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 the squirrels ran in and out for food and water.)
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. In carrying his little bundles from it to where he placed them to soak, he would pass two birds’ drinking pans full of water; but they were in public places on the lawn, and constantly bathed in by all sorts of birds. Fritz—if it was he, and I very much suspect it was—preferred the comparative secrecy and seclusion of the small water-jar in the squirrel-house in the back garden. His sagacity was justified, for no one meddled with them till he considered them to be sufficiently moistened for weaving purposes.
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 a vain quest for worms. I lifted my head very cautiously, and twisted it slowly towards the rough stem of the white-blossomed acacia, twenty feet away. Yes, up in a fork of the branches was a bit of brown fur. Part of it seemed to be quivering incessantly. The tiny noise I heard was the dropping of a nutshell on the grass. The quivering I saw was a little jaw nibbling very fast. Presently there was a flashing movement, and out into the sunshine she came, a beautiful, brilliant foxy red, with a tail which put her husband’s to shame, for this was Mrs. Fritz.
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.