  FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS. It will be remembered that I had obtained another squirrel as a mate for Laurence when he should leave London and come to Hook Heath and freedom. This little creature had arrived on the thirteenth of January; had been kept in the conservatory while the bitter weather lasted; and had been put into the garden squirrel-house on the twenty-eighth of the month. I called her Sulky at first, for she remained so implacably invisible; and, though food disappeared, I never caught a glimpse of I had reason to believe, however, that for a week she sneaked back to the squirrel-house every night to sleep; for nuts put in overnight were gone before 7 a.m., and one morning I saw her slipping down from the sleeping-box to make her breakfast. I watched her afterwards get out and run along the fence, and then think better of it, and come back and climb up to have another nap. By midday, however, she was gone, nor did I see her again for more than a fortnight. We had some very stormy weather, with high gales and snow squalls, and I began to fear How should we ever know? She would creep into one of the deserted nests in the wood, and there gasp out her little life as the two others had done. The only thing that gave me hope that she was alive and well, though unseen, was Fritz’s cheerful behaviour, and the fact of his still remaining in the wood and garden. For it was springtime, and surely, if there had not been some attraction here, he would have been off to the plantations across the heath, where there were plenty of little ladies to be courted. His demeanour when he paid visits to my room—which he did every day—was suggestive of happiness and of amorous thoughts. He would cock his tail roguishly, and skip about and run up the curtains—plainly “showing off.” I therefore hoped that, though I could not And, sure enough, one bright morning I peeped out at 6 a.m., to see Fritz tearing across the lawn, as fast as his little legs could carry him, towards the stump, where Sulky was boldly cracking nuts, looking exceedingly well and pretty. I saw her lift the cocoanut shell with her little fore paws from off the cob nuts, and she tucked in an excellent breakfast. Fritz, being the gentleman he always was, would not disturb her, but came up the ivy to me, where his antics betokened great happiness. From that day the name of Sulky was dropped, and became “Mrs. Fritz.” By the 17th March Miss Appleton required Laurence Housman no longer as a model, so she brought him down to me at Hook Heath. She had secured his sleeping-box (while he “I suppose he is here, and I suppose he is alive,” she said when she arrived; “but I have not heard the ghost of a sound, nor felt the faintest wriggle in the box. I hope he has not died of fright!” We put the package down for a moment upon the sofa, when, to our amusement and relief, there immediately came forth squeaks and grunts of expostulation. “Poor little fellow! how cramped he must be,” we exclaimed; and proceeded forthwith to place him, box and all, within the spacious squirrel-house in the garden. This was safely accomplished by Smithers, good man—as kind and interested in my pets as ever. In this abode Laurence remained till the 2nd May, when I set him free altogether. March 1914 was a dreadful month of gales, rain, and snow squalls; but with the first days of April came spring-like warmth and brilliant sunshine, and the wild squirrels visited the garden again. One morning the dear little thing, whom I used to call Miss Fritz in the summer of 1913, came dancing and skipping along the fence rails, and I watched her at 6 a.m. from my bedroom window. She climbed the big lime tree to have a look at the little shelf outside my casement, where, as she well remembered, nuts were spread galore in the days of her childhood last year. Yes! there She knew me again quite well; looked at Two days before this, Laurence had got out. The little door of his house, though shut, had not been bolted, and with a sudden burst of summer-like sunshine and high wind the rain-swollen wood had shrunk, and was easily burst open when pressed by his eager paws. I did not see him go. He must have skipped off very early indeed; but about 10 a.m. I happened to be looking out of the window, and was suddenly aware of two hurrying furry forms across the ground. Poor Laurence was tearing for all he was worth towards the shelter of his lately forsaken house, and Fritz was after him, with murder in his eyes. I clapped my hands and shouted, startling them both and diverting Fritz’s attention. He sprang up a tree, and Half an hour later I perceived Laurence stealthily making his way along the fence towards his house, where nuts were plentifully spread. (I suspect he had not had much of a breakfast.) I fled downstairs and out in time to see his tail drawn neatly through the open door, as he seized a cob nut and sat up to enjoy it. He scarcely noticed me as I bolted him in—only too thankful, I fancy, to find himself once more where were plenty of nuts and no Fritz. Towards the end of March—to be accurate, on the 22nd—I see in a note in my squirrel diary that Laurence wakened and was busy over his breakfast at 6 a.m., and that Fritz At last Laurence’s bride arrived, and as had happened before with the various pairs under observation, she soon took the best of everything. Laurence was turned out of his sleeping-box; she stole all his best nuts; and invariably made him wait till she had finished her meals, leaving only the refuse for him. She arrived on the seventeenth of April, and I also made a little hole in the thatched roof—as squirrels like to have two entrances to their abodes—and Laurence immediately set out to enjoy his liberty. I soon saw his little head emerging from the hole at the top, and I watched his furtive joy as he capered about among the foxgloves and periwinkles below, and finally was lost to my sight clambering up a cherry tree. Mrs. Laurence, on the contrary, was quite a week before she quitted the cage. She preferred to remain where food was abundant, and where her comfortable sleeping-box kept her snug at night. When at length she did venture forth with her husband into the unknown, she still stole Squirrels are very busy in the spring stripping bark for making new nests, and in the summer this is sometimes carried on for remaking and mending the old. They generally choose damp rainy days for doing this, when the material they gather is full of moisture. Once, however, in a spell of prolonged hot dry weather, I was much struck with a clever device on the part of one of them, probably Fritz. I found one morning two little bundles of stripped fibre thrust into the jar of drinking water inside the garden squirrel-house. (The entrance to this was always left open, and There was no mistaking these neat little bundles. I had too often watched Bunty, Fritz, Rufina, and Co. not to know the look of them, with the ends tucked in, in the form of a little bolster. I left the packages there, grasping at once that the weather being so dry the fibre had become too stiff and hard to be easily woven, hence the bringing of these bundles to the water and leaving them to soak. They remained there for two or three days, then one was carried off, and a day or two later the second disappeared. She coquetted with the birds round the drinking pan. See page 83. What made the performance more interesting was that this special fibre was only obtained from one particular tree, a certain conifer which grew on the other side of the garden. Fritz had been frequently seen in the spring stripping the fibre from this half-dead tree, the only one of its kind we had. One hot afternoon under the weeping tree there was coolness and shade. Half drowsily I was reading the Saturday Westminster, when I was aware—I can’t say I heard it, for it was so slight—but I was aware of a minute noise. It was not the fitful summer breeze swaying the hanging branches of my sanctuary, nor the scratches of birds under the rhododendrons in With electric jerky motions she came down the tree stem and clawed out another nut from the crevices, and swung head downward easily and securely, her hind feet firmly clenching the deeply-grooved bark. Nut after nut she searched out from where I had hidden them, and then, catching sight of me, she swiftly and noiselessly put herself out of sight. Presently, as I remained very still, she plucked up more courage and skipped down to the grass. Here for some minutes she coquetted—there is no other word for it—she She rushed towards me in a tremendous hurry as if afraid of changing her mind again, her tail straight out behind her, and in two seconds was within touching distance of my hand. I kept rigid, and watched out of half-closed eyes. She stood up on her flexible hind feet and reached out a quivering, sniffling little nose in my direction, trembling all over with fear and curiosity. But as the dreaded human The long hanging green around me shook a moment, and by that I knew that she had jumped from the holly to the beech, and was somewhere above my head. I moved imperceptibly so as to look upwards, and close above me was a little white stomach with a fiery tail cocked over a chestnut back. And now she began to scold and stamp her feet and lash her tail; but seeing that I kept calm and moved not an eyelash, she made for the nuts, and sat up within a yard of my chair cracking and devouring them one by one. I was immensely pleased, as this was the There came a day at the end of June when Fritz brought a son and heir to the nuts on the stump. The stump, I must explain, was near the squirrel-house in the back garden, and was in full view of my window. The youngster was a lovely colour, almost orange, with a smart bushy tail. Fritz at this time was changing his tail, and was a lamentable object in that respect—his spiny little appendix had hardly a hair on it. I was amused at his elderly paterfamilias ways—“twizzling” his bald tail in mock anger, and carefully hiding away several nuts for future occasions. And this reminds me that I never saw him bury his nuts as the Surrey squirrels did. He preferred to hide them in the forks of the trees, or in the ivy, or in deserted birds’ nests. I have forgotten to say that when Laurence’s There, one hot spring morning, as I was lying on moss and whortleberry, under the shoulder of Mutter’s Moor, I watched a wild squirrel running up a larch. It was soon hidden from view in the tree’s delicate green branches—and what is more exquisite than the earliest green of the larch? I heard the delicious scrabble of little claws on the bark, while about me droned the big bumble-bees and their quick-working cousins of the hive, all intent on honey-getting. I was puzzled to know where the honey was to be found, till I saw that the whortleberry was full of innumerable tiny crimson bell-flowers. It was a wonderful Easter. After “the wettest March on record” April came in hot In every sheltered valley and “goyle” the trees rushed into leaf. The birch shook out her fairy tassels, and larches lit up the hillsides with their vivid green lace. Everywhere the busy birds flew in and out of the hedges, intent on nest-making. The rooks cawed from morning to night, the jackdaws “chucked,” and sea-gulls sailed aloft exchanging their wild free calls in the blue. It was a joy to live. Back in Surrey again after a cold spell—“the tail of winter in the middle of May”—the icy wind dropped, and a still, hot day soothed our ruffled nerves, and warmed our shivering bodies once more. Early one morning wild Miss Tito paid me a second visit. She came to the bedroom window, and allowed me to stand close beside her, while she cracked her favourite Barcelona nuts. When her back was turned, and her eyes shielded by her lovely tail, I gently unfastened the casement and very slowly pushed it out, holding my breath and body very still, when she quickly jerked round to see what was happening. I then backed quietly into the shadow of the room, having placed more nuts on a chair. Presently, her nut finished, and no more to be found under the inverted cocoanut in spite of her vigorous nose-pushings, her wee intelligent face peeped inside the casement, two little fore paws appeared, and then she jumped upon the chair to seize a nut—skipping outside again to crack it. I crept back into bed, and lay still. Then she came again, jumped down upon the blue carpet, and executed a sort of pas seul—pitter-patter—and back. She had not been inside my room since last September—eight months ago! Through the autumn and winter I had scarcely seen her, even in the garden. With To return, however, to this particular morning, she came in and out several times till the nuts were finished, and then took a bit of brown bread in her mouth, and hid it in the curtains before she finally departed. Afterwards I saw her in the lime tree licking her little paws, and cleaning her whiskers assiduously. “There’s a boy downstairs with some baby This from an excited child who came bounding to my door, the morning holidays began, and we were all going away from home. I went downstairs and found a bright-eyed, sturdy little chap of nine, who held in his hand a tiny bit of fur, with a fuzzy turned-up tail, and a pair of sharp tufted ears. Putting it on the kitchen table—where it darted about in electric fashion, saved from falling off the edge every minute by eager hands—the boy pulled another, and another, and yet another out of his pockets, and then diving into a basket on the floor, he produced three more. I questioned him wrathfully, as I dashed round the table, with others, to prevent imminent “Where did you get them?” “Out in the fir plantations on the heath, Miss. Oi cloimed up a tree and put me ’and in the nestises. Oi let one fall, and ’e doid.” Some one brought warmed milk in a soup plate, and we placed the seven wee things round it, dipping their noses in, as one does with kittens, to make them lap. Three tackled the food at once; tiny pink tongues shot out, tiny tails curled comfortably over backs. The others were too feeble, and too young to understand; they were palpitating, and fell over as fast as they were put upon their four legs. Poor little innocents, taken away far too young from their mothers and their dark, warm nests! I saw they would not live; already two were in convulsions. I was furious with the boy. But what was to be done? He had already sold most of them for a shilling apiece, on condition he reared them for the first week himself. He had heard that I knew all about squirrels, and came to me for instructions about food. I warned him as emphatically as I knew how against overfeeding, and pointed out the It was impossible for me to have taken them myself. I was going a long journey to friends—whom I love, but whose prime aversion is pet animals! Our house was being shut up, and Smithers, with all his kindness and patience, firmly declined a responsibility in my absence that entailed getting up at 4 a.m. to give food, and that in any case was by no means an easy task. Baby squirrels are notoriously difficult to rear. Later in the month found me once more established with books and work in my old The beech had been, as usual, the last to come out; while larches, limes, and chestnuts had flung open their treasures and burst into spring loveliness almost before the middle of that wonderful April, the beech, still shrinking and coy, had kept her little brown sheaths wrapped tightly round her buds. But by the second week in May, after “Winter’s tail” had fled, she hung out all her delicate green; and her swaying tresses swept the turf around me, as I sat alone in the sweetness and promise of yet another spring. Sparrows, thrushes, and robins were busy feeding young broods; chaffinches and blue tits were still sitting on their eggs; the spotted flycatchers had not yet arrived. Forget-me-nots, violas, and irises made a sea of blue and purple, seen through the pendent branches of my sanctuary. White broom leant over Presently there was a scolding and chattering above my head, and I looked up to see Fritz, who had, I suppose, come by his usual overland route along the tree tops, and was minded to come down to the tray at my elbow for nuts. He did not like the look of my rug and cushions, and was apparently trying to stamp at and scold them out of his way. Finding them immovable and harmless, however, he came leaping down for almonds and walnuts, and as I talked to him his nervousness ceased, and we were both happy. After he had gone came the conscientious robin, who just now was hard at it feeding her newly-fledged young. I helped her, at intervals, all day in the performance of this duty, with currants, oatmeal, and cheese. Scarcely did she allow herself a morsel, so First, he sang to her, a little low whispering song, swaying his head and neck to and fro, in an extraordinary manner bowing and sidling. As, perfectly unconcerned, she continued assiduously picking up invisible insects for her children, he changed his tactics, and, flying to a branch above, he cocked up his tail, and trilled a loud jubilant strain. Nothing moved by this exhibition, she simply ignored him, and he flew away in disgust. Seven furry infants!... The heartlessness of it! See page 90. I named him Robin Adair, because the garden was so dull when he was not there, and he became eventually the most persistent little visitor. He caused me to waste no end of Perched upon the open lid of my dispatch case, he would eye me with a determined expression there was no mistaking. It said plainly, “Where are my worms? Here I sit till you produce them. Be quick, please; my family is waiting.” And I would have to get up, and go inside and bring out the tin which contained his meal-worms. This I would place on my knee, and take up my pen again, meaning really to write. But his dainty little flutterings, his wee spindly legs, his beautiful plumage, and his dew-bright eye were invariably too fascinating and too distracting. I would leave off my writing a hundred times, to admire him and talk to him. He was a most devoted father. He plied to and from the nest where his little ones were His cleverness in carrying several worms at once was remarkable, as each had to be killed before it was given to his babies. This entailed a good deal of manipulation with his beak, biting and striking the ground. I have constantly seen him doing this, and finally carrying four worms in a row, to save the trouble of four journeys. He became absolutely fearless while the very dry weather of June lasted, as all ordinary worms refused to come to the surface of the earth; and he would have got none at all but for my tin box. Not only would he perch on my shoe, or on the box in my lap, but I He was always with me, appearing, as I have said, suddenly and swiftly out of nowhere; in whatever part of the garden I placed my chair, there close to me in half a second would be the dapper little creature, trim, neat, and alert. He was never dishevelled like the sparrows, and when in the late afternoon it would seem as if he must be exhausted, he would go and take an energetic bath, and come and sit beside me to dry his feathers. Sometimes for days together the garden was forsaken by the squirrels; but to make up for their absence, many little episodes of bird life amused me as I sat out of doors in the sun and the wind. The tits were shameless thieves, and their ingenuity was surprising. I have watched one of these tiny birds manipulating—if one can use such a word in connection with a beak—a cocoanut shell, which had been turned over upon some nuts on purpose to keep them from him. Cob nuts or walnuts he could not tackle, but almonds were not safe from him, and monkey nuts he was determined to have. I saw him mount the cocoanut shell, and with his head on one side peer into the hole at the top. Satisfied that the coveted food was beneath it, he began to try to lift the heavy shell. With his little beak he pecked and pulled manfully at the outside fibre. He could just raise the shell, but not high enough to get what he wanted. After a good deal of exertion, which only shuffled it about on the stump, he flew off for a minute’s rest and reflection. Then he tackled it again, leaning down and pushing The stump on which the shell was placed had a sloping surface, and to prevent the squirrels’ food from rolling off, a ledge had been put on two sides and across the bottom. Presently I was amazed to see that the small bird had succeeded in wriggling and shuffling the cocoanut till he had tilted it up upon this ledge. Out rolled the monkey nut from beneath, and he flew away with it in triumph. I then heard a vigorous knocking going on, a little way off, and saw him in a shrub banging the nut against the trunk to break the pod. Having made an opening, he held it firmly It was during this summer of 1914 that I saw, for the first time in my life, a young cuckoo in a nest. Parting the furze bushes one day I came upon a linnet’s nest, moss-built and tiny. There seemed to be a weird sort of an eye looking over the top of it, and I touched the rim. To my amazement half a foot of ruffled black and white shot up like a Jack-in-the-box, and an orange-coloured maw and throat opened wide and hissed angrily. It was quite formidable, and looked enormous compared with its wee foster-parents, but I have no doubt they were immensely proud of it. We had a tennis tournament that day, and I think about fifty young people must have I think we may disabuse our minds of the traditional belief in the wickedness of the cuckoo mÈre, and of the supposed grief and distress of the youngster’s foster-parents. It seems to me much more likely that, instead of considering it a misfortune to find a cuckoo’s egg in their nests, our British birds only hope for such luck, and swell with pride as they rear a magnificent chick, under the delusion that it is their own. One very hot morning in June I was the Her energy was astounding. She flapped and ducked and soused herself till she had not a dry feather, then flew out and told them to go in. Not a bit of it! The little cowards “We are trying, mother! we are indeed! Look at us! We’re doing just what you do!” On the tenth of June, to my joy, my pretty turtle-doves appeared again. I called them my Bible doves— “As the wings of a dove covered with silver, And her pinions with yellow gold.” For there is a silvery sheen about them, and a glint of gold in their plumage. This was the third summer that they had come to the garden and nested in the wood. Such delicate lovely creatures! They came to drink, and to pick up the small corn which I scattered for them every day on the lawn. The lovely fawn colour of their breasts, melting into lavender on their heads, the blue They were very shy, and, on their first arrival, the sight or sound of a human being made them instantly take fright; but as time went on they became accustomed to me, and would, as long as I kept still, approach quite close to my chair. Though I searched the wood many times I never could find their nest. It was well hidden. And now autumn is approaching, with its splendour of amber and gold, of crimson and brown. There is great activity in the squirrel world. Young and old are busy storing and burying nuts. Early in the dewy mornings they hie themselves to the hazel coppices, to the lordly beeches, and later they will strip the walnuts. Active little creatures, intent upon this their supreme instinct, I have known a pair entirely clear away the beech-mast under the weeping tree on our lawn on a September morning before breakfast—beech-mast which thickly covered the ground the night before. Fritz and Laurence Housman, too, are now disporting the full glory of their autumn tails. Mrs. Fritz and Mrs. Laurence are teaching the little Fritzes and the little Laurences where and how to hide the winter food. Soon they will be stripping the fibre from the old conifer in the shrubbery, and mending up Good-bye, gay and care-free little friends! Good-bye! My way lies south, by the sea, where no squirrels come. FINIS. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN. |
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