THE RED SQUIRREL

A hawk, flashing the old gold of his pinions in the face of the sun, flings down a shrill, husky cry of intense scorn; a jay scolds like a shrew; from his safe isolation in the midwater, a loon taunts you and the awakening winds with his wild laughter; there is a jeer in the chuckling diminuendo of the woodchuck's whistle, a taunt in the fox's gasping bark as he scurries unseen behind the veil of night; and a scoff on hunters and hounds and cornfield owners is flung out through the gloaming in the raccoon's quavering cry. But of all the wild world's inhabitants, feathered or furred, none outdo the saucy red squirrel in taunts, gibes, and mockery of their common enemy.

He is inspired with derision that is expressed in every tone and gesture. His agile form is vibrant with it when he flattens himself against a tree-trunk, toes and tail quivering with intensity of ridicule as fully expressed in every motion as in his nasal snicker and throaty chuckle or in the chattering jeer that he pours down when he has attained a midway or topmost bough and cocks his tail with a saucy curve above his arched back.

When he persistently retires within his wooden tower, he still peers out saucily from his lofty portal, and if he disappears you may yet hear the smothered chuckle wherewith he continues to tickle his ribs. When in a less scornful mood, he is at least supremely indifferent, deigning to regard you with but the corner of an eye, while he rasps a nut or chips a cone.

Ordinarily you must be philosophical or godly to suffer gibes with equanimity, but you need be neither to endure the scoffs of this buffoon of the woods and waysides. They only amuse you as they do him, and you could forgive these tricks tenfold multiplied if he had no worse, and love him if he were but half as good as he is beautiful.

He exasperates when he cuts off your half-grown apples and pears in sheer wantonness, injuring you and profiting himself only in the pleasure of seeing and hearing them fall. But you are heated with a hotter wrath when he reveals his chief wickedness, and you catch sight of him stealthily skulking along the leafy by-paths of the branches, silently intent on evil deeds and plotting the murder of callow innocents. Quite noiseless now, himself, his whereabouts are only indicated by the distressful outcry of the persecuted and sympathizing birds and the fluttering swoops of their futile attacks upon the marauder. Then when you see him gliding away, swift and silent as a shadow, bearing a half-naked fledgeling in his jaws, if this is the first revelation of such wickedness, you are as painfully surprised as if you had discovered a little child in some wanton act of cruelty.

It seems quite out of all fitness of nature that this merry fellow should turn murderer, that this dainty connoisseur of choice nuts and tender buds, and earliest discoverer and taster of the maple's sweetness, should become so grossly carnivorous and savagely bloodthirsty. But anon he will cajole you with pretty ways into forgetfulness and forgiveness of his crimes. You find yourself offering, in extenuation of his sins, confession of your own offenses. Have not you, too, wrought havoc among harmless broods and brought sorrow to feathered mothers and woodland homes? Is he worse than you, or are you better than he? Against his sins you set his beauty and tricksy manners, and for them would not banish him out of the world nor miss the incomparable touch of wild life that his presence gives it.