CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST NUT CROP
THAT year the nut crop was a failure. This was the off-year for the red oaks; they bear only every other season. The white oaks had been nipped by a late frost. The beech-trees were very scarce, and the chestnuts were gone—the blight had taken them all. Pignut hickories were not plentiful, and the very best of all, the sweet shag-hickory, had suffered like the white oaks.
October, the time of the nut harvest, came. Dry leaves were drifting to the ground, and occasional "thumps" told of big fat nuts that also were falling, sometimes of themselves and sometimes cut by harvesters; for, although no other Graysquirrel was to be seen, Bannertail was not alone. A pair of Redsquirrels was there and half a dozen Chipmunks searching about for the scattering precious nuts.
Their methods were very different from those of the Graysquirrel race. The Chipmunks were carrying off the prizes in their cheek-pouches to underground storehouses. The Redsquirrels were hurrying away with their loads to distant hollow trees, a day's gathering in one tree. The Graysquirrels' way is different. With them each nut is buried in the ground, three or four inches deep, one nut at each place. A very precise essential instinct it is that regulates this plan. It is inwrought with the very making of the Graysquirrel race. Yet in Bannertail it was scarcely functioning at all. Even the strongest inherited habit needs a starter.