The life story of a squirrel

by T. C. Bridges

The ginger-haired keeper and a boy—his son, I believe—were often in the coppice, messing about among the undergrowth and collecting whole baskets full of pheasants’ eggs. Mother was horrified at this performance, but, as we found out later, they took them to the Hall to be hatched in incubators. I have spoken of the amount of timber-cutting which went on around the Hall. One day in the early spring a number of men invaded the coppice and cut away the underbrush and tree branches, so as to make several open rides across the wood from end to end. We were annoyed to see so many good hazel-bushes destroyed, but as they did not cut down the heavy timber we were not particularly inconvenienced.

We owed that ginger-whiskered keeper a debt of gratitude for slaying our enemy, the grey cat, but some of his performances no self-respecting coppice-dweller could approve of. He began to set horrible gins and snares in every direction. So far as killing off the stoats and weasels went, this was all very well; but it was a sad and dreadful thing to see an unlucky brown owl, the foe of nothing except mice and such-like vermin, struggling miserably half the night in the foul jaws of a pole-trap, with both its legs broken. Jays and magpies suffered also. I had seen traps at the Hall, and took particular pains to point them out to my youngsters as objects to be avoided with the utmost care. Other young families were not so fortunate. One of Rusty’s promising sons was missed one day, and found by his mother with his head crushed between cruel iron teeth, stone dead. There is nothing in the world so barbarous as the steel-spring trap.

That spring and all the early summer were extraordinarily dry. The hay-crop was very short, but of excellent quality, while the grain was curiously dwarfed. Many of the flowers came out before their time, particularly the white convolvulus and the purple scabious. The brook in the field, I remember, ran altogether dry, and failed to fill a large excavation which the new tenant of the Hall had had dug with the intention of making a fish-pond. I went to look at it one day, and found it a bare expanse of red clay, netted all over with deep cracks, in the largest and dampest of which a few small, unhappy frogs had found precarious refuge.

Mother told us that she had never seen weather like it before, and shook her head a good deal, prophesying that food would be as scanty during the coming autumn as it had been plentiful the previous year. Certainly there seemed good ground for her forebodings, for the oaks had hardly set any acorns, and there was little sign of mast upon the beech-trees. It looked as though the birds, also, would be likely to suffer, for the hips and haws dropped before setting from the drought, the hollies and yews had no berries, and the blackberry crop seemed as though it would be a complete failure.

Towards the end of July we had a spell of intense heat. We all took up our abode in our summer drey, opening both doors in order to let the draught, when there was any, blow through, and never stirred out except in the early morning and late evening. We felt the heat severely; but, after all, were far better off than the ground creatures. The grass in the meadows outside the gate had turned quite brown, and the unlucky rabbits were forced to travel long distances to find grazing.

There are few things, by the bye, which a rabbit dislikes more greatly than venturing any considerable distance from his home. The poor young ones paid a heavy toll to the stoats and weasels during that famine-time, for the vermin had them at their mercy when the little chaps visited the hedgerows to look for a little greenstuff.

The birds ceased singing almost completely, and the only place where much bird-life was still to be seen in our neighbourhood was around the pool down at the end of the coppice. This was almost dry, but a few square yards of stagnant, shallow water still remained in the centre, surrounded by a wide space of mud dotted all over with the footprints of dozens of different species of birds, and not a few four-legged creatures as well.

It must have been about the twelfth day of the heat, which turned out the most sultry I ever experienced in my life. The sun rose crimson in a crimson sky. No breath of air was abroad, and the leaves hung down straight without a flicker of movement. The coppice was uncannily silent, a silence broken only by the hum of insects, which rose drowsily through the foliage; the only moving things were butterflies, flaunting on painted wings, and a few lizards and snakes—reptiles for which no weather seems too hot.

All six of us lay out on the branches under the thickest shade we could find, tongues lolling out, too listless to trouble about food or even to talk. As the afternoon drew on, and the shadows lengthened towards the east, I suggested to Sable that we should go off in search of supper. I mentioned an oat-field just across the road, where I had an idea that the grain would be ripe enough to provide an easily-won meal.

But Sable said no; that it was still too hot for the children. That I had better go alone. If the oats were really ripe, we would all journey there next morning for breakfast. I never argue with my wife. My first week of wedded life taught me that such a proceeding is an entire waste of time and energy. So answering, ‘Very well, my dear,’ I rose, stretching and yawning lazily, and went leisurely away towards my destination. After all, Sable was quite right When I reached the open, the sun still stung with hardly abated power, and the heat mist shimmered over the baking ground.