Hamster Harry and His Hut
This is a true story. Mostly. Every word of it, give or take a few.
At the edge of Thistledown Meadow, where the tall grass meets the old dirt lane, there lives a field mouse named Harry.
Everyone calls him Hamster Harry.
He is not a hamster. He has never been a hamster. He has a long pink tail, which hamsters do not have, and he lives in a meadow, which hamsters do not do. But when he was a very small mouse, no bigger than a thimble, he once stuffed eleven sunflower seeds into his cheeks at the same time, and his cheeks swelled up so round and so fat that his Great-Aunt Clover took one look at him and shrieked, “Good gracious, the child’s turned into a hamster!”
And that was that. The name stuck. It has been stuck for years. Harry has long since stopped correcting anyone. Secretly, he rather likes it.
Hamster Harry is a mouse of simple tastes. He wears a woven straw hat with a wide brim, which he made himself, and which keeps the sun out of his eyes and the rain off his whiskers. He wears a soft gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of brown overalls so covered in patches that there is more patch than overall. Every patch has a story. The square one on the left knee is from the time he slid down the big rock by the creek. The round one on the belly is from a disagreement with a blackberry bush. The little crooked one on the seat of his pants, he does not discuss.
And he carries, wherever he goes, a popgun.
He carved it himself, one long winter, from a hollow elderberry stem and a bit of old brass he found by the farmer’s fence. It is a very fine popgun. It has a proper trigger, and a proper sight on the end, and when you pull the trigger, it goes POP! and shoots a small cork about the length of a dandelion stalk.
It has never hit anything in its life. Harry is a terrible shot. But it makes a wonderfully loud noise, and that, as Harry says, is the important part.
But the thing Hamster Harry loves most in the whole wide world is his hut.
He built it all by himself, three summers ago, out of meadow straw. He gathered every stalk with his own two paws, and soaked them in the creek to make them bend, and wove them round and round and up and up, the way his grandmother taught him, until the walls rose higher than his hat and curved in at the top into a snug, pointed roof. It has a round little doorway, and a round little window, and inside there is a bed of soft thistledown and a shelf for his acorn cups and a tiny hearth made of creek stones. It smells of sunshine and dry grass and toasted seeds.
It is, quite simply, the finest hut in Thistledown Meadow. Possibly in the world. Harry would tell you so himself, if you asked him. Probably even if you didn’t.
And he guards it like a dragon guards gold.
Every morning, Harry steps out of his round little door, settles his straw hat firmly on his head, shoulders his popgun, and walks a slow, serious circle around his hut, inspecting every straw. If one is out of place, he tucks it back in. If a beetle has wandered up the wall, he asks it politely to wander back down. If a sparrow tries to pull a straw out for its nest, Harry marches up, plants his feet, raises his popgun, and says in his gruffest, most fearsome voice:
“Now see here! This is a private residence!”
And then, because the sparrow looks so disappointed, he goes and finds it a lovely pile of loose straw by the fence, and helps it carry some home, and stays for tea.
That is the other thing you should know about Hamster Harry. He is very protective of his hut. But he is kind to everyone. He simply cannot help it.
He once found a lost ladybug on the lane and walked her three fields over to find her family. He shares his blackberries with the old toad who lives under the stone bridge, who has terrible eyesight and cannot find his own. When the hedgehog twins were sick with the sniffles last spring, Harry brought them dandelion soup every single day for a week, and told them stories until they fell asleep. He has a sign over his door, painted on a bit of bark, that says:
NO TRESPASSING
And underneath it, in much smaller letters, added later, because he felt bad:
(friends welcome)
And underneath that, even smaller, added later still, because he felt worse:
(everyone is a friend)
One afternoon at the end of summer, Hamster Harry was sitting on his doorstep, polishing his popgun and humming to himself, when he noticed that the sky had gone a strange, dark, greenish gray. The swallows were flying low over the meadow. The grass was whispering and shivering. And far away, over the hills, there came a long, low grumble of thunder.
Harry stood up. He looked at the sky. He looked at his hut.
“Oh, my,” he said. “That’s a big one.”
He checked every straw twice. He pulled his window shutter closed and tied it tight with a bit of string. He brought in his acorn cups and stacked plenty of dry twigs by his little hearth.
And just as the first fat drops of rain began to fall, splattering on the dust of the lane like tiny cannonballs, he heard a very small voice outside his door.
“Excuse me,” it said. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you. But do you happen to have room for a beetle?”
Harry opened the door. On the doorstep stood a small, shiny black beetle, holding a leaf over his head like an umbrella. It was not working very well.
“Bartholomew,” said the beetle, with a little bow. “My log is filling up with water.”
Harry looked at the beetle. He looked at the rain. He looked at his sign.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a very small hut. But I suppose there’s room for a beetle.”
Bartholomew had barely shaken himself dry by the hearth when there came another knock. This time it was Mrs. Pennywhistle the shrew, soaked to the skin, with five tiny soaked shrewlets clinging to her tail, all sneezing in a row like a string of firecrackers.
“The creek’s come up into our burrow,” she said, wringing out her apron. “I’m so sorry, Harry. Is there any chance at all…?”
“Well,” said Harry, “it’s a very small hut. But I suppose there’s room for a few shrews.”
Then came the hedgehog twins, Bramble and Burr, who had been out picking mushrooms and lost track of the time. Then old Mr. Puddlethorpe the toad, who did not mind the rain one bit, being a toad, but had heard there was company and did not want to miss anything. And then, last of all, a very small, very wet, very lost baby rabbit, all ears and trembling whiskers, who did not say anything at all, but simply stood on the doorstep and looked up at Harry with enormous eyes.
Harry did not even bother saying it was a very small hut. He simply scooped the little rabbit inside and wrapped her in his own blanket.
It was, by now, an extremely small hut.
The shrewlets were on the shelf, between the acorn cups. Bartholomew was on the windowsill. The hedgehog twins were curled up by the hearth, and everyone had learned very quickly not to lean back against them. Mr. Puddlethorpe had taken the bed, on the grounds that he was the oldest. The baby rabbit was in Harry’s lap. And Harry was sitting on an upturned thimble in the middle of it all, with his straw hat pushed back on his head, toasting sunflower seeds over the little fire and passing them around.
The walls of the hut bulged gently outward, like a loaf of bread rising. But they held. Harry had woven them very well.
Outside, the storm howled and the rain hammered on the roof. Inside, it was warm and dry and smelled of toasted seeds, and Mr. Puddlethorpe was telling a story about the Great Flood of the year he was a tadpole, which nobody believed, and everybody enjoyed.
And then there came a knock at the door that was not small at all.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Everyone went silent. The shrewlets dove into Mrs. Pennywhistle’s apron. The hedgehog twins rolled up into two tight, prickly balls. The baby rabbit buried her face in Harry’s overalls.
Harry set the rabbit down very gently. He settled his straw hat firmly on his head. He picked up his popgun. And he marched to the door and flung it open.
There, in the pouring rain, filling up the whole doorway and a good deal of the sky behind it, stood a fox.
He was enormous, at least from a mouse’s point of view. He had a long sharp nose and a great many teeth and a big bushy tail, and every single bit of him was soaking wet.
Hamster Harry planted his feet. He raised his popgun. And he said, in his very gruffest, most fearsome voice:
“Now see here! This is a private residence!”
And he pulled the trigger.
POP!
For the very first time in its whole life, the cork hit something. It bounced right off the end of the fox’s nose with a little bonk.
The fox blinked. He crossed his eyes and looked at the end of his nose. Then he sat down heavily in the mud, and his ears drooped, and he sneezed.
“I wasn’t going to eat anyone,” he said, in a sad, damp, rather small voice for such a big fox. “Honestly. I’ve eaten already. My den flooded. I’ve been wandering around in this for an hour, and I saw your light.” He sniffed. “And I could smell toasted seeds. And I just thought… well. Never mind.”
He got up and began to turn away.
Hamster Harry lowered his popgun.
He looked at the fox, dripping and miserable in the mud. Then he looked up, over his doorway, at his little bark sign.
NO TRESPASSING.
(friends welcome).
(everyone is a friend).
He sighed.
“Wait,” he said. “What’s your name?”
The fox turned back. “Fennick.”
“Well, Fennick,” said Harry, “it’s a very small hut.” He looked the fox up and down. “And you are a very large fox. So you definitely won’t fit inside.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But I have an idea. If you’ll promise to mind your manners.”
“I promise,” said Fennick, very earnestly.
And that is how, for the rest of that long stormy night, a large red fox lay curled all the way around the outside of Hamster Harry’s hut, like a warm, furry wall, with his great bushy tail draped over the roof and the doorway like a thatch. The rain could not get past it. The wind could not get past it. And inside, it grew warmer and cozier than ever. Harry passed a handful of toasted seeds out through the window for him, and Fennick ate them one at a time, very politely, and said thank you after each one.
The baby rabbit fell asleep in Harry’s lap. The shrewlets fell asleep in a heap on the shelf. Mr. Puddlethorpe fell asleep in the middle of his own story. And at last, Hamster Harry fell asleep too, sitting on his thimble, with his straw hat tipped over his eyes, listening to the rain and the deep, slow, contented breathing of a fox.
In the morning, the storm was gone.
The sky over Thistledown Meadow was washed clean and blue, and the grass sparkled, and the whole world smelled of wet earth and sunshine. Harry’s guests came tumbling out of his little round door, one after another, blinking in the light. Fennick uncurled himself and stretched, so long and so wide that he yawned all the way down to his tail.
And Harry stepped outside and looked at his hut.
It was rather lopsided now. Bulging on one side. Squashed a bit on the other. There was a fox-shaped dent in the straw all the way around the bottom.
It was, Harry thought, the most beautiful he had ever seen it.
That afternoon, everyone came back to help. The shrews gathered straw. The hedgehog twins carried it on their spines. Bartholomew supervised. Mr. Puddlethorpe offered advice, most of it wrong. The baby rabbit, whose family had been found and who had brought every one of them along, held the string. And Fennick, who was very good at reaching high places, helped Harry weave the roof back into a perfect point.
By sundown, the hut was finer than ever. It even had something new: a wide, shady porch on one side, built out of straw and branches, exactly the right size for a large fox to curl up on.
That evening, Hamster Harry stood back and admired it all, with his popgun on his shoulder and his straw hat on his head, as proud as any mouse has ever been. Then he took out his little paintbrush, climbed up to his bark sign, and added one last line, in even tinier letters than before:
(especially foxes who say thank you)
And that, as I said, is a true story. Every word of it, give or take a few.
If you ever find yourself at the edge of Thistledown Meadow, where the tall grass meets the old dirt lane, keep an eye out for a field mouse in a straw hat and patched overalls. He will probably raise his popgun and tell you, in his gruffest, most fearsome voice, that this is a private residence.
And then he will invite you in for toasted seeds.
He simply can’t help it.
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