WATCHED SQUIRRELS
Once, deep in the woods, I sat down on a rock to rest. It was quiet as the grave, and I had the feeling that I might almost have been the first man here.
Suddenly I heard a rattling in the trees. It startled me at first, and then I saw a flash of movement, and realized it was a squirrel running down a tree trunk.
I sat there real still. Soon there was another squirrel. And then another. They were odd little fellows—only half as big as the ordinary squirrel. Later I learned the mountain people call them “boomers.”
One of them walked a fallen log right up to within six feet of me, and sat there on his haunches, eating and staring.
I gave a little whistle. He stared harder. Then I whistled again. And several more times. And maybe you think I didn’t feel silly, and a little thrilled, too, when a bird started answering me. Yessir. I’d whistle, and the bird would whistle right back. It made me feel like Audubon or Thoreau or somebody.
That went on for five minutes. But finally I had to go. So I got up and said, “To hell with you, you lousy little squirrels and birds, you’d probably eat me up if you had a chance.”
Any savage squirrel that attacks me will get the toe of my boot right where he sits down, that’s what he’ll get. No squirrel is going to eat me up. I got up to the top of the mountain without anything else happening.