Part 8

The two baby squirrels for the most of the harvest-time remained in the nest or on the hemlock-tree in which the nest was located. Now and then they followed the mother to a nut-tree, but were so noisy that I imagine the fear of enemies caused the discreet mother to drive them home.

When the family storehouse was well filled, Bismarck stored a few nuts in the hole at the cabin. I think he would have stored more if it had not been for the alert wood-mice. He hid a great many nuts around boulders and trees. These nuts were used in the winter, and often lasted until late in the spring. In the spring, when the nuts started to grow, Bismarck dug them up, bit off the sprouts, and buried them again.

When the nut crop is a failure, the squirrels are face to face with a famine. Long before the nut season approaches the squirrels know that they must depend on other food for the winter's supply. During one year of failure I carefully noted how Bismarck conducted himself, knowing that he would teach me how the red squirrel provides food when his main supply is cut off. When September warned the squirrels that the season for providing food for winter was on, Bismarck turned his attention to the corn in the dooryard. Years before he had stored corn, when he was obliged to compete with the blue jays and chipmunks. The latter could carry away from fourteen to nineteen grains, while Bismarck's load was but two grains. He soon evened things up by hiding corn in the dooryard, or near it. When the supply was exhausted, and the blue jays and chipmunks had disappeared, Bismarck would dig up his corn and carry it home. It was sharp practice, but the squirrel was justified, when we consider the circumstances. For several years prior to the famine, Bismarck had dropped the habit of storing corn, and only gnawed out the germ, leaving the mutilated grain for the blue jays and chipmunks. Now Bismarck undertook to store corn, hiding it as of old, but I vetoed the act, by withholding the corn. The squirrel then turned his attention to a black cherry-tree, and with the aid of a chipmunk, soon stripped it of fruit. I think the chipmunk gathered the fruit for the stone. He gathered an enormous quantity, and surely could not make use of the soft part. The red squirrel may have gathered for immediate use and also for a winter supply.

Bismarck's next move was a great surprise. I caught him carrying bones to his storehouse.

One summer I saw Bismarck sitting on a stone wall, apparently eating a bone. After he got through he hid the bone in the wall. I found that the bone was old and partly decayed. I smashed up similar bones, and Bismarck seemed to relish a meal three or four times a week, but I never knew him to store bones for winter use before. His next move was to attack the pine-cones. These were gathered while quite green. They were left on the ground three or four days and then carried, whole, to the family storehouse--a great quantity was stored under stumps, trees, and boulders. The hemlock-cones were gathered later, but were husked at the foot of the tree on which they grew.

During the following winter Bismarck looked to me for food. A loaf of bread was wired to a post near the cabin door, from which he could eat, while he could not carry it away. One cold, rainy day, he sat by the bread without eating, and whimpered like a little child. He was telling me in squirrel language that it was cold, rainy, and almost night, and that I ought to give him some bread to take home to his family. I understood his appeal, and passed him a biscuit. He scampered away chuckling over his good luck. After that, fair or foul, all through the winter days, he would beg for bread to take home, and always chuckled when he got it. Perhaps he was laughing at me for being an easy mark, or it may have been squirrel for "I thank you a thousand times." However that may be, he was welcome, for I thought of the baby squirrels starving along on a cone-seed diet.

Bismarck would eat all kinds of meat--even fat pork--but he preferred cooked meat to raw. While the famine was on he turned his attention to many kinds of food found in the woods. I made a record of each variety, and religiously tasted of everything he used. Frozen barberries and chokeberries were preferred to all others. I found the barberries had lost much of their usual sourness; the chokeberries were sweet and palatable. While the former remained on the bushes through the winter, the latter were soon exhausted, for they were food for quail, grouse, blue jays, and mice. The berries of the greenbrier, staghorn sumach, and rosehips were used sparingly. The greenbrier berries had a sweetish taste; the staghorn sumachs were sour and puckery, while the rosehips had a pleasant flavor at first, ending in a most disagreeable bitter. Many mushrooms were caught by an early frost, and remained frozen through the winter. These were food for Bismarck. He would gnaw out the under part, or gills, rejecting the rest. I tasted the food, but cannot say that I care for frozen mushroom.

In the spring pussy-willow buds formed a part of Bismarck's food. I found the buds nearly tasteless, but they crunched between the teeth like a crisp cucumber. As spring advanced, creeping wintergreen and partridge-berries appeared here and there where the sun had melted the snow, and Bismarck greedily devoured the bright red berries. Later berries formed the greater part of his food until the hazelnuts were ripe. Wild apple-trees abound on Cape Ann, and Bismarck attacked the fruit early in the fall. He destroyed great quantities for the seed, which was the only part stored for winter use. However, he seemed to relish an apple, if it was not too sour, and all through the winter he would eat a Baldwin apple, even to the seeds, at one sitting.

The history of Bismarck through a year of famine is the history of other red squirrels on Cape Ann. It is evident that the red squirrel is famine proof. If the nut crop is a failure, chickaree turns his attention to other food sources, and by perseverance and hard work is able to keep the wolf from the door.

For years Bismarck and the blue jays have matched wits. After nesting, the blue jays would flock to the cabin and impudently appropriate all the food found in the trees. Bismarck seemed to know that it was useless to store food longer in this way, so he would bury it beneath the pine-needles. The jays were soon on to this trick. When I threw a piece of bread to the squirrel he would start at once to hide it, while the jays would follow him, keeping in the trees, just out of reach. The moment he left, the jays would fly down, dig out the bread and carry it away. It often happened that Bismarck would fool the robbers by pretending to bury the bread. He would dig a hole, cover it over, pat down the pine-needles, but would run away with the bread in his mouth. While the jays were scratching the pine-needles right and left, in a useless search, Bismarck would hide the bit of bread, and return to the dooryard for more. He was not so particular if the food was wheat bread, but if it was his favorite food--doughnut--the jays were fooled every time.

Every spring Bismarck taps the trees around the cabin. He begins on the maples and ends later on the birches. If the tree is small, he taps the trunk; if large, he works on the limbs. He gnaws through the bark and into the wood, then clings to the limb or trunk, below the wound, while he laps the sweet sap. If there is a hollow in the bark into which the sap flows, Bismarck is sure to find it.

Did the red squirrel learn how to tap trees from the American Indian, or did the Indian learn from the squirrel?

The habits of the red squirrel are rapidly changing in this locality on account of a foolish State law. The story is quickly told. Ward 8 (city of Gloucester), where my cabin is located, contains over eleven thousand square acres. Its area is greater than that of the other seven wards combined. The bulk of the territory of Ward 8 is made up of woodland and shrubland, the city proper being in the other seven wards. Ward 8 contains the delightful summer resort known as Magnolia. This resort derives its name from Magnolia Swamp, the only spot in New England where magnolia glauca is found in a wild state. The famous Coffin's Beach is also in this ward.

The General Court four years ago placed a close time of five years on small game in the territory east of Ward 8. This protects the seven wards of the city and the town of Rockport. Two years ago the town of Essex, which joins Ward 8 on the west, was protected, so that the gunners from a population of about forty thousand are turned loose in Ward 8. The extermination of nearly all the game, and of great numbers of song-birds, has been the result of this peculiar legislation.

All the wild things are desperately wild. The red squirrel if he hears the report of a gun instantly rushes to a hiding-place. Well he knows the deadly meaning of the report. He has turned day into night, and now harvests his nut crop in the night-time. I sleep in the open air, and during the harvest season I listen for hours to the sound of dropping nuts which the industrious but wary squirrels are cutting from the oak-trees around my cabin.

Bismarck is still in the land of the living, although ten years have passed since he first introduced himself, and requested me to book him for table board. He has cost me many dollars, while he has not paid a cent in the coin of the realm. However, I owe him for teaching and am ready to balance the books and exchange receipts.

I know that my position in relation to the red squirrel's destruction of song-birds will be sharply criticized by those who believe in the squirrel's total depravity. But the truth is that I describe wild life just as I find it, not as some books say I ought to find it. If the red squirrel was as destructive as reported, there would not be a young bird reared around my cabin. My notes show that last year the following named birds nested near my cabin, and probably every nest was known and visited by the red squirrel:

Number of nests. Chestnut-sided warbler 3 Black-throated green warbler 1 Oven-bird 2 Vireo 4 Canada fly-catching warbler 1 Robin 2 Towhee-bunting 2 Catbird 1 Wilson's thrush 2 Indigo-bird 1 -- Total 19

A ruffed grouse nest was looted by the crows when it contained but four eggs, after which the bird resorted to a swamp, and reared a brood.

Several of the nests named were destroyed, but none by the squirrel. In the light of my observations I cannot consistently denounce the red squirrel.

CHANGES IN HERMIT-LIFE

For several years I had slept in a hammock without a roof to keep off the night air. I had found this method inconvenient on account of stormy nights, when I was obliged to seek the shelter of the cabin. I overcame the difficulty by putting a tent roof over my hammock. The sides and ends were open so that I was practically exposed to the night air. The tent roof protected me on stormy nights, and with this slight shelter I slept out-doors from April 1st until Christmas, unless there was a heavy, fall of snow, meantime.

I found it inconvenient to cook my breakfast, and then, after eating it, go to the city. Why I did so was on account of my coffee habit. I had tried to find a good cup of coffee in the city and had failed, so had depended on my own brewing.

One morning I dropped into the little store at the head of Pavilion Beach, and the proprietor asked me to have a cup of coffee. He piloted me into a back shop, where he told me that he served a light lunch with coffee, to the farmers. The coffee was just to my taste, and for twelve years I patronized the coffee trade in that little back shop. My note-book shows that during the twelve years I had missed only eighty mornings. I had paid six hundred and forty-five dollars, during that time, for my lunch and coffee, and had walked, on account of my breakfast, seventeen thousand two hundred miles. Whew! It makes me feel poor and tired to recall it. I do not remember that I remained at home to breakfast on account of a storm. The eighty mornings which I missed in the twelve years were accounted for by absence from the city.

I would leave my cabin, summer or winter, at half-past five o'clock, so I could sit down to breakfast in the back shop about six.

In the winter months it was dark at half-past five in the morning, but that did not disturb me. I did not use a lantern because I would not be bothered with it, and for another reason. It made one a bright and shining object for early ghouls or tramps.

For some years past I have discontinued my early morning tramps, but I love to recall the persistence with which I clung to habit. Those early walks afforded me much pleasure and some hardships. During the spring months the frogs and birds enlivened my morning walk with music. The bird-music along the route to the city was divided according to locality. Before leaving the cabin, from early daylight, there would be a variety of bird-songs. In numbers the veery led all the rest. Then followed the red-eyed vireo. After these, I could hear only one song each of the following species:

Catbird, towhee-bunting, chestnut-sided warbler, robin, black-throated green warbler, oven-bird, wood-thrush, and warbling-vireo. Indigo-birds and cedar-birds some years could be added to the list, but they are erratic birds, and cannot be depended upon.