After ten minutes of this hot work he became quiet, except a sob, which he uttered from time to time. Finding that I would not help him, he returned to the box. He tried the wire a short time, then sat up and folded his paws across his breast and fell into a brown study. Like a flash he came out of his trance, grasped the box, and turned it completely over, then he began to eat, saying something to me, while he jerked his tail in a defiant manner. After this, whenever he found seed in the box, he quickly turned them out. For a week or more I allowed him to have his way. I wanted my visitors to see how cute the little scamp could be on a pinch. Later I drove stakes across the box to hold it down. I returned one day to find that Tiny had managed to dig a hole beneath the box, and had gnawed through the bottom. I tried another scheme for the purpose of testing the intelligence of the squirrel. I stretched a cord between two trees, and half-way suspended a box open at the top. Tiny saw the birds eating from the box, and he quickly understood that it was another device of mine to outwit him. He ran up one of the trees, and tried the limbs that hung over the box. He soon found a slender limb that would bend under his weight and let him into the box. After he had used this highway several days I cut the limb away.
"MADE HIS WAY TO THE BOX, HAND OVER HAND."
When Tiny found a fresh stub instead of a limb, he understood what it meant. He knew that I was the guilty one, and he swore at me, if a squirrel can swear, for twenty minutes. His next move was to investigate the line where it was attached to the trees. He thought he could reach the box over the line, and started out. When about a foot from the tree, the line turned, and Tiny jumped to the ground. He tried this three times, and met with failure. The fourth time, when the line turned, he clung to it and made his way to the box, hand over hand. I thought he deserved a reward for his continued effort and intelligence, so since then I allow him to eat from the box whenever he feels like it.
Tiny made a cozy nest in November, of moss, leaves, and grass. It was in the top of a pine-tree that hangs over the cabin dooryard. Some wretch shot this nest to pieces when I was absent. I returned to find empty shells in the dooryard, and fragments of the nest hanging to the tree. Tiny made another nest in a near-by pine, and lives in it at this time. The past two winters Tiny made his nest in my summer house. Why he did not occupy the house this winter is a mystery. Perhaps he heard me say that I should take down this house and put it into a new log-cabin that I had in contemplation.
Tiny is a widower, and childless. His wife and children were shot to death by the gunners that swarm through the magnolia woods.
I think Bismarck is dead. In cold weather he made it a practice to sly up to the cabin, just at dusk, for a doughnut or a bit of bread. For some time I have missed him. I went to his nest, to find it shot to pieces. Still farther away I found Mrs. Bismarck's nest in ruins, and silence reigned in that part of the woods.
Tiny is now an orphan, a widower, and is also childless. He occupies in squirrel life the same relative position that the hermit occupies in human life. Tiny's misfortune has brought the man and squirrel a little nearer together.