There were so many squirrels hunting for nuts!—and I am sorry to say they were not all as honest as they might have been.
The little red squirrels were the quickest, and got the most nuts; but they didn’t keep the most, because there were those rascally gray squirrels, which were nimble-witted if they were not nimble-footed.
You know what the squirrels do with their nuts. They hide them. If they do not find a good place in a hollow tree or somewhere, then they just dig a little hole and bury the nut in the ground.
One day Little Mitchell’s lady was sitting by a window that looked out on the lawn at the back of the house, and this is what she saw.
Along came a little red squirrel with a nut in his mouth. He dug a hole in the ground with his little paws, very fast indeed. Then he tucked the nut in, covered it up, and patted the dirt and grass all down nice and smooth over it.
This done, he scampered off and got another nut and buried it in the same way, and then another and another, until he had planted quite a space with his nuts. Then off he went, and I am sure you could not have found one of those nuts, he had hidden them so cleverly, patting the earth and grass down over them, so that the places where they were did not show at all.
But if you could not have found them, there was somebody else who could.
The little red squirrel had no sooner hidden his last nut and gone off, than along came a big gray squirrel. Hop, hop, he came, his nose to the ground. Then he stopped, and began to dig very fast with his hands, and—pop!—out came one of the nuts the little red squirrel had so carefully hidden!
Then the big gray mischief bounded off to the other side of the lawn, where he dug a hole and buried that nut! His hole was deeper,—very likely too deep for the little red fellow to get his nut again, though I am not sure about that. But, anyway, the gray squirrel dug up all the poor little red fellow’s nuts, and went off and hid them, one by one, somewhere else.