The life story of a squirrel

by T. C. Bridges

It was all most pleasant and peaceful as we sat there—Rusty, Hazel, and I—enjoying the gentle swinging in the soft west wind, and waiting for mother to come home.

It was a very fine summer, that one. I have never seen one like it since. We had very little rain and no storms for weeks on end, and the crops of mast and nuts were splendid.

But I am running ahead too fast. The very next day after our narrow escape from the two loafers, father set to work to make a new house in the fir-tree he had spoken of. Luckily for him, there was an old carrion crow’s nest handy in the top branches, and he got plenty of sticks out of this for the framework. Mother helped him to gather some moss—nice dry stuff from the roots of a beech, and he made a tidy job of it within three days. Of course, he did not build so elaborately as if he had been constructing a winter nest—we squirrels never do. But all the same, he put a good water-tight roof over it.

Meantime mother had been keeping us youngsters hard at work with our climbing and jumping lessons. We all got on very well, and the day before we were to move she actually let me come down to the ground. It was the funniest feeling coming down so low, and at first I cannot say that I liked it. There was no spring in the earth, and one did not seem able to get a good hold for one’s claws. The pine-needles slipped away when one tried to jump. However, after the first novelty wore off, I enjoyed the new sensation hugely, and my joy was complete when mother showed me a little fat brown beetle which she said I might eat. I tried it, and really it might have been a nut, it was so crisp and plump.

Rusty and Hazel were sitting on a bough overhead, and as full of envy as ever they could be, for mother had said that she really could not have more than one of us at a time down among the dangers of the ground, and that I was the only one quick enough to look after myself if anything happened.

My quickness was fated to be tested. While mother was scratching about the tree-roots, having a hunt for any stray nuts of last autumn’s store that might hitherto have been overlooked, I moved off to see if I could not discover another of those tasty beetles. At a little distance lay a great log, the slowly-rotting remains of a tall tree that had been torn up by the roots in some winter gale many years before, and was now half buried in the ground. On its far side was a perfect thicket of bracken, and a great bramble grew in the hollow where the roots of the tree had once been, and hid the fast decaying trunk. There was a curious earthy smell about the place which somehow attracted me. I know now that it was from a sort of fungus which grows in the rotten wood, and is quite good to eat, but at that time I was still too young to understand this. However, I went gaily grubbing about, and at last ventured on the very top of the log and pattered down it towards the trunk end. Near the butt was a hollow in the worm-eaten wood. The bramble was thick on all sides, but there was an opening above through which a patch of bright sunlight leaked down. In the middle of this dry, warm cavity was a small coil of something of almost the same colour as the wood on which it lay. At first I took it for a twisted stick, but it attracted me strangely, and I gradually moved nearer. It was not until I came to the very edge of the hollow and sat up on my hind-legs that I suddenly became aware that the odd coil had a little diamond-shaped head, in which were set two beady eyes. There was a horrible cold, cruel look in those unwinking eyes which had a strange effect upon me. I turned cold and stiff, and felt as if, for the very life of me, I could not move. Suddenly a forked tongue flickered out, the dead coil took life, I saw the muscles ripple below the ashen skin. It was that movement which saved me. As the horrid head flashed forward, I leaped high into the air. The narrow head and two thin, keen fangs gleaming white passed less than my own length below me, and I fell into the thick of the bramble, the worst scared squirrel in the wood. How I scrambled out I have no idea, but in another instant I was scuttling back to my mother, full of my direful tale.

When I told her what had happened she looked very grave.

‘It was an adder,’ she said, shivering. ‘If it had bitten you, you would have been dead before sunset. Keep close to me, Scud.’

The next day we moved into our new quarters in the fir-tree. Personally, I never liked a fir so well as most other trees. It is so dark and gloomy, and you get so little sun. My own preference has always been for a beech. An old beech has such delightful nooks and crannies, and often deep holes, sometimes deep and large enough to build a winter home in—always capital for the storage of nuts. There was no doubt, however, that the fir which father had chosen had many points to recommend it. It was an immensely tall tree, and thick as a hedge, yet there were no branches close to the ground to tempt evil-minded young humans like our recent invaders to climb up. What was still better, so cunningly had father chosen his site that it was quite impossible for any evil-minded, two-legged creatures to see us from below. Our nest was founded on a large, flat-topped branch close in to the thick red trunk, and only about two-thirds of the way up to the top. Another branch almost equally thick formed a roof over our heads, so that we were very snug and comfortable.