put on her dress.
But when she looked again at the mousetrap, the mouse was no longer there.
Peak learned how to get out of the mousetrap a long time ago. One wire was in it
slightly bent. Gray mice could not squeeze into this loophole, and he
passed freely.
He fell into the trap through the open doors and immediately pulled the
bait.
The doors slammed with noise, but he quickly recovered from fear,
calmly ate the bait, and then left through the loophole.
On the last night, the boy accidentally placed the mousetrap against the wall, and
just on the side where there was a loophole, and Peak was caught. And when the girl left
mousetrap in the middle of the room, he jumped out and hid behind a large chest.

Music

The brother caught the sister in tears.
- He ran away! she said through tears. He doesn't want to live with me!
Her brother put the saucer of milk on the table and began to comfort her:
- Dissolved nurses! Yes, I'll catch him in my boot now!
- How about boots? the girl was surprised.
- Very simple! I'll take off my boot and put it on the wall with the bootleg, and you
chase a mouse. He will run along the wall - they are always along the wall itself.
run around, - he will see a hole in the bootleg, he will think that it is a mink, and slink there! Here
I will grab him, in a boot.
My sister stopped crying.
— Do you know what? she said thoughtfully. We won't catch him. Let be
lives in our room. We don't have a cat, no one will touch him. And milk I
I'll put him right here on the floor.
You are always thinking! brother said displeased. - I don't care.
I gave you this mouse, do with it what you want.
The girl put the saucer on the floor and crumbled bread into it. She sat down in
aside and began to wait for the little mouse to come out. But he never left until the very
night. The guys even decided that he ran away from the room.
However, in the morning the milk turned out to be drunk and the bread eaten.
"How can I tame him?" the girl thought.
Piku now lived very well. He ate now always enough, gray
There were no mice in the room, and no one touched him.
He dragged rags and pieces of paper over the chest and made a nest for himself there.
He was wary of people and came out from behind the chest only at night, when the guys
slept.
But one afternoon he heard beautiful music. Someone was playing the flute. Voice
the pipe was thin and so plaintive.
And again, as at the time when Peak heard the "robber nightingale" -
zhulan, the mouse could not resist the temptation to listen to the music closer. He
crawled out from behind the chest and sat down on the floor in the middle of the room.
The boy was playing the pipe.
The girl sat next to him and listened. She was the first to notice the mouse.
Her eyes were suddenly large and dark. She gently pushed
brother with her elbow and whispered to him:
— Don't move!.. You see, Peak came out. Play, play: he wants to listen!
The brother continued to blow.
The children sat quietly, afraid to move.
The little mouse listened to the sad song of the pipe and somehow completely forgot about
danger.
He even went up to the saucer and began to lap up the milk, as if there was no one in the room.
did not have. And soon he drank so much that he began to whistle.
Do you hear? the girl said quietly to her brother. - He sings.
Peak came to his senses only when the boy lowered the pipe. And right now
ran for the chest.
But now the guys knew how to tame a wild mouse.
They blew softly into a pipe. Peak went to the middle of the room, sat down
and listened. And when he himself began to whistle, they got real
concerts.

Happy end

Soon the little mouse got used to the guys so much that he completely stopped being afraid of them. He
went out without music. The girl even taught him to take bread from her hands.
She sat on the floor, and he climbed onto her knees.
The guys made him a small wooden house with painted windows and
real doors. In this house, he lived on their table. And when he left
walk, according to an old habit, shut the door with everything that caught his eye:
cloth, crumpled paper, cotton.
Even the boy who did not like mice so much became very attached to Peak.
Most of all he liked that the mouse eats and washes with its front paws,
like hands.
And my sister was very fond of listening to his thin, thin whistle.
“He sings well,” she said to her brother, “he loves music very much.
It never occurred to her that the little mouse was singing not at all for his
pleasure. She did not know what dangers little Peak had endured and
what a difficult journey he made before he got to her.
And it's good that it ended so well.

The tale of the adventures of Peak the Mouse introduces the child to the outside world. The story contains a plot that shows the difficulties experienced by the mouse on the journey. The story is quite long, so there is no need to "skip" it in one go. It is best to carefully discuss the action of the mouse with the baby. As you read the story, you can offer the child a kind of game. For example, ask: what would the baby do in that situation. You can pretend not to understand: is the mouse squeaking in alarm or joy? We are sure that the child will happily begin to explain the behavior of the main character to you. Ask the question: why did the snake frighten him, and what danger threatened him? By discussing a story with your child, you can encourage your child to draw their own conclusions from what they hear.

Short story Mouse Peak download:

Little Mouse Peak's story read

Shipwreck

scary night

"The Nightingale the Robber"

Journey's end

building a house

Uninvited guest

Pantry

Snow and sleep

Terrible awakening

On snow and on ice

From trouble to trouble

Unfortunate musician

Mousetrap

Happy end

How the mouse got into the sailors

The boys were sailing boats down the river. My brother carved them with a knife from thick pieces of pine bark. My sister was adjusting sails from rags.

The largest ship needed a long mast.

It must be from a straight branch, - said the brother, took a knife and went into the bushes.

Suddenly he shouted from there:

Mice, mice!

The little sister rushed over to him.

He chopped a branch, - said the brother, - and how they crackle! A whole bunch! One over here under the root. Wait, I'm her now...

He cut a root with a knife and pulled out a tiny mouse.

Yes, he is tiny! - the little sister was surprised. - And yellow! Do such things happen?

This is a wild mouse, - the brother explained, - a field mouse. Each breed has its own name, but I don't know what it's called.

Then the little mouse opened its pink mouth and squeaked.

Peak! He says his name is Peak! sister laughed. - Look how he's trembling! Ay! Yes, he has blood in his ear. It was you who wounded him with a knife when you got him. He hurts.

I'll kill him anyway," the brother said angrily. - I kill them all: why do they steal our bread?

Let him go, - the little sister pleaded, - he is small!

But the boy did not want to listen.

I’ll throw it into the river, ”he said and went to the shore.

The girl suddenly figured out how to save the little mouse.

Stop! she screamed at her brother. - You know? Let's put him in our largest ship, and let him be a passenger!

The brother agreed to this: anyway, the mouse will drown in the river. And with a live passenger, it’s interesting to let the boat go.

They set the sail, put the mouse in a dugout boat and let it go with the flow. The wind picked up the boat and drove it away from the shore. The little mouse clung tightly to the dry bark and did not move.

The boys waved to him from the shore.

At this time they were called home. They still saw how a light boat in full sail disappeared around a bend in the river.

Poor little Peak! - the girl said when they returned home. - The ship will probably be capsized by the wind, and Peak will drown.

The boy was silent. He thought about how he could kill all the mice in their closet.

Shipwreck

And the little mouse carried and carried on a light pine boat. The wind drove the boat farther and farther from the shore. High waves splashed all around. The river was wide - a whole sea for a tiny Peak.

Peak was only two weeks old. He did not know how to find food for himself, nor to hide from enemies. On that day, the mother mouse took her mice out of the nest for the first time - for a walk. She was just feeding them her milk when the boy scared the mouse family.

Peak was still a sucker. The guys played a cruel joke on him. It would be better if they killed him at once than to let him alone, small and defenseless, on such a dangerous journey.

The whole world was against him. The wind was blowing, as if it wanted to overturn the boat, the waves threw the boat, as if they wanted to drown it in their dark depths. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish - all were against him. Everyone was not averse to profiting from a stupid, defenseless little mouse.

The first to notice Peak were large white gulls. They flew up and circled over the ship. They screamed in annoyance that they could not finish off the mouse at once: they were afraid to break their beak on the hard bark in flight. Some sank into the water and swam to catch up with the boat.

And a pike rose from the bottom of the river and also swam after the boat. She was waiting for the seagulls to throw the mouse into the water. Then he can't get past her teeth.

Peak heard the predatory cries of seagulls. He closed his eyes and waited for death.

At this time, a large bird of prey flew up from behind - an osprey fisherman. The seagulls scattered.

The fisherman saw a mouse on a boat and under him a pike in the water. He folded his wings and plunged down.

He fell into the river next to the boat. The tip of the wing touched the sail, and the ship turned over.

When the angler rose heavily from the water with the pike in his claws, there was no one on the capsized boat.

The seagulls saw this from afar and flew away: they thought that the little mouse had drowned.

Peak didn't learn to swim. But when he got into the water, it turned out that he had only to quickly, quickly work with his paws so as not to drown. He surfaced and grabbed the boat with his teeth.

He was carried along with the capsized boat.

Soon the ship was washed up by the waves to an unfamiliar shore.

The peak jumped onto the sand and rushed into the bushes.

It was a real shipwreck, and the little passenger could consider himself lucky that he was saved.

scary night

Peak is soaked to the last hair. I had to lick myself all over with my tongue. After that, the fur soon dried up, and he warmed up. He wanted to eat. But he was afraid to get out from under the bush: the sharp cries of seagulls could be heard from the river.

So he sat hungry all day.

Finally it got dark. The birds calmed down. Only ringing waves crashed against the close shore.

Peak cautiously crawled out from under the bush.

Looked around - no one. Then he quickly rolled into the grass in a dark ball.

Then he began to suck on all the leaves and stems that came across his eyes. But there was no milk in them.

Out of vexation, he began to fumble and tear them with his teeth.

Suddenly, from one stem, warm juice splashed into his mouth. The juice was sweet, like the milk of a mother mouse.

Peak ate this stalk and began to look for others like it. He was hungry and did not see at all what was happening around him.

And over the tops of tall grasses the full moon was already rising. Quick shadows swept silently through the air: nimble bats were chasing night butterflies.

Quiet rustlings and rustlings were heard from all sides in the grass.

Someone was scurrying around there, sniffing in the bushes, hiding in the hummocks.

Peak ate. He gnawed through the stems near the ground. The stalk fell, and a rain of cold dew flew over the mouse. But at the end of the stem, Peak found a delicious spikelet. The little mouse sat down, lifted the stalk with its front paws, as if with hands, and quickly ate the spikelet.

Slap-slap! - hit something on the ground not far from the mouse.

Peak stopped nibbling and listened.

The grass rustled.

Slap-slap!

Again heard ahead of the bumps.

Slap-slap!

Someone jumped on the grass right at the little mouse. We must hurry back to the bushes!

Slap-slap! - jumped from behind.

Slap-slap! Slap-slap! - resounded from all sides.

Plop! - sounded quite close ahead.

Someone's long, outstretched legs flashed over the grass, and - slap! - right in front of Peak's nose, a goggle-eyed little frog plopped down on the ground.

He stared fearfully at the mouse. The little mouse looked with surprise and fear at his bare slippery skin...

So they sat in front of each other, and neither one nor the other knew what to do next.

And all around you could still hear - plop-slap! plop-slap! - like a whole herd of frightened frogs, escaping from someone, jumped on the grass.

And closer and closer I heard a light, quick rustling.

And for a moment the little mouse saw: behind the frog, the long flexible body of a silver-black snake shot up.

The snake slid down, and the frog's long hind legs jerked and disappeared into its open mouth.

The mouse rushed headlong away and did not notice how he found himself on a branch of a bush, high above the ground.

Here he spent the rest of the night, since his belly was tightly stuffed with grass.

And all around before dawn rustles and rustles were heard.

Tail-hook and fur-invisible

Starvation no longer threatened Peak: he had already learned how to find food for himself. But how could he alone be saved from all enemies?

Mice always live in large flocks: it is easier to defend themselves from an attack. Someone will notice the approaching enemy, whistle, and everyone will hide.

And Peak was alone. He had to quickly find other mice and stick to them. And Peak went on a search. Wherever he could, he tried to make his way through the bushes. There were many snakes in this place, and he was afraid to go down to them on the ground.

He learned to climb very well. Especially helped him tail. His tail was long, flexible and tenacious. With such a hook, he could climb thin twigs no worse than a monkey.

From branch to branch, from branch to branch, from bush to bush - this is how the Peak made his way for three nights in a row.

Pik did not meet mice in the bushes. I had to run through the grass.

The meadow was dry. The snakes didn't come across. The mouse took courage and began to travel in the sun. Now he ate everything he came across: grains and tubers of various plants, beetles, caterpillars, worms. And soon he learned a new way to hide from enemies.

It happened like this: Peak unearthed the larvae of some beetles in the ground, sat down on his hind legs and began to eat.

The sun shone brightly. Grasshoppers chirped in the grass.

Peak saw a small shaking falcon in the distance over the meadow, but he was not afraid of him. The shaker - a bird the size of a dove, only thinner - hung motionless in the empty air, as if suspended on a rope. Only her wings shook a little and she turned her head from side to side.

The little mouse did not even know what keen eyes the shaking had.

Peak's breast was white. When he sat, she could be seen far away on the brown earth.

Peak realized the danger only when the shaker immediately rushed from its place and rushed towards him like an arrow.

It was too late to run. The little mouse was paralyzed with fear. He pressed his chest to the ground and froze.

The shaker flew up to him and suddenly hung in the air again, slightly perceptibly fluttering with sharp wings. She couldn't figure out where the little mouse had gone. Now only she saw his bright white chest, and suddenly he was gone. She vigilantly peered at the place where he sat, but saw only brown clods of earth.

And Peak lay there, in front of her eyes.

On the back, his fur was yellow-brown, exactly the same color as the earth, and from above it was impossible to make out in any way.

Just then a green grasshopper jumped out of the grass.

The shaker rushed down, picked him up on the fly and sped away.

Invisible fur saved Peak's life.

Since then, as he noticed the enemy from afar, he immediately clung to the ground and lay without moving. And the invisible fur did its job: it deceived the most keen eyes.

"The Nightingale the Robber"

Day after day, Peak ran through the meadow, but he did not find any traces of mice anywhere.

At last the bushes began again, and behind them Peak heard the familiar lapping of the river waves.

The mouse had to turn around and head in the other direction. He ran all night, and in the morning he climbed under a large bush and went to bed.

He was awakened by a loud song. Peak looked out from under the roots and saw a beautiful bird with a pink chest, a gray head and a red-brown back above his head.

The mouse really liked her cheerful song. He wanted to listen to the singer closer. He climbed up the bush towards her.

Songbirds never touched Peak, and he was not afraid of them. And this little girl was a little bigger than a sparrow in height.

The silly little mouse did not know that it was a Shrike Shrike and that, although he is a songbird, he trades in robbery.

Peak did not even have time to come to his senses, as the shrike pounced on him and painfully hit him in the back with a hooked beak.

From a strong blow, Peak flew head over heels from a branch. He fell into the soft grass and didn't hurt himself. Before the shrike had time to pounce on him again, the little mouse had already scurried under the roots. Then the cunning "robber nightingale" sat down on a bush and waited for Peak to peek out from under the roots.

He sang very beautiful songs, but the mouse was not up to them. From the place where Peak was now hiding, the bush on which the shrike was sitting was clearly visible.

The branches of this bush were planted with long sharp thorns. Dead, half-eaten chicks, lizards, frogs, beetles and grasshoppers stuck out on the thorns, like on pikes. Here was the robber's air pantry.

To sit on a thorn and a mouse if he came out from under the roots.

The whole day the shrike guarded Peak. But when the sun went down, the robber climbed into the thicket to sleep. Then the little mouse crawled out from under the bush and ran away.

Maybe in a hurry he lost his way, only the next morning he again heard the splashing of the river behind the bushes. And again he had to turn and run in the other direction.

Journey's end

Peak was now running across the dry swamp.

Only dry moss grew here; it was very difficult to run along it, and most importantly there was nothing to eat; neither worms, nor caterpillars, nor juicy grass came across.

On the second night, the mouse was completely exhausted. With difficulty, he climbed another hillock and fell. His eyes drooped. My throat is dry. To freshen up, he lay down to lick drops of cold dew from the moss.

Beginning to light up. From the hillock Peak could see the moss-covered valley far away. Behind her, the meadow began again. Juicy grasses stood there in a high wall. But the mouse did not have the strength to get up and run to them.

The sun came out. From its hot light, dew drops quickly began to dry.

Peak felt that he was coming to an end. He gathered the rest of his strength, crawled, but immediately fell down and rolled down the hill. He fell on his back, paws up, and now he saw only a hummock overgrown with moss in front of him.

Directly opposite him, in a tussock, was a deep black hole, so narrow that Peak could not even stick his head in it.

The little mouse noticed that something was stirring in the depths of it. Soon a shaggy thick bumblebee appeared at the entrance. He crawled out of the hole, scratched his round belly with his paw, spread his wings and rose into the air.

Having made a circle over the hummock, the bumblebee returned to its mink and landed at its entrance. Then he got up on his paws and worked his stiff wings so hard that the wind smelled like a mouse.

"Zzhzhzhuu! - the wings hummed. - Zzhzhzhuu! .."

It was a trumpet bumblebee. He drove fresh air into a deep mink, ventilated the room - and woke up other bumblebees that were still sleeping in the nest.

Soon, one after another, all the bumblebees got out of the mink and flew to the meadow to collect honey. The trumpeter was the last to leave. Peak was left alone. He understood what he had to do to be saved.

Somehow, crawling, with respite, he reached the bumblebee mink. From there, a sweet smell hit his nose.

Peak dug his nose into the ground. The earth gave way.

He dug again and again until he dug a hole. Large cells of gray wax appeared at the bottom of the hole. Some contained bumblebee larvae, others were full of fragrant yellow honey.

The little mouse greedily began to lick the sweet delicacy. He licked all the honey, set about the larvae and quickly dealt with them.

Strength quickly returned to him: he had never eaten such hearty food since he parted with his mother. He tore the ground further and further, now without difficulty - and found more and more cells with honey, with larvae.

Suddenly something painfully pricked him on the cheek. The peak bounced off. A large bumblebee queen climbed out of the ground on him.

Peak was about to rush at her, but then wings hummed, buzzed over him: the bumblebees had returned from the meadow.

Their whole army attacked the mouse, and he had no choice but to rush to flight.

Peak launched from them with all his might. Thick fur protected him from the terrible bumblebee stings. But the bumblebees chose places where the hair is shorter, and pricked it in the ears, in the back of the head.

In one breath - where did the agility come from! - the little mouse rushed to the meadow and hid in the thick grass.

Then the bumblebees left him and returned to their plundered nest.

On the same day Peak crossed a damp, swampy meadow and again found himself on the bank of the river.

The peak was on an island.

building a house

The island that Peak landed on was uninhabited: there were no mice on it. Only birds, snakes, and frogs lived here, and it cost nothing for them to cross the wide river here.

Peak had to live alone, surrounded by enemies.

The famous Robinson, when he ended up on a desert island, began to think about how he could live alone. He reasoned that first he needed to build himself a house that would protect him from the weather and the attacks of enemies. And then he began to collect supplies for a rainy day.

Peak was just a mouse: he couldn't reason. And yet he did just the same as Robinson. The first thing he did was build a house for himself.

Nobody taught him to build: it was in his blood. He built as all mice of the same breed built with him.

In the swampy meadow, high reeds grew interspersed with sedge - an excellent forest for a mouse building.

Peak chose several reeds growing nearby, climbed on them, bit off the tops and split the ends with his teeth. He was so small and light that the grass easily held him.

Then he turned to the leaves. He climbed onto a sedge and gnawed off a leaf at the very stem. The leaf fell, the mouse climbed down, picked up the leaf with its front paws and held it out through clenched teeth. The little mouse dragged the soaked strips of leaves up and deftly wove them into the split ends of the reed. He climbed on such thin blades of grass that they bent under him. He tied them with tips one by one.

In the end, he got a light round house, very similar to a bird's nest. The whole house was the size of a child's fist.

From the side, the mouse made a move in it, laid out moss, leaves and thin roots inside. For the bed, he dragged soft, warm flower down. The bedroom turned out great.

Now Peak had a place to rest and hide from bad weather and enemies. From a distance, the most keen eye could not have noticed a grassy nest, hidden on all sides by high reeds and dense sedge. Not a single snake would have reached it: it hung so high above the ground.

The real Robinson himself could not have come up with a better one.

Uninvited guest

Day after day passed.

The little mouse lived quietly in his air house. He became quite an adult, but grew very little.

He was not supposed to grow anymore, because Peak belonged to a breed of baby mice. These mice are even smaller than our little gray house mice.

Peak often now disappeared from the house for long periods. On hot days, he bathed in the cool water of the swamp, not far from the meadow.

Once he left home in the evening, found two bumblebee nests in the meadow, and ate so much honey that he immediately climbed into the grass and fell asleep.

Peak returned home only in the morning. Downstairs, he noticed something amiss. A wide strip of thick mucus ran along the ground and along one of the stems, and a thick, curly tail protruded from the nest.

The mouse was seriously scared. The smooth, fat tail looked like a snake's. Only the tail of snakes is hard and covered with scales, and this one was naked, soft, covered in some kind of sticky mucus.

Peak plucked up courage and climbed up the stalk to take a closer look at the intruder.

At this time, the tail slowly moved, and the frightened little mouse rolled head over heels to the ground. He hid in the grass and from there saw how the monster lazily crawled out of his house.

First, the thick tail disappeared into the nest hole. Then two long soft horns with pimples at the ends appeared from there. Then two more of the same horns - only short. And behind them at last the whole disgusting head of the monster poked out.

The little mouse saw the naked, soft, slimy body of a giant slug crawl out of his house, slowly, as if spilled.

From head to tail, the slug was a good three inches long.

He began to descend to the ground. Its soft belly stuck tightly to the stalk, and a wide band of thick mucus remained on the stalk.

Peak did not wait for him to slide to the ground, and ran away. The soft slug could not do anything to him, but the little mouse was disgusted by this cold, lethargic, sticky animal.

Peak returned only a few hours later. The slug has gone somewhere.

The mouse climbed into its nest. Everything there was smeared with nasty slime. Peak threw out all the fluff and put in a new one. Only then did he decide to go to bed. Since then, leaving the house, he always plugged the entrance with a bunch of dry grass.

Pantry

The days were getting shorter, the nights colder.

Grains ripened on cereals. The wind dropped them to the ground, and flocks of birds flew to the mouse in the meadow to pick them up.

Piku lived very well. He grew fat every day. The fur was slick on him.

Now the little four-legged Robinson set up a pantry for himself and collected supplies in it for a rainy day. He dug a hole in the ground and widened the end of it. Here he dragged grain, as in a cellar.

Then it seemed to him not enough. He dug another cellar nearby and connected them with an underground passage.

It rained more and more often. The earth softened from above, the grass turned yellow, got wet and drooped. Peak's grass house had drooped and now hung low above the ground. There was mold in it.

Living in the nest became bad. The grass had completely fallen to the ground, and the nest hung like a perceptible dark ball on the reeds. It was already dangerous.

Peak decided to move to live underground. He was no longer afraid that a snake would crawl into his hole or that restless frogs would disturb him: snakes and frogs had long disappeared somewhere.

The little mouse chose a dry and secluded place under a hummock for his mink.

Peak arranged a passage to the mink from the leeward side, so that cold air would not blow into his dwelling.

A long, straight corridor led from the entrance. It expanded at the end into a small round room. Peak dragged dry moss and grass here - he arranged a bedroom for himself.

His new underground bedroom was warm and cozy.

He dug passages from it underground to both his cellars, so that he could run to dine without going outside.

When everything was ready, the little mouse tightly plugged the entrance to his airy summer house with grass and moved into the underground one.

Snow and sleep

The birds no longer came to peck at the grain. The grass lay firmly on the ground, and a cold wind roamed freely around the island.

By that time Peak had grown terribly fat. A sort of lethargy came over him. He was too lazy to move much. He got out of the hole less and less.

One morning he saw that the entrance to his dwelling was blocked. He dug up the cold loose snow and went out into the meadow.

The whole earth was white. The snow sparkled unbearably in the sun. The little mouse's bare paws burned with cold.

Then the frosts began.

The mouse would have had a bad time if he had not stocked up food for himself. How to dig grains from deep frozen snow?

Sleepy lethargy increasingly seized Peak. Now he did not leave the bedroom for two, three days and still slept. Waking up, he went to the cellar, ate there and again fell asleep for several days.

Outside, he stopped walking at all.

He was fine underground. He lay on a soft bed, curled up in a warm, fluffy ball. His heart beat slower and slower. Breath became weak-weak. A sweet, long sleep completely overcame him.

Baby mice do not sleep all winter, like marmots or hamsters.

From a long sleep they lose weight, they become cold. Then they wake up and take on their supplies.

Peak slept peacefully: after all, he had two full cellars of grain.

He did not sense what unexpected misfortune would soon befall him.

Terrible awakening

On a frosty winter evening, the guys sat by the warm stove.

It’s bad for the little animals now, ”the little sister said thoughtfully. - Remember little Pike? Where is he now?

Who knows! - indifferently answered the brother. - For a long time, it's true, he fell into someone's claws.

The girl whimpered.

What are you? - the brother was surprised.

It's a pity for the little mouse, he's so fluffy, yellow...

Found someone to pity! I'll put a mousetrap - I'll catch a hundred pieces for you!

I don't need a hundred! - sobbed my sister. - Bring me one of these small, yellow...

Wait, stupid, maybe one will come across.

The girl wiped away her tears.

Well, look: if you get caught - don't touch it, give it to me. Promise?

Okay, roar! brother agreed.

That same evening he set up a mousetrap in the closet.

It was the same evening that Peak woke up in his hole.

It wasn't hunger that woke him this time. Through sleep, the mouse felt something heavy press on his back. And now the frost pinched him under the fur.

When Peak was fully awake, he was already shaking from the cold. From above it was crushed by earth and snow. The ceiling above him collapsed. The corridor was filled up.

It was impossible to delay even a minute: the frost does not like to joke.

It is necessary to go to the cellar and quickly eat grains: the well-fed is warm, the frost will not kill the well-fed.

The little mouse jumped up and ran through the snow to the cellars.

But all around the snow was pitted with narrow deep pits - hoof marks of small roe deer.

The peak continually fell into the pits, climbed up and flew down again.

And when he got to the place where his cellars were, he saw only a large hole there.

It turns out that the roe deer not only destroyed his underground home, but also ate all his supplies. Peak was going to starve to death if the frost didn't kill him earlier.

On snow and on ice

Peak managed to dig out a few grains in the hole. Roe deer trampled them into the snow with their hooves.

The food strengthened the little mouse and kept him warm. Again began to cover his languid drowsiness. But he felt: if you succumb to sleep, you will freeze.

Peak shook off his laziness and ran.

Where? He himself did not know this. I just ran and ran wherever my eyes looked.

It was already night and the moon was high in the sky. The snow shone all around like small stars.

The mouse ran to the bank of the river and stopped. The coast was steep. Under the cliff lay a thick, dark shadow. A wide icy river sparkled ahead.

Peak sniffed the air uneasily.

He was afraid to run on ice. What if someone spots him in the middle of the river? You can even burrow into the snow if there is danger.

Turn back - there is death from cold and hunger. There is somewhere ahead, perhaps food and warmth. And Peak ran forward. He went down the cliff and left the island where he lived so peacefully and happily for a long time.

And evil eyes have already noticed him.

He had not yet reached the middle of the river, when a swift and noiseless shadow began to overtake him from behind. Only a shadow, a light shadow on the ice, he saw, turning around. He didn't even know who was after him.

In vain he crouched on the ground with his belly, as he always did in a moment of danger: his dark fur stood out like a sharp spot on the sparkling bluish ice, and the transparent darkness of the moonlit night could not hide him from the terrible eyes of the enemy.

The shadow covered the mouse. Curved claws dug painfully into his body. Something hit hard on the head. And Peak stopped feeling.

From trouble to trouble

Peak woke up in total darkness. He lay on something hard and uneven. The head and the wounds on the body hurt a lot, but it was warm.

As he licked his wounds, his eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness.

He saw that he was in a spacious room, with round walls going up somewhere. There was no ceiling to be seen, although a large hole gaped somewhere above the mouse's head. Through this hole, the still quite pale light of the morning dawn penetrated into the room.

Peak looked at what he was lying on, and immediately jumped up.

He lay, it turns out, on dead mice. There were several mice, and they all became stiff; Apparently they have been here for a long time.

Fear gave the mouse strength.

Peak clambered up the rough sheer wall and peered out.

All around were only snow-covered branches. Below them were the tops of the bushes.

Peak himself was on a tree: looking out of a hollow.

Who brought it here and threw it to the bottom of the hollow, the little mouse never knew. Yes, he did not rack his brains over this riddle, but simply hurried to get away from here as soon as possible.

And this is how it was. On the ice of the river, he was overtaken by a long-eared forest owl. She grabbed him by the cogi, hit him on the head with her beak and carried him into the forest.

Fortunately, the owl was very full: she had just eaten a young hare as much as she could. Her belly was so tightly stuffed that there was no room even for little Peak. She decided to keep it in reserve.

The owl carried him into the forest and threw him into a hollow where she had a pantry. She has brought here a dozen dead mice since autumn. In winter, food can be difficult to obtain, and even such nocturnal robbers as an owl happen to starve.

Of course, she did not know that the mouse was only stunned, otherwise she would immediately crush his skull with her sharp beak! Usually she was able to finish off the mice with the first blow.

Pike was very lucky this time. The little mouse descended safely from the tree and darted into the bushes.

Only then did he notice that something was wrong with him: his breath whistled out of his throat.

The wounds were not fatal, but the owl's claws hurt something in his chest, and now he began to whistle after a quick run.

When he rested and began to breathe evenly, the whistling stopped. The little mouse ate the bitter bark from the bush and ran again - away from the terrible place.

The little mouse ran, and behind him a thin double path remained in the snow: his footprint.

And when Peak ran to the clearing, where a large house with smoking chimneys stood behind the fence, a red fox had already attacked his trail.

The scent of the fox was very delicate. She immediately realized that the mouse had just run through here, and set off to catch up with him.

Her fiery red tail flashed between the bushes, and, of course, she ran much faster than a mouse.

Unfortunate musician

Peak did not know that the fox was chasing him. Therefore, when two huge dogs jumped out of the house and rushed to him barking, he thought he was dead.

But the dogs, of course, did not even notice him. They saw a fox that jumped out of the bushes after him, and rushed at her.

Lisa immediately turned back. Her fiery tail flashed for the last time and disappeared into the forest. The dogs rushed over the head of the little mouse in huge leaps and also disappeared into the bushes.

Peak made it home without incident and darted underground.

The first thing Peak noticed in the underground was the strong smell of mice.

Each breed of animal has its own smell, and mice distinguish each other by smell as well as we distinguish people by their appearance.

Therefore, Peak learned that mice not of his breed lived here. But still, they were mice, and Peak was a mouse.

He was as happy with them as Robinson was with people when he returned to them from his uninhabited island.

At once, Peak ran to look for mice.

But finding mice here was not so easy. Mouse tracks and their smell were everywhere, but the mice themselves were nowhere to be seen.

Holes had been gnawed into the ceiling of the underground. Peak thought that mice might live up there, climbed up the wall and climbed out through the hole. Then he saw something that, with joy, immediately forgot about the mice. The peak fell into the closet.

In the closet on the floor were large, heavily stuffed bags. One of them was gnawed at the bottom, and the grits spilled out of it onto the floor.

And along the walls of the closet there were shelves. Wonderful delicious smells came from there. It smelled of smoked, and dried, and fried, and something else very sweet.

The hungry mouse greedily pounced on the food.

After the bitter bark, the groats seemed so tasty to him that he ate right to satiety. He ate so much that it became difficult for him to even breathe.

And then again his throat whistled and sang.

And at this time, a mustachioed sharp muzzle poked out of a hole in the floor. Angry eyes flashed in the darkness, and a large gray mouse jumped out into the closet, followed by four more of the same kind.

Their appearance was so formidable that Peak did not dare to rush towards them. He timidly stamped his feet and whistled louder and louder in excitement.

Gray mice did not like this whistle.

Where did this alien mouse-musician come from?

The gray mice considered the closet to be theirs. They sometimes took to their underground wild mice that came running from the forest, but they had never seen such whistlers before.

One of the mice rushed at Peak and bit him painfully on the shoulder. Others followed her.

Peak barely managed to slip away from them through a hole under some box. The hole was so narrow that the gray mice could not get through it. Here he was safe.

But he was very bitter that the gray relatives did not want to accept him into their family.

Mousetrap

Every morning my sister would ask her brother:

Well, did the mouse get caught?

Her brother showed her mice that he caught in a mousetrap. But they were all gray mice, and the girl did not like them. She was even a little afraid of them. She certainly needed a little yellow mouse.

Let them go, she said sadly. - These are not so good.

The boy carried away the mice he had caught and quietly drowned them in a bucket from his sister. And in recent days, mice have stopped coming across something.

The most surprising thing was that someone ate the bait every night. In the evening, the boy will plant a fragrant piece of smoked ham on a hook, alert the tight doors of the mousetrap, and in the morning he will come - there is nothing on the hook, and the doors are slammed. He looked at the mousetrap many times: is there a hole somewhere? But there were no big holes - such as a mouse could crawl through - in the mousetrap.

So a whole week passed, and the boy could not understand in any way who was stealing the bait from him.

And on the morning of the eighth day, the boy ran out of the closet and shouted at the door:

Caught! Look yellow!

Yellow, yellow! - my sister rejoiced. - Look, this is our Peak: his ear has been cut. Remember, you knifed him then? .. Run quickly for milk, and I'll get dressed for now.

She was still in bed.

The brother ran to another room, and the girl put the mousetrap on the floor, jumped out from under the covers and quickly threw on her dress.

But when she looked again at the mousetrap, the mouse was no longer there.

Peak learned how to get out of the mousetrap a long time ago. One wire was slightly bent in it. Gray mice could not squeeze into this loophole, and he passed freely.

He fell into the trap through the open doors and immediately pulled the bait.

The doors slammed with noise, but he quickly recovered from fear, calmly ate the bait, and then left through the loophole.

On the last night, the boy accidentally placed the mousetrap right next to the wall, and just on the side where the loophole was, Peak was caught. And when the girl left the mousetrap in the middle of the room, he jumped out and hid behind a large chest.

Music

The brother caught the sister in tears.

He ran away! she said through tears. He doesn't want to live with me!

The brother put the saucer of milk on the table and began to comfort her:

Dissolved nurses! Yes, I'll catch him in my boot now!

How about boots? - the girl was surprised.

Very simple! I'll take off my boot and put it on the wall with the top of it, and you will chase the little mouse. He will run along the wall - they always run along the very wall - he will see a hole in the bootleg, he will think that it is a mink, and he will sniff there! Then I will grab him, in a boot.

My sister stopped crying.

Do you know what? she said thoughtfully. We won't catch him. Let him live in our room. We don't have a cat, no one will touch him. And I'll put milk for him right here on the floor.

You are always imagining! - disgruntled said brother. - I don't care. I gave you this mouse, do with it what you want.

The girl put the saucer on the floor and crumbled bread into it. She sat aside and waited for the little mouse to come out. But he didn't come out until late at night. The guys even decided that he ran away from the room.

However, in the morning the milk turned out to be drunk and the bread eaten.

"How can I tame him?" - thought the girl.

Piku now lived very well. Now he always ate plenty, there were no gray mice in the room, and no one touched him.

He dragged rags and pieces of paper over the chest and made a nest for himself there.

He was wary of people and came out from behind the chest only at night, when the guys were sleeping.

But one day he heard beautiful music. Someone was playing the flute. The voice of the pipe was thin and so plaintive.

And again, as on the occasion when Peak heard the "robber nightingale" shrike, the mouse could not resist the temptation to listen to the music closer. He crawled out from behind the chest and sat down on the floor in the middle of the room.

The boy was playing the pipe.

The girl sat next to him and listened. She was the first to notice the mouse.

Her eyes were suddenly large and dark. She gently nudged her brother with her elbow and whispered to him:

Don't move!.. You see, Peak is out. Play, play: he wants to listen!

The brother continued to blow.

The children sat quietly, afraid to move.

The little mouse listened to a sad song and somehow completely forgot about the danger.

He even went up to the saucer and began to lap up the milk, as if there was no one in the room. And soon he drank so much that he began to whistle. The girl's eyes grew even darker and larger.

Do you hear? - the girl said quietly to her brother. - He sings.

Peak came to his senses only when the boy lowered the pipe. And now he ran for the chest.

But now the guys knew how to tame a wild mouse.

They blew softly into a pipe. Peak went to the middle of the room, sat down and listened. And when he himself began to whistle, they got real concerts.

Happy end

Soon the little mouse got used to the guys so much that he completely stopped being afraid of them. He began to go out without music. The girl even taught him to take bread from her hands. She sat on the floor, and he climbed onto her knees.

The guys made him a small wooden house with painted windows and real doors. In this house, he lived on their table. And when he went out for a walk, according to an old habit, he plugged the door with everything that caught his eye: a rag, crumpled paper, cotton wool.

Even the boy who did not like mice so much became very attached to Peak. Most of all, he liked that the mouse eats and washes with its front paws, as if with hands.

And my sister was very fond of listening to his thin, thin whistle.

He sings well, she said to her brother, he loves music very much.

It never occurred to her that the little mouse was not singing for his own pleasure. She did not know what dangers the little Peak had endured and what a difficult journey he had made before he came to her.

And it's good that it ended so well.

Vitaly Bianchi

MOUSE PEAK

How the mouse got into the sailors

The boys were sailing boats down the river. My brother carved them with a knife from thick pieces of pine bark. My sister was adjusting sails from rags.

The largest ship needed a long mast.

It must be from a straight branch, - said the brother, took a knife and went into the bushes.

Suddenly he shouted from there:

Mice, mice!

The little sister rushed over to him.

He chopped a branch, - said the brother, - and how they crackle! A whole bunch! One over here under the root. Wait, I'm her now...

He cut a root with a knife and pulled out a tiny mouse.

Yes, he is tiny! - the little sister was surprised. - And yellow-mouthed! Do such things happen?

This is a wild mouse, - the brother explained, - a field mouse. Each breed has its own name, but I don't know what it's called.

Then the little mouse opened its pink mouth and squeaked.

Peak! He says his name is Peak! sister laughed. - Look how he's trembling! Ay! Yes, he has blood in his ear. It was you who wounded him with a knife when you got him. He hurts.

I'll kill him anyway," the brother said angrily. - I kill them all: why do they steal our bread?

Let him go, - the little sister pleaded, - he is small!

But the boy did not want to listen.

I’ll throw it into the river, ”he said and went to the shore.

The girl suddenly figured out how to save the little mouse.

Stop! she screamed at her brother. - You know? Let's put him in our largest ship, and let him be a passenger!

The brother agreed to this: anyway, the mouse will drown in the river. And with a live passenger, it’s interesting to let the boat go.

They set the sail, put the mouse in a dugout boat and let it go with the flow. The wind picked up the boat and drove it away from the shore. The little mouse clung tightly to the dry bark and did not move.

The boys waved to him from the shore.

At this time they were called home. They still saw how a light boat in full sail disappeared around a bend in the river.

Poor little Peak! - the girl said when they returned home. - The ship will probably be capsized by the wind, and Peak will drown.

The boy was silent. He thought about how he could kill all the mice in their closet.

Shipwreck

And the little mouse carried and carried on a light pine boat. The wind drove the boat farther and farther from the shore. High waves splashed all around. The river was wide - a whole sea for a tiny Peak.

Peak was only two weeks old. He did not know how to find food for himself, nor to hide from enemies. On that day, the mother mouse took her mice out of the nest for the first time - for a walk. She was just feeding them her milk when the boy scared the whole mouse family.

Peak was still a sucker. The guys played a cruel joke on him. It would be better if they killed him at once than to let him alone, small and defenseless, on such a dangerous journey.

The whole world was against him. The wind was blowing, as if it wanted to overturn the boat, the waves threw the boat, as if they wanted to drown it in their dark depths. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish - all were against him. Everyone was not averse to profiting from a stupid, defenseless little mouse.

The first to notice Peak were large white gulls. They flew up and circled over the ship. They screamed in annoyance that they could not finish off the mouse at once: they were afraid to break their beak on the hard bark in flight. Some sank into the water and swam to catch up with the boat.

And a pike rose from the bottom of the river and also swam after the boat. She was waiting for the seagulls to throw the mouse into the water. Then he can not escape her terrible teeth.

Peak heard the predatory cries of seagulls. He closed his eyes and waited for death.

At this time, a large bird of prey flew up from behind - an osprey fisherman. The seagulls scattered.

The fisherman saw a mouse on a boat and under him a pike in the water. He folded his wings and plunged down.

He fell into the river very close to the boat. With the end of the wing, he touched the sail, and the ship turned over.

When the angler rose heavily from the water with the pike in his claws, there was no one on the capsized boat.

The seagulls saw this from afar and flew away: they thought that the little mouse had drowned.

Peak didn't learn to swim. But when he got into the water, it turned out that he only had to work with his paws so as not to drown. He surfaced and grabbed the boat with his teeth.

He was carried along with the capsized boat.

Soon the ship was washed up by the waves to an unfamiliar shore.

The peak jumped onto the sand and rushed into the bushes.

It was a real shipwreck, and the little passenger could consider himself lucky that he was saved.

scary night

Peak is soaked to the last hair. I had to lick myself all over with my tongue. After that, the fur soon dried up, and he warmed up. He wanted to eat. But he was afraid to get out from under the bush: the sharp cries of seagulls could be heard from the river.

So he sat hungry all day.

Finally it got dark. The birds calmed down. Only ringing waves crashed against the close shore.

Peak cautiously crawled out from under the bush.

Looked around - no one. Then he quickly rolled into the grass in a dark ball.

Then he began to suck on all the leaves and stems that came across his eyes. But there was no milk in them.

Out of vexation, he began to fumble and tear them with his teeth.

Suddenly, from one stem, warm juice splashed into his mouth. The juice was sweet, like the milk of a mother mouse.

Peak ate this stalk and began to look for others like it. He was hungry and did not see at all what was happening around him.

And over the tops of tall grasses the full moon was already rising. Quick shadows swept silently through the air: nimble bats were chasing night butterflies.

Quiet rustlings and rustlings were heard from all sides in the grass.

Someone was scurrying around there, sniffing in the bushes, hiding in the hummocks.

Peak ate. He gnawed through the stems near the ground. The stalk fell, and a rain of cold dew flew over the mouse. But at the end of the stem, Peak found a delicious spikelet. The little mouse sat down, lifted the stalk with its front paws, as if with hands, and quickly ate the spikelet.

Slap-slap! - hit something on the ground not far from the mouse.

Peak stopped nibbling and listened.

The grass rustled.

Slap-slap!

Someone jumped on the grass right at the little mouse. We must hurry back to the bushes!

Slap-slap! - jumped from behind.

Slap-slap! Slap-slap! resounded from all sides.

Plop! - sounded quite close ahead.

Someone's long, outstretched legs flashed over the grass, and - slap! - right in front of Peak's nose, a goggle-eyed little frog plopped down on the ground.

He stared fearfully at the mouse. The mouse looked with surprise and fear at his bare slippery skin ...

So they sat in front of each other, and neither one nor the other knew what to do next.

And all around you could still hear - plop-slap! plop-slap! - like a whole herd of frightened frogs, escaping from someone, jumped on the grass.

And closer and closer I heard a light, quick rustling.

And for a moment the little mouse saw: behind the frog, the long flexible body of a silver-black snake shot up.

The snake slid down, and the frog's long hind legs jerked and disappeared into its open mouth.

The mouse rushed headlong away and did not notice how he found himself on a branch of a bush, high above the ground.

Here he spent the rest of the night, since his belly was tightly stuffed with grass.

And all around before dawn rustles and rustles were heard.

Tail-hook and fur-invisible

Starvation no longer threatens Peak: he has already learned how to find food for himself. But how could he alone be saved from all enemies?

Mice always live in large flocks: it is easier to defend themselves from an attack. Someone will notice the approaching enemy, whistle, and everyone will hide.

And Peak was alone. He had to quickly find other mice and stick to them. And Peak went on a search. Wherever he could, he tried to make his way through the bushes. There were many snakes in this place, and he was afraid to go down to them on the ground.

He learned to climb very well. Especially helped him tail. His tail was long, flexible and tenacious. With such a hook, he could climb thin twigs no worse than a monkey.

From branch to branch, from branch to branch, from bush to bush - this is how the Peak made his way for three nights in a row.

Pik did not meet mice in the bushes. I had to run through the grass.

The meadow was dry. The snakes didn't come across. The mouse took courage and began to travel in the sun. Now he ate everything he came across: grains and tubers of various plants, beetles, caterpillars, worms. And soon he learned a new way to hide from enemies.

It happened like this: Peak unearthed the larvae of some beetles in the ground, sat down on his hind legs and began to eat.

The sun shone brightly. Grasshoppers chirped in the grass.

Peak saw a small shaking falcon in the distance over the meadow, but he was not afraid of him. The shaker - a bird the size of a dove, only thinner - hung motionless in the empty air, as if suspended on a rope. Only her wings shook a little and she turned her head from side to side.

He did not know what sharp eyes the shaker had.

Peak's breast was white. When he sat, she could be seen far away on the brown earth.

Peak realized the danger only when the shaker immediately rushed from its place and rushed towards him like an arrow.

It was too late to run. The little mouse was paralyzed with fear. He pressed his chest to the ground and froze.

The shaker flew up to him and suddenly hung in the air again, slightly perceptibly fluttering with sharp wings. She couldn't figure out where the little mouse had gone. Now only she saw his bright white chest, and suddenly he was gone. She vigilantly peered at the place where he sat, but saw only brown clods of earth.

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How the mouse got into the sailors

The boys were sailing boats down the river. My brother carved them with a knife from thick pieces of pine bark. My sister was adjusting sails from rags.

The largest ship needed a long mast.

It must be from a straight branch, - said the brother, took a knife and went into the bushes.

Suddenly he shouted from there:

Mice, mice!

The little sister rushed over to him.

He chopped a branch, - said the brother, - and how they crackle! A whole bunch! One over here under the root. Wait, I'm her now...

He cut a root with a knife and pulled out a tiny mouse.

Yes, he is tiny! - the little sister was surprised. - And yellow-mouthed! Do such things happen?

This is a wild mouse, - the brother explained, - a field mouse. Each breed has its own name, but I don't know what it's called.

Then the little mouse opened its pink mouth and squeaked.

Peak! He says his name is Peak! sister laughed. - Look how he's trembling! Ay! Yes, he has blood in his ear. It was you who wounded him with a knife when you got him. He hurts.

I'll kill him anyway," the brother said angrily. - I kill them all: why do they steal our bread?

Let him go, - the little sister pleaded, - he is small!

But the boy did not want to listen.

I’ll throw it into the river, ”he said and went to the shore.

The girl suddenly figured out how to save the little mouse.

Stop! she screamed at her brother. - You know? Let's put him in our largest ship, and let him be a passenger!

The brother agreed to this: anyway, the mouse will drown in the river. And with a live passenger, it’s interesting to let the boat go.

They set the sail, put the mouse in a dugout boat and let it go with the flow. The wind picked up the boat and drove it away from the shore. The little mouse clung tightly to the dry bark and did not move.

The boys waved to him from the shore.

At this time they were called home. They still saw how a light boat in full sail disappeared around a bend in the river.

Poor little Peak! - the girl said when they returned home. - The ship will probably be capsized by the wind, and Peak will drown.

The boy was silent. He thought about how he could kill all the mice in their closet.

Shipwreck

And the little mouse carried and carried on a light pine boat. The wind drove the boat farther and farther from the shore. High waves splashed all around. The river was wide - a whole sea for a tiny Peak.

Peak was only two weeks old. He did not know how to find food for himself, nor to hide from enemies. On that day, the mother mouse took her mice out of the nest for the first time - for a walk. She was just feeding them her milk when the boy scared the whole mouse family.

Peak was still a sucker. The guys played a cruel joke on him. It would be better if they killed him at once than to let him alone, small and defenseless, on such a dangerous journey.

The whole world was against him. The wind was blowing, as if it wanted to overturn the boat, the waves threw the boat, as if they wanted to drown it in their dark depths. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish - all were against him. Everyone was not averse to profiting from a stupid, defenseless little mouse.

The first to notice Peak were large white gulls. They flew up and circled over the ship. They screamed in annoyance that they could not finish off the mouse at once: they were afraid to break their beak on the hard bark in flight. Some sank into the water and swam to catch up with the boat.

And a pike rose from the bottom of the river and also swam after the boat. She was waiting for the seagulls to throw the mouse into the water. Then he can not escape her terrible teeth.

Peak heard the predatory cries of seagulls. He closed his eyes and waited for death.

At this time, a large bird of prey flew up from behind - an osprey fisherman. The seagulls scattered.

The fisherman saw a mouse on a boat and under him a pike in the water. He folded his wings and plunged down.

He fell into the river very close to the boat. With the end of the wing, he touched the sail, and the ship turned over.

When the angler rose heavily from the water with the pike in his claws, there was no one on the capsized boat.

The seagulls saw this from afar and flew away: they thought that the little mouse had drowned.

Peak didn't learn to swim. But when he got into the water, it turned out that he only had to work with his paws so as not to drown. He surfaced and grabbed the boat with his teeth.

He was carried along with the capsized boat.

Soon the ship was washed up by the waves to an unfamiliar shore.

The peak jumped onto the sand and rushed into the bushes.

It was a real shipwreck, and the little passenger could consider himself lucky that he was saved.

scary night

Peak is soaked to the last hair. I had to lick myself all over with my tongue. After that, the fur soon dried up, and he warmed up. He wanted to eat. But he was afraid to get out from under the bush: the sharp cries of seagulls could be heard from the river.

So he sat hungry all day.

Finally it got dark. The birds calmed down. Only ringing waves crashed against the close shore.

Peak cautiously crawled out from under the bush.

Looked around - no one. Then he quickly rolled into the grass in a dark ball.

Then he began to suck on all the leaves and stems that came across his eyes. But there was no milk in them.

Out of vexation, he began to fumble and tear them with his teeth.

Suddenly, from one stem, warm juice splashed into his mouth. The juice was sweet, like the milk of a mother mouse.

Peak ate this stalk and began to look for others like it. He was hungry and did not see at all what was happening around him.

And over the tops of tall grasses the full moon was already rising. Quick shadows swept silently through the air: nimble bats were chasing night butterflies.

Quiet rustlings and rustlings were heard from all sides in the grass.

Someone was scurrying around there, sniffing in the bushes, hiding in the hummocks.

Peak ate. He gnawed through the stems near the ground. The stalk fell, and a rain of cold dew flew over the mouse. But at the end of the stem, Peak found a delicious spikelet. The little mouse sat down, lifted the stalk with its front paws, as if with hands, and quickly ate the spikelet.

Slap-slap! - hit something on the ground not far from the mouse.

Peak stopped nibbling and listened.

The grass rustled.

Slap-slap!

Someone jumped on the grass right at the little mouse. We must hurry back to the bushes!

Slap-slap! - jumped from behind.

Slap-slap! Slap-slap! resounded from all sides.

Plop! - sounded quite close ahead.

Someone's long, outstretched legs flashed over the grass, and - slap! - right in front of Peak's nose, a goggle-eyed little frog plopped down on the ground.

He stared fearfully at the mouse. The little mouse looked with surprise and fear at his bare slippery skin...

So they sat in front of each other, and neither one nor the other knew what to do next.

And all around you could still hear - plop-slap! plop-slap! - like a whole herd of frightened frogs, escaping from someone, jumped on the grass.

And closer and closer I heard a light, quick rustling.

And for a moment the little mouse saw: behind the frog, the long flexible body of a silver-black snake shot up.

The snake slid down, and the frog's long hind legs jerked and disappeared into its open mouth.

The mouse rushed headlong away and did not notice how he found himself on a branch of a bush, high above the ground.

Here he spent the rest of the night, since his belly was tightly stuffed with grass.

And all around before dawn rustles and rustles were heard.

Tail-hook and fur-invisible

Starvation no longer threatens Peak: he has already learned how to find food for himself. But how could he alone be saved from all enemies?

Mice always live in large flocks: it is easier to defend themselves from an attack. Someone will notice the approaching enemy, whistle, and everyone will hide.

And Peak was alone. He had to quickly find other mice and stick to them. And Peak went on a search. Wherever he could, he tried to make his way through the bushes. There were many snakes in this place, and he was afraid to go down to them on the ground.

He learned to climb very well. Especially helped him tail. His tail was long, flexible and tenacious. With such a hook, he could climb thin twigs no worse than a monkey.

From branch to branch, from branch to branch, from bush to bush - this is how the Peak made his way for three nights in a row.

Pik did not meet mice in the bushes. I had to run through the grass.

The meadow was dry. The snakes didn't come across. The mouse took courage and began to travel in the sun. Now he ate everything he came across: grains and tubers of various plants, beetles, caterpillars, worms. And soon he learned a new way to hide from enemies.

It happened like this: Peak unearthed the larvae of some beetles in the ground, sat down on his hind legs and began to eat.

The sun shone brightly. Grasshoppers chirped in the grass.

Peak saw a small shaking falcon in the distance over the meadow, but he was not afraid of him. The shaker - a bird the size of a dove, only thinner - hung motionless in the empty air, as if suspended on a rope. Only her wings shook a little and she turned her head from side to side.

He did not know what sharp eyes the shaker had.

Peak's breast was white. When he sat, she could be seen far away on the brown earth.

Peak realized the danger only when the shaker immediately rushed from its place and rushed towards him like an arrow.

It was too late to run. The little mouse was paralyzed with fear. He pressed his chest to the ground and froze.

The shaker flew up to him and suddenly hung in the air again, slightly perceptibly fluttering with sharp wings. She couldn't figure out where the little mouse had gone. Now only she saw his bright white chest, and suddenly he was gone. She vigilantly peered at the place where he sat, but saw only brown clods of earth.

And Peak lay there, in front of her eyes.

On the back, his fur was yellow-brown, exactly the same color as the earth, and from above it was impossible to make out in any way.

Just then a green grasshopper jumped out of the grass.

The shaker rushed down, picked him up on the fly and sped away.

Invisible fur saved Peak's life.

From the moment he noticed the enemy from afar, he immediately clung to the ground and lay without moving. And the invisible fur did its job: it deceived the most keen eyes.

"The Nightingale the Robber"

Day after day, Peak ran through the meadow, but he did not find any traces of mice anywhere.

At last the bushes began again, and behind them Peak heard the familiar lapping of the river waves.

The mouse had to turn around and head in the other direction. He ran all night, and in the morning he climbed under a large bush and went to bed.

He was awakened by a loud song. Peak looked out from under the roots and saw a beautiful bird with a pink chest, a gray head and a red-brown back above his head.

The mouse really liked her cheerful song. He wanted to listen to the singer closer. He climbed up the bush towards her.

Songbirds never touched Peak, and he was not afraid of them. And this little girl was a little bigger than a sparrow in height.

The silly little mouse did not know that it was a Shrike Shrike and that, although he is a songbird, he trades in robbery.

Peak did not even have time to come to his senses, as the shrike pounced on him and painfully hit him in the back with a hooked beak.

From a strong blow, Peak flew head over heels from a branch. He fell into the soft grass and didn't hurt himself. Before the shrike had time to pounce on him again, the little mouse had already scurried under the roots. Then the cunning "robber nightingale" sat down on a bush and waited for Peak to peek out from under the roots.

He sang very beautiful songs, but the mouse was not up to them. From the place where Peak now sat, he could clearly see the bush on which the shrike was sitting.

The branches of this bush were planted with long sharp thorns. Dead, half-eaten chicks, lizards, frogs, beetles and grasshoppers stuck out on the thorns, like on pikes. Here was the robber's air pantry.

To sit on a thorn and a mouse if he came out from under the roots.

The whole day the shrike guarded Peak. But when the sun went down, the robber climbed into the thicket to sleep. Then the little mouse crawled out from under the bush and ran away.

Maybe in a hurry he lost his way, only the next morning he again heard the splashing of the river behind the bushes. And again he had to turn and run in the other direction.