Bannertail: The Story of a Graysquirrel

by Ernest Thompson Seton

The mother Squirrel saw that, and her feeling of doubt grew stronger. She rose up to follow, but gazed a moment to see a sudden horror. Just as the little Nyek-nyek stooped and sank her face deep to her eyes in the cooling flood, the Blacksnake sprang, sprang from his coil as a Blacksnake springs, when the victim is within the measured length. Sprang with his rows of teeth agape, clinched on her neck, and in a trice the heavy coils, tense with energy, ridged with muscle, flash-lapped around her neck and loins, gripped in an awful grip, while the lithe, live scaly tail wrapped round a branch to anchor both killer and victim to the place. One shriek of "Qua," another fainter, and a final gasp, and no more sound from Nyek-nyek. But she struggled, a hopeless, helpless struggle. The mother saw it all. Fear of that terrible Snake was forgotten. Not one moment did she pause. She did not clamber down that tree. She leaped to the next and a lower yet, and along a log; five heart-beats put her on the spot; and with all her force she drove her teeth into the hard, scaly coil of the beast that she held in mortal fear. With a jerk the monster quit his neck hold on the young one. She was helpless, bound in his coil, and the Snake's dread jaws with the rows of pointed teeth clamped on the mother's neck, and another fold of that long, hellish length was hitched around her throat. Scratch she could and struggle, but bite she could not, for the coil held her as in a vise. For a moment only could she make a sound, the long, long, screaming "Queeee," the Squirrel call for help; and Bannertail, lazily dozing on his sunning perch, sprang up and set his ears acock.

It was not repeated, but the sound of struggle was there, and the keen-eyed father Squirrel saw the flash of a silver tail, the signal of his kind. And from that perch high in the air he leaped in one long, parachuting leap; he landed on the ground, and in three mighty bounds he was at the place. The horror of the Snake was on him. It set his coat a-bristling; but it did not hold him back. It only added desperation to his onset. Clutching that devilish scaly neck with both his arms, he drove in his chisel teeth and ground them in, down to the very bone, as Silvergray could not have done. He worked and tugged and stabbed again, and the Snake, sensing a new and stronger foe, relaxed on Silvergray, snapped with his hateful jaws, seized Bannertail's strong shoulder just where he best could stand it—where the skin is thick and strong the Blacksnake drove in and gripped. And Bannertail, as quick, quit his first hold on the coil that was strangling Nyek-nyek, and by good luck, or maybe by better wisdom than his own, drove, fighting fierce, into the demon's throat, the weak spot in that scaly armor. Deep sank the Squirrel's teeth, and pangs of mortal agony went thrilling through the reptile's length. But he was strong, and a desperate fighter, too. The coils unloosed on the senseless form of Nyek-nyek and lapped in a trice on Bannertail, three times round, straining, crushing, while his rows of cruel fangs were sunk in the Squirrel's silvery side.

THE BATTLE WITH THE BLACKSNAKE

But in throwing all his force against Bannertail he released the little Gray mother. She flung herself again on the black horror, and bit with all her power the head that was gripped on the shoulder of her mate. Very narrow is the demon reptile's head, and only one place was open, offered to her grip. She bit with all her force across the eyes, her long, sharp chisels entered in. His eyes were pierced, his brain was stung. With an agonizing last convulsion he wrenched on Bannertail, then, quivering with a palsy that changed to a springing open of the coils, he dashed his head from side to side, lashed his tail, heaved this way and that, coiled up, then straightened out. The Squirrels leaped back, the monster lashed in writhing convolutions, felt the cool water that he could no longer see, went squirming out upon it, working his frothy jaws, lashing, thrashing with his tail. Then up from the darkest depths came a hideous goggle-eyed head, a monstrous head, as big as a Squirrel's whole body, and on it a horny beak, which, opening, showed a huge red maw, and the squirming Blacksnake was seized by the bigger brute. Crushed and broken in those mighty jaws was the Black One's supple spine; torn open by those great claws was his belly, ended was his life. The Snapper sank, taking the Blacksnake with him. It was the finish of an ancient feud between them, and down in the dark depths of the pond the Water Demon feasted on the body of his foe.

And Bannertail, the brave fighter, with the heroic little Mother and Nyek-nyek now revived, drew quickly back to safety. A little cut they were, but mostly breathless, their very wind squeezed out by those dread coils. The ripples on the pool had scarcely died before they were all three again in the dear old nest, with Brownhead back anew from a far journey. Without words, were they to tell of their thrills and fears, or their joy; but this reaction came: They cuddled up in the nest, a little closer than before, a little more at one, a little less to feel the scatteration craze that comes in most wild families when the young are grown; which meant these young will have for a little longer the good offices of their parents, and are thereby fitted a little better for the life-battle, a little more likely to win.

Is it not by such accumulating little things that brain and brawn and the world success of every dominating race of creatures has been built?