A family of white squirrels, pure white from tip to tip, is making its home in a locust tree near the gate of Captain Wyman X. Folsom’s place, opposite Interstate Park, Taylor’s Falls, Minn.
How they came to be white, Nature, wise old friend of the woodland folk, only knows. But probably they are albino members of the red squirrel race. The freaks were discovered six weeks ago, and now are so tame it is possible to approach within three or four feet of them before there’s a gleam of white dashing up the nearest tree.
George Hazzard, park commissioner, and members of the Folsom household, have been taking particularly good care that nothing happens to them, and perhaps Interstate Park eventually will have a whole race of white squirrels. Anyway, that’s the idea behind the careful care which surrounds the curiosities.
Already, however, unkind fate in the form of a mean old cat has evaded the guardians, and one young squirrel’s life has been forfeited.
“He was one of the nicest of the five,” declared Martin Tangen, druggist and friend of Nature’s children. Now the two old squirrels are doing their best to keep their two remaining children from other harm.
Houses have been built for the white denizens, and they are to have an easy time this winter, according to the plans of Commissioner Hazzard, for proper food will be available, no matter how hard the earth freezes at the base of their locust tree.
Back-pension Pay Good as Fortune.
Frank Ferris, seventy-nine, of Atchison, Kan., who served during the Civil War in the Third Regiment of Missouri Infantry, applied for a pension in 1890, but because he could not produce his discharge he was denied one. He kept on in his efforts to prove that he was a soldier, and some time ago secured the help of United States Senator Thompson.
Recently the adjutant general of Missouri, in going through the records that were kept in that office during the war days, discovered the dates of both the mustering in and discharge of Ferris, and on the strength of this the pension will be allowed.
He will receive $30 a month and back pay for twenty-three years at the rate of $12 a month, or more than $3,000 in all.