Wilderness Babies

by Julia Augusta Schwartz

The little squirrels appeared to be always doing something. They turned summersaults in the grass, or swung by one paw from the tip of a tough branch. There was always something to do or to see. Now they chattered at a blue jay, or chased a toad for the fun of watching him hop. Now they caught beetles to look at, or, safe in a tree, they scolded at some fox slinking along through the woods. And every day there was the excitement of finding something to eat.

The babies lived on milk till they were almost as heavy as their mother. Then she began to feed them with fruit and buds and grubs, which she first chewed for them. Like the beavers and the hares and rabbits each had four chisel teeth in the front of its mouth. They needed to gnaw hard nuts or bark every day to keep these teeth from growing too long.

When the young squirrels were three months old in July they were big enough to take care of themselves. Away they scampered from the old home tree and found new homes in stumps and hollows. The smallest one used to curl up in an old robin’s nest to sleep at night. All day long they were just as busy as they could be.

There were cones to be gathered from the evergreens. The little squirrels ran up the trees in a hurry, and, cutting off the cones with their sharp teeth, tossed them over their shoulders to the ground. Every few minutes they scurried down to bury the cones under the pine-needles for the winter. Sometimes a drop of sticky pitch from the cut stems was rubbed against their fur. That made them so uncomfortable that they had to stop and lick it off.

The squirrels loved to be clean. Ever since they were tiny babies, with their new red fur, they always helped one another with washing their faces, and combing their tails with their claws. They were careful to run along logs over a muddy spot. If one happened to get wet he dried himself with his fluffy tail.

When they were tired of eating seeds and twigs they hunted for grubs. Clinging to the bark of a dead tree they listened till they heard something gnawing beneath the surface ever so softly. Then, tearing off the bark in ragged pieces, they pounced upon the flat whitish grub beneath and ate it up. They were fond of mushrooms, too, and seemed to know which were poisonous and which were good to eat.

But the best time of all came in the autumn when nuts were ripe. Then what fun the little squirrels had! Early every morning out popped the little heads from the hollow stumps and logs. The big round eyes twinkled eagerly in every direction. Then, whisk! they were out, with a bark and a squeak! Scampering to the top of a tree each one took a flying leap to a branch of the next. Up and down, on and across, they followed the squirrel-paths through the woods till they reached the grove, where the nuts were ripening.

It was a busy place, with little wings fluttering and little feet pattering, and yellow leaves drifting down in the sunshine. All the squirrels scurried to and fro, picking one nut here, and another there. They sat on the branches, with their bushy tails curving over their backs, and held the nuts in their fore-paws to nibble. The smallest baby could open the hardest walnut, and clean it out in less than a minute. In the oddest way he seemed to know exactly where to bore through the shell so as to strike the broad side of the kernel.

All the while the blue jays and the thrifty chipmunks were gathering nuts and corn, and hiding their stores away for the winter. That seemed so interesting that the squirrels gathered some too. The smallest one stuffed his cheeks full of nuts and scampered back to his latest home in a hollow stump. The next mouthful he brought was hidden in a fork of a tree and covered with leaves. Then he tucked away a few chestnuts in the cracks of the bark on an oak-tree. By that time he was tired of working at this, so he scurried around to find out how many nuts the other young squirrels were saving for the winter.