‘Don’t be a fool, Rusty!’ exclaimed I angrily, for I thought it sheer bravado on his part. ‘There’s nothing to eat there, except the chicken grain you profess to despise.’
‘Oh! isn’t there?’ jeered my brother; and before I could say another word he had leaped on to the wall, and with another bold spring was down in the yard.
It was still very early, a bright cloudless August morning, and everything dripping with dew. The place appeared to be deserted, although from the kitchen chimney of the farm-house a slight blue smoke was rising. Climbing into the top of a laurel, I got a good view of the whole yard, and watched Rusty nimbly scuttle across towards the further buddings. Behind these he was lost to sight.
Suddenly arose the wild cackling of a frightened hen, and next moment, to my utter horror, there came Rusty round the corner of a shed, head up, as bold as brass, with a young chicken swinging by the neck between his sharp teeth. At the same moment I saw—what he failed to notice—a man, who raised his head cautiously over the half-door of a cowshed on the far side of the yard, and the level rays of the rising sun glinting on the barrels of a gun. I gave one sharp bark of warning. Too late! A puff of smoke sprang from the muzzle, the heavy report sent the sparrows up in a chattering cloud, and of my brother no more remained than a little red rag of broken fur stretched on the cobbles which paved the yard.
I suppose the man with the gun could not have heard my attempted warning. If he had, nothing could have saved me, for I was too horror-stricken for the moment to move at all. I sat like a stuffed squirrel and watched him walk across to where Rusty lay. ‘Well, I never would ha’ believed it!’ he said wonderingly, holding the small bunch of mangled fur out at arm’s length. ‘If one of them chicks has gone I’ve lost a dozen; and to think it was this here little red rascal!’ He turned and called loudly, ‘Jim, bring me a hammer and a nail.’
A tousle-headed boy came out of the back door of the farm-house with the required implements. The man took the hammer, and deliberately nailed the dead body of my brother against the tarred wooden wall of one of the barns. ‘You’ll do for a warning,’ he remarked grimly as he turned away. And, sick at heart, I dropped out of sight and made the best of my way back to the coppice.
Such was the end of the strongest and bravest squirrel whom I ever knew. You must not imagine for one moment that such a crime as he was guilty of is a common one among squirrels. It is, indeed, very rare for one of our family to take to a carnivorous diet, but when he does fall into such a habit he never abandons it. They say that there is a kind of parrot in New Zealand, called the kea, which in old days, before sheep were imported into the islands, lived entirely upon seeds and insects. But the bird found it was easier to pick at the raw skins of newly-killed sheep, hung out on the fences, than to hunt food for itself; and, once it acquired a taste for blood, there was no more caterpillar-hunting for the kea! Next thing the shepherds knew, sheep were found dying or dead all over the ranges, the fat above the kidneys torn out by the powerful hooked beak of this goblin bird. Now the Government has set a price upon the head of the kea, and the outlaw lives a proscribed and hunted life.
Far be it from the squirrels that, as a race, they should take to the evil habit of flesh eating. But from time immemorial a few in each generation have begun with devouring birds’ eggs; from that gone on to eating young hedge-sparrows, redstarts, and the like; and finally, like my poor brother, taken to larger game, such as young pheasants, ducks, or chickens. But they seldom have the chance of long continuing such raids, for, unlike foxes, rats, polecats, and other enemies of the poultry yard, they do not hunt by night, but boldly in broad daylight. Consequently they almost inevitably meet fate in the shape of a charge of lead.
‘AND TO THINK IT WAS THIS HERE LITTLE RED RASCAL’