The life story of a squirrel

by T. C. Bridges

The oat-field had turned quite golden in the past few days, but it was pitiful to see how short was the straw, how light the heads, and how small the grain. I had it all to myself, and wandered about, picking out the heaviest heads and nibbling in leisurely fashion. Suddenly a low distant mutter of thunder boomed through the stagnant air, and it struck me that it might be wise to make for home. But before I could even reach the hedge there sounded a second and louder peal, and to my amazement a quarter of the northern sky was already swallowed by a huge mass of vapour, purplish-black in colour, and rimmed with a tumbling edge of boiling mist white as snow. The cloud was advancing with amazing rapidity, and as I sprang into a pollard oak at the corner of the hedge, to get a better view, it swallowed up the sun, and a sudden darkness fell upon the thirsty land. Then I saw that the deep bosom of the ponderous storm-cloud was laced by constant streaks of blue and silver fire. Such a sight is not seen once in a generation of squirrels, and it so deeply interested me that for the moment I entirely forgot my intention of returning home, and sat there watching the gathering tempest with fascinated eyes.

A great tongue of blue flame licked downwards, and a moment later the thunder crashed in real earnest. There was a hoarse murmur in the far distance, and I saw the tree-tops, fields away across the level country-side, bend their tall heads as the first gust struck them. Presently a breath of air, cold, damp, and delicious, ruffled my fur, and, as the lightning flared again through the gloom, the first drop of rain, the size of a wren’s egg, struck me full in the face.

With a sudden start I realized that it was now too late to dream of returning, and that, if I wished to avoid the worst ducking of my life, I must seek shelter of some kind. Racing round the club-like top of the pollard I discovered a knot hole just large enough to hold me, and into this I forced my way—barely in time, for almost instantaneously the full force of the tempest was upon me. One gust of wind, so fierce that I felt the sturdy old oak quiver to its very roots, then a smashing downpour of hail. Not ordinary hail, but lumps of ice as large as walnuts, which almost instantaneously levelled the field of oats flat with the ground, stripped the foliage from the trees, and danced into white drifts which lay inches deep against the hedge bank.

In between the hail clouds pennons of blue and white electric fire sprang and vanished; but the clamour of the pounding ice and the roar of the wind almost drowned the bellowing thunder. Closer and closer glared the lightning. The hail turned to rain, which fell in solid sheets. The sharp alternations between darkness and intense white light dazzled me so greatly that I could hardly see. I felt stunned, deafened, and horribly frightened.

Of a sudden the rain ceased absolutely. Instantly the whole world was bathed in white fire, and simultaneously the very heavens seemed to crack with a crash that, I think, actually stunned me for the moment. When I came to myself again it was raining almost as fiercely as ever. Flash and crash still followed for some minutes with hardly abated rapidity and intensity, but very soon it began to grow lighter. The storm, like most such, was of small area, and travelling so rapidly that it passed almost as quickly as it had come.

DOWN THE NEAR SIDE OF THE TRUNK WAS A DEEP AND WIDE NEW SCAR

‘My poor Sable!’ I thought as I started hurriedly homewards. ‘What a terrible fright she and the kittens will have had!’ As I crossed the road into the coppice signs of the storm were everywhere visible. The ground was covered with green leaves, among which the fast-melting hail-drifts gleamed oddly white. Every puddle brimmed, every branch dripped, and from the meadow below the voice of the swollen brook rose hoarsely.

I made along the hedge, crossed into the coppice trees, and rattled rapidly homewards among the soaking foliage. A slight smoke rising in the distance startled me, but it was without the slightest premonition of coming misfortune that I quickened my pace, uttering a slight bark to signal my approach.

There was no reply, and the last part of my way I covered at full speed. Reaching the nearest side of the path, I stopped, stared, staggered, and nearly lost my hold. It was from our own beech-tree that the smoke was rising. The ground below was strewn with white fragments of splintered wood. Down the near side of the trunk was a deep and wide new scar, blackened in the centre.