Little Mitchell: The Story of a Mountain Squirrel

by Margaret Warner Morley

He liked to have the lady go to a lonely part of the Public Garden, and sit on a bench, and let him sit beside her with a nice pecan nut that had been cracked a little so that he could open it by working at it awhile.

You see, he did not crack his own nuts, because he did not know how. It must be that mother squirrels start the nuts for their young ones; but Little Mitchell’s lady did not know that, only she saw nuts that the squirrels had gnawed, and there were two little holes in the sides opposite each other. But Little Mitchell did not gnaw the sides of the nut,—he always tried to gnaw the end; and you know it would take him forever to get at the meat that way. So finally the lady started his nuts with a penknife in the right place, and Little Mitchell would try very hard to finish opening them; but he liked much better to have his nuts cracked with a hammer, so that he could peel off pieces of the shell.

No doubt he would soon have learned to open his nuts himself, and do it very well, only something happened that made this impossible. It is strange he did not know how, he knew so many other things the squirrel folk know, but that they had never taught him. You remember he knew how to clean himself and wash his face in the funny squirrel way. And he knew how to talk squirrel talk. He had several sounds that meant different things.

The funniest talking he ever did was when he saw the dog in the backyard. It was away down below him, and not in his yard either, but in another yard over the fence. It is strange he should have noticed the dog so far off; but he had good eyes, had Little Mitchell,—and the way he screamed and scolded when he saw the dog! You never heard anything like it,—unless you have been scolded by a gray squirrel out in the woods sometime!

He was sitting looking out of the big window, when the little dog ran across the yard. Up went Little Mitchell’s hands across his breast, in the most comical manner, as though he were pressing them over his fast-beating heart. Then he stretched his neck, and opened his mouth wide, and screamed at the dog. The way he screamed when his mouth was wiped was nothing to this. How he did go on!—just as the gray squirrels in the woods do when they are very much excited; and he had never heard a squirrel do it in all his life.

There were gray squirrels on Boston Common, where Little Mitchell sometimes went to walk with the lady; but he did not take the slightest interest in them.

There are more squirrels on the Common sometimes than others. The winter Little Mitchell was in Boston there were several of them living on the Common, and they had nests in some of the trees. Yes, they built nests that looked like big clumsy bird’s-nests, and they went into them to sleep and to keep warm.

One cold winter day, when Little Mitchell’s lady was crossing the Common early in the morning, and Little Mitchell was not with her, a big gray squirrel ran up to her and asked for a nut. Of course he could not ask in people’s talk, but he asked very plainly in squirrel talk,—in their sign language. He made no sound, but signed for nuts in the prettiest way, running close up to her, flatting out a little toward the ground, and looking up into her face as Little Mitchell looked when he was coaxing for something. The lady had no nuts with her; but she brought some when she came that way again. Then she found somebody else had given him nuts, and he was sitting on the ground eating them. Of course this squirrel did not pass the winter in a nest in the branches of a tree. Oh, no, he had a nice warm hiding-place inside a big tree that had a hole in the crotch so that he could get in.

Once there were a great many squirrels on the Common, but one day there were none. They had all gone off. What had become of them? everybody was asking. The policeman knew, for he saw them go. It was very early in the morning, and they went all together, single file, across Cambridge bridge. They were on the bridge railing, one old fellow leading the way. Perhaps there were getting to be too many of them to be comfortable on the Common. Perhaps they were tired of city life. Anyway, the policeman saw them go, and that was the end of the squirrels on the Common for some time. At least, so I was told.

A good many city parks have gray squirrels in them, but where else are they so tame as in the park at Richmond, Virginia? Little Mitchell’s lady was there one day, before she had found Little Mitchell, and the squirrels were so tame they came right up and ate out of her hand; and when she stooped down to speak to one, another little fellow raced right up her back,—which rather startled her, because she was not used to squirrels then.