The life story of a squirrel

by T. C. Bridges

Redwings and fieldfares fed in small flocks across the open ground, and shared with the starlings and rooks the insect food of which they are so fond. The grass, no longer green but browned at the tips by frost and sodden from lack of sun, had ceased to grow, and feed was becoming short. I noticed that the cattle had taken to the higher ground instead of feeding along the brook; and that in the mornings when the frost-dew hung thick on the meadows, they wandered along the hedgerows, picking drier mouthfuls from the bank.

Some of our acquaintances had already retired for the winter. The hedgehogs were no longer to be seen making leisurely progress along the hedge-banks; they had all gone to sleep deep in leaf-lined crevices under the blackthorn roots; the dormice had followed their example, and curled themselves up for the winter in their delicately woven globes of grass and fibre. Mr. Dormouse is a heavier sleeper than we are, yet not above rousing for a square meal if the sun comes out warm and bright on a January morning. Snakes, slow-worms and lizards had all disappeared long ago, and would not move again for more than four months. I had not seen a bat for a fortnight, and I fancy the last of them had joined his comrades hung up in the church-tower or in Farmer Martin’s thatched barn, stiff and motionless like dead game in the Hall larder.

Field-mice showed when the sun came out, dodging about on the surface of the dead leaves, apparently very busy, and yet never appearing to accomplish anything in particular. But they would soon follow most of the four-legged denizens of the coppice into winter-quarters, and leave the bare woods to the birds, the rabbits, and the cunning, hungry fox.

Of the wild-cat, the terror of the neighbouring wood, we heard nothing at all; and though I often talked of her with Cob and his sister, we did not imagine that there was much chance of her raiding so far from home. Cob gradually recovered from his wound, and, as food was still fairly plentiful, he grew fat and strong again.

Nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of those last few days before winter set in in earnest; and the silence that reigned in the coppice was broken only by the cheery song of the robin, the low twitter of the tits, and occasionally the clear pipe of the missel-thrush. Then came a day when the wind turned to the north-east, and a new biting, penetrating chill filled the bleak air.

For the first time in my experience mother absolutely refused to leave the nest.

‘Children,’ she said drowsily, ‘it’s going to snow. I feel it in my bones. Close the door with moss and let us sleep.’

Pushing a bunch of moss into the opening, she curled herself into the deepest, darkest corner of our snug retreat, and almost instantly fell into a sleep deeper than ever we had seen or dreamed of. Squirrels, you must know, are never still for more than a few minutes at a time in their ordinary sleep. I know that, whenever I wake at night, and that is very often, especially now that I am no longer young, some of my family are always moving their legs, twitching about like a dog that lies before the fire and hunts rabbits in its dreams. But this was a different thing, this sleep of mother’s—she lay like a dead thing on her side, her splendid brush curled round and over her, and, as we watched, her breathing seemed to slow until it became almost imperceptible.

We, too, felt strangely drowsy; but yet, with all the curiosity of youth, would not yield to it, so anxious were we to see this snow of which we had heard so often. The wind whistled in stronger and stronger gusts, making weird wailing sounds among the bare branches; the sky, already one uniform mass of greyish cloud, grew duller and thicker, while up to windward a darkness like that of the winter twilight began to cover the land. Rusty and I, peering out through a small hole in the moss, saw the great trees bending and swaying in the increasing blast, while the dead leaves raised by the wind rustled and rattled in brown clouds along the ground below. Then suddenly, and as if by magic, the whole air was swarming with little white atoms, which whirled and fluttered silently in a mad dance. Thicker and thicker they came till the sky was blotted out, and even the trees close by were nearly hidden behind the waving white veil. All along the eastern edges of the beech-tree limbs lines of pure white appeared and grew, while the dry leaves below stopped their rustling as they vanished, hidden beneath a carpet whiter than fallen hawthorn petals. To us, who had never seen the like before, it was a wonderful sight, and we gazed and gazed as if we should never tire. But gradually the drowsiness of the snow-sleep came upon us and mastered us, and, whether we would or no, closed our eyes. Rusty slipped limply back, and lay like a dead thing beside the quiet forms of Hazel and my mother. I remember vaguely pushing back the plug of moss into position, and then I, too, fell back and sank away into a long, delicious, dreamless slumber.