Like their age-old enemies, mice too can be consumed by curiosity.

pedlar had heard about the House, every since his birth. It stood three fields away--too far away to be able to see it form his Hedgerow--but stories about the house had travelled with the travellers. Wandering rodents had entertained the hedges and ditches with tales about the house. 

    It wad a place where mice lived in comfort, they said, warm all the year round. It was a place where food was in plenty, whatever the season, whatever the weather; It was a place where a variety of different species of mice made nests above ground, yet still remained out of the rain, out of the wind, out of reach of the fox and weasel, the stoat and hawk.

However, when pedlar asked his older cousin, Tinker, about the house, he received the reply, 'You don't want to go near there- place is crawling with nudniks, so I hear. Dirty creatures. Never wash themselves, so I'm told. They don't bend in the middle very well and their tongues are too short. I never heard of a nudnik even licking between its toes...must be covered in lice , they must. Fancy not being able to nip the fleas on your own belly-it doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

I wasn't thinking about the nudniks - everyone knows what bumbling oafs they are. No, I was just wondering about the house it self. You konw, what it's like inside. Here, do you want to change that piece of beet for a haw?