Little Mitchell: The Story of a Mountain Squirrel

by Margaret Warner Morley

Do you want to know about his bed?

Well, you see, the mountain people use feather-beds, and they have two or three beds in one room. That is the way they like to live,—a great many people together in one room.

But the lady did not like this way, so she had a room to herself, with two big beds in it, and there was a thick feather-bed on each of them. She punched her fists down into one of the feather-beds until she had made quite a deep hole, and in this she buried Little Mitchell in his blanket.

You see, young squirrels, like other babies, need to be kept warm.

So Baby Mitchell had a whole feather-bed to himself that night, and he slept without a sound until the lady unrolled him the next morning.

She hardly expected to find him alive, he was such a tender little thing to undergo such hardships. Starving, and sleeping under ladies’ belts, and being carried in that way up a rough mountain and then down again, and fed on condensed milk and cow’s milk, and put to sleep at last in a feather-bed, one would think would be enough to wear out any squirrel so young it couldn’t open its eyes.

But it didn’t wear out Baby Mitchell.

When the lady unrolled him, there he was, as alive as could be and as warm as a kitten. She laughed when she saw him, he was so little and the bed so big!

As soon as she unrolled him, he lifted up his head, and then he opened his mouth and screamed for his breakfast. He was used to being cared for earlier in the morning, in his home in the tree, and he was starving hungry.