The Life Story of a Squirrel

CHAPTER XI. My Last Adventure 210

MY LAST ADVENTURE 210

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY ALLAN STEWART

SCUD Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

FATHER LEAPED STRAIGHT TOWARDS THE BOY, LANDING ACTUALLY ON HIS SHOULDER 32

HE IMITATED ME TO MY FACE 48

THE WHOLE OF THE SLIMY OLD WALL SEEMED ALIVE WITH THEM 74

THE BOYS NEVER MOVED OR SPOKE 88

CLIMBING INTO ONE OF THE LARGEST TREES, WE LAY PANTING AND TIRED OUT 112

TWO CRUEL GREEN ORBS SET IN A WIDE GREY FACE 142

DOWN THE NEAR SIDE OF THE TRUNK WAS A DEEP AND WIDE NEW SCAR 172

‘AND TO THINK IT WAS THIS HERE LITTLE RED RASCAL’ 184

A SMALL BLUE FLAME ILLUMINATED THREE EAGER FACES 194

ANOTHER MOMENT FOUND ME COMFORTABLY PERCHED IN THE BRANCHES OF THE HAZEL-BUSHES 208

THE DOG BOUNDED HIGH, BUT I WAS SAFELY OUT OF HIS REACH 224

THE LIFE STORY OF A SQUIRREL

CHAPTER I. My First Adventure

MY FIRST ADVENTURE

It was a perfect June morning, not a breath stirring, and the sun fairly baking down till the whole air was full of the hot resinous scent of pine-needles; but, warm as it was, I was shivering as I lay out on the tip of a larch-bough and looked down. I was not giddy—a squirrel never is. But that next bough below me, where my mother was sitting, seemed very far away, and I could not help thinking what a tremendous fall it would be to the ground, supposing I happened to miss my landing-place. I am too old now to blush at the recollection of it, and I don’t mind confessing that at the time I was in what I have since heard called a blue funk.

The fact is, it was my first jumping and climbing lesson. Even squirrels have to learn to climb, just as birds have to be taught by their parents to fly.

My mother called me by my name, Scud, sitting up straight, and looking at me encouragingly with her pretty black eyes. But I still hesitated, crouching low on my branch and clinging tight to it with all four sets of small sharp claws.

Mother grew a trifle impatient, and called to my brother Rusty to take my place.

This was too much for me. I took my courage in both fore-paws, set my teeth, and launched myself desperately into the air. I came down flat on my little white stomach, but as at that time I weighed rather less than four ounces, and the bough below was soft and springy, I did not knock the wind out of myself, as one of you humans would have done if you had fallen in the same way.

Mother gave a little snort. She did not approve of my methods, and told me I should spread my legs wider and make more use of my tail. Then she turned and gave a low call to Rusty to follow.

Even at that early age—we were barely a month old—Rusty was a heavier and rather slower-going squirrel than I. But he already showed that bull-dog courage which was so strong a trait all through his after-life. He crawled deliberately to the very end of the branch, then simply let go and tumbled all in a heap right on the top of us. It was extremely lucky for him that mother was so quick as she was. She made a rapid bound forward, and caught her blundering son by the loose skin at the back of his neck just in time to save him from going headlong to the ground, quite fifty feet below.

She panted with fright as she lifted him to a place of safety with a little shake.

Rusty looked a trifle sulky, and mother gave him an affectionate pat to soothe him down.

Then she told us to follow her back along the branch, and she would show us how to climb up the trunk home again. She sent me first.

I had hardly reached the trunk end of the bough when I heard mother utter a cry which I had never heard her give before. It was a low sharp call. Oddly enough, I seemed to know exactly what it meant. At once I lay flat upon the bough, here quite thick enough to hide my small body, and crouched down, making myself as small as possible. At the same instant mother seized Rusty by the scruff of his neck, and with one splendid leap sprang right up on to the wide, thick bough on the flat surface of which our home was built. In a few seconds she came back for me, and before I knew what was the matter I, too, was safe in the nest, alongside Rusty and my sister, little Hazel.

Mother gave a low note of warning that none of us should move or make any noise; and you may be sure we all obeyed, for something in her manner frightened us greatly. Presently we heard heavy footfalls down below rustling in the dry pine-needles. We sat closer than ever, hardly daring to breathe. The footsteps stopped just below our tree, and a loud rough voice, that made every nerve in my body quiver, shouted out something. From the sound of it we could tell that the speaker was peering right up between the boughs into our tree, and we knew without the slightest doubt he had discovered our drey. He must have spoken loud, even for a human, for his companion gave a sharp ‘S-s-sh!’ as if he were afraid that some one else might overhear and come down upon them. It could not have been of us he was afraid, for we, poor trembling, palpitating little things, lay huddled together, hardly daring to breathe.

The two tormentors turned away a few paces after a few lower-toned remarks, and I began to think they had gone, when——

Crash, a great jagged lump of stone came hurtling up within a yard of our home, frightening us all abominably.

Mother crouched with us closer than ever into our frail little house of sticks, which was not made to stand the force of stones.

Almost immediately there fell another mass of whizzing stone, even nearer than the first. It shore away a large tassel from the bough just overhead, and this fell right on the top of us, frightening Hazel so much that she jumped completely out of the nest, and, if mother had not been after her as quick as lightning, she must have fallen over the edge and probably tumbled right down to the ground and been killed at once. Even a squirrel, particularly a young one, cannot fall fifty feet in safety.

Mother saved her from this fate, but the mischief was done. The quick eyes of our enemies below had caught a glimpse of red fur among the pale green foliage, and they roared out in triumph, the louder and noisier making such a row, I thought that anyone within hearing must come rushing to see what was the matter. Then they began disputing together, perhaps as to which of them should carry us away.

We lay there nestling under mother’s thick fur, shaking with fright.

The two fellows down below argued like angry magpies for several minutes, and at last it was decided that the quieter one should do the climbing. I peeped over timidly and saw him throw off his coat, and drew back to make myself as small as possible. Presently I heard a bough creak, and then there followed a scraping and grinding as his heavy hobnailed boots clawed the trunk in an effort to reach the first branch. Once on that, he came up with dreadful rapidity. The boughs of the larch were so close together that even such a great clumsy animal, with his hind-paws all covered up with leather and iron, could climb it as easily as a ladder. We heard him coughing and making queer noises as the thick green dust, which always covers an old larch, got into his throat, and the little sharp dry twigs switched his face. But he kept on steadily, and soon he was only three or four branches below us, and making the whole top of the tree quiver and shake with his clumsy struggles. But as he got higher the branches were thinner, and he stopped, evidently not daring to trust his weight to them, and called out something to his companion. All the answer he got was a jeering laugh, and this probably decided him, for, with a growl, he came on again. The tree really was thin up near our bough, at least for a great giant like this. The trunk itself bent, and the shaking was so tremendous that I began to think that our whole home would be jerked loose from its platform and go tumbling down in ruins with us inside it.

Suddenly the fellow’s great rough head was pushed up through the branches just below. His fat cheeks were crimson, and his hair all plastered down on his forehead with perspiration. I stared at him in a sort of horrible fascination. I could not have moved for the life of me, and, as Rusty and Hazel told me afterwards, they felt just the same. But mother kept her head. She was sitting up straight, with her bright black eyes fairly snapping with rage and excitement.

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