tame, and would at times frisk playfully
about my hand and strike it gently with its forefeet; but the moment it
was liberated in a room, or let down in the grass with a string about
its neck, all its wild nature came forth. In the room it would run and
hide; in the open it would make desperate efforts to escape, and leap
and bound as you drew in the string that held it. At night, too, it
never failed to try to make its escape from the cage, and finally, when
two thirds grown, it succeeded, and we saw it no more.

XV

A LIFE OF FEAR

As I sat looking from my window the other morning upon a red squirrel
gathering nuts from a small hickory, and storing them up in his den in
the bank, I was forcibly reminded of the state of constant fear and
apprehension in which the wild creatures live, and I tried to picture to
myself what life would be to me, or to any of us, hedged about by so
many dangers, real or imaginary.

The squirrel would shoot up the tree, making only a brown streak from
the bottom to the top; would seize his nut and rush down again in the
most hurried manner. Half way to his den, which was not over three rods
distant, he would rush up the trunk of another tree for a few yards to
make an observation. No danger being near, he would dive into his den
and reappear again in a twinkling.

Returning for another nut, he would mount the second tree again for
another observation. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he would spin
along the top of the ground to the tree that bore the nuts, shoot up it
as before, seize the fruit, and then back again to his retreat.

Never did he fail during the half hour or more that I watched him to
take an observation on his way both to and from his nest. It was "snatch
and run" with him. Something seemed to say to him all the time: "Look
out! look out!" "The cat!" "The hawk!" "The owl!" "The boy with the
gun!"

It was a bleak December morning; the first fine flakes of a cold,
driving snowstorm were just beginning to sift down, and the squirrel was
eager to finish harvesting his nuts in time. It was quite touching to
see how hurried and anxious and nervous he was. I felt like going out
and lending a hand. The nuts were small, poor pig-nuts, and I thought of
all the gnawing he would have to do to get at the scanty meat they held.
My little boy once took pity on a squirrel that lived in the wall near
the gate, and cracked the nuts for him, and put them upon a small board