My attention was called early to the fact that a gale of wind did not dislodge the pieces of bread which the squirrel had stored on the limbs of a hemlock-tree. I found that each piece was held in place by a small twig. Scores of times afterward I saw Bismarck lift up a twig with his hands and then push the piece of bread with his nose to the junction of twig and limb. Of course the natural spring of the twig held the bread in place.
Bismarck always stored mushrooms in the trees, for he knew that the blue jays did not eat such food. He would drop the stem of the mushroom between the prongs of a forked limb, if there was cap enough left to hold the same in place, otherwise he treated it just as he would a piece of bread.
How Bismarck acquired a knowledge of the edible mushrooms is a mystery beyond my powers. Doubtless, when he attended the Chickaree College, he studied natural history instead of the dead languages. He knew how to harvest mushrooms. He gathered them soon after they appeared above the ground. Gathered thus, they would keep several days, while a few hours' growth would spoil them if left in the ground.
Bismarck knew how to eat mushrooms. He did not begin on the freshly gathered ones; he knew they would keep, and he selected those that would decay shortly. Human beings eat the specked apples from motives of economy, and the same impulse controls the squirrel.
In the woods about my cabin grow many varieties of the poisonous mushrooms. One deadly variety—the "Destroying Angel"—possesses a form most pleasing to the eye. Its symmetrical shape and pearly white color give it a look of innocence that has lured many a human being to an early grave. I have never seen a tooth-mark by a squirrel, mouse, or mole in one of these deadly mushrooms, which goes to prove that the wild things know more than some human beings.
A few years ago, while out on a walk with the Appalachian Mountain Club, I told a professor, who was an expert on mushrooms, that I used the mushrooms which were approved by the squirrels, and no others. He said that I was risking my life, for he claimed that squirrels could eat poisonous varieties that might kill human beings. I thought that the professor knew more about mushrooms than he did about squirrels, so his warning was wasted on me. Up to date I have found the squirrels all right, and I feel no fear when eating what they eat.
For years I attended a squirrels' school, and Bismarck was the schoolmaster. He taught me many things relating to squirrel life. Much of the knowledge acquired was wholly unknown to me before.