Little Mitchell: The Story of a Mountain Squirrel

by Margaret Warner Morley

Did he ever get over crying when his mouth was wiped? Oh no, after every drink of water he screamed in the same naughty way if the lady wiped his mouth. He much preferred springing upon her and wiping it very hard on the front of her dress. I suppose he thought laces and ribbons were made for squirrels to wipe their faces on!

But he did love his lady. He did not want to be away from her a moment. Sometimes, when he ran across the front of her waist to get to her shoulder, she would drop a little kiss on his furry coat as he passed. Then what would he do? Run on without noticing it? Oh no; he would stop for just the fraction of a second, and give one soft touch of his little velvety tongue to her cheek, and then race on again.

Sometimes he would lick her hands like a little dog; and if she was busy, he couldn’t possibly let her alone. If she was writing, he would take hold of the pen and shake it, and bite at her fingers, and turn somersaults in her lap, and caper so she couldn’t do a thing but stop and play with him, as though he were a little monkey.

He liked to have her tousle him about, as you do a kitten, upside down, and tickling his little white neck and chest with her fingers; and he would make believe bite, and really scratch just like a kitten. You see, his little claws were as sharp as any cat’s claws; and though he did not mean to hurt her at all, he scratched her hands all over until they were a sight to see. Then she had to stop playing that way, and instead she took a long lead-pencil, and he would bite at that and catch it in all four of his feet, and hang from it like a sloth, back down, and she would swing him back and forth, as though he were a hammock suspended from the ends of the pencil. He thought that was great fun, and so did the lady.

As to sewing, she couldn’t do a bit of it if he was out of his cage, for he insisted upon helping, and caught hold of the thread and tangled it all up. It was such fun to see the lady’s hands go back and forth, that he would jump at them, and she was afraid that she would stick the needle into his nose or his eye. With the scissors it was even worse; she couldn’t so much as snip a thread without running the risk of clipping something off him,—one of his feet, or his nose, or the end of his tail. He seemed to be all over everything at once.

Of course she could have shut him up in his cage, but she didn’t like to do that, it made him so unhappy. He would shake the cage door, and bite at it, and do everything he could think of to coax her to let him out.

Of course he wasn’t bothering her every minute, though when he was not playing with her she had to keep sharp watch of him, for she never knew what he might do next, excepting when he was taking a sun-bath on the platform. For when the sun flooded the big windows, nice and warm, he would flatten himself out on the floor, and stretch first one leg, then another, and finally he would open his mouth and yawn, and show his four front teeth, two above and two below, that looked very long and sharp.

For that is the way the squirrel-folk have their teeth,—two long, sharp ones in the front of the upper jaw, and two opposite them in the front of the lower jaw. These teeth are like little chisels, and it is with them they gnaw wood so easily. Not that they have only four teeth,—they have others, away back in the mouth, that look something like our back teeth, and are used for the same purpose—to chew the food.