1. As the squirrel is made to climb trees and live on nuts, he builds his nest there, and makes the tree his home. He finds some hollow place in the tree, or he builds where some large limb branches off, so that his nest can not well be seen from below.
2. His nest is made of dried leaves and bits of moss. His summer home is high up on the tree, where he has plenty at air; but his winter nest is as snug in some hole as he can make it.
3. In the fall, the squirrel gathers nuts and corn, and stores them up near his winter nest. Then, when cold weather comes on, he crawls into his bed of leaves, curls up, and goes to sleep.
4. Now and then, in the winter, he wakes, crawls to his store and has a dinner, and then goes to sleep again. When the warm days of spring come on, he wakes up fully, and is ready for his summer's work and play.
5. When the squirrel eats a nut, he takes it in his paws, sits up straight, with his tail curled over his back, and nips off the shell in little bites, turning it about as easily as we could with our hands.
6. The squirrels that we see most often are the little chattering red squirrel, and the gray squirrel, which is about twice as large. In the West and South, a large squirrel, that is partly red and partly gray, is called a fox-squirrel. All these squirrels have fine little rounded ears, and large eyes, so placed that they can look all around.
7. The English squirrel is most like our red squirrel. It is of the same color, but a little larger, and has pointed ears, with a long tuft of hair standing up from the top.
8. The teeth of the squirrel grow, and he wears them off by gnawing nuts. If, when not in his winter's sleep, he should stop gnawing something hard for a week or two, his teeth would become so long that he could not use them again.
