Mammal Study 



2 33 



THE RED SQUIRREL OR CHICKAREE 



Teacher's Story 



Just a tawny glimmer, a dash of red and gray, 



Was it a flitting shadow, or a sunbeam gone astray I 



It glances up a tree trunk, and a pair of bright eyes glow 



Where a little spy in ambush -is measuring his foe. 



I hear a mocking chuckle, then wrathful, he grown bold 



And stays his pressing business to scold and scold and scold. 



E ought to yield admiring tribute to those animals which 

 have been able to flourish in our midst despite man and 

 his gun, this weapon being the most cowardly and 

 unfair invention of the human mind. The only time 

 that man has been a fair fighter, in combating his four- 

 footed brethren, was when he fought them with a 

 weapon which he wielded in his hand. There is noth- 

 ing in animal comprehension which can take into 

 account a projectile, and much less a shot from a gun ; but though it does 

 not understand, it experiences a deathly fear at the noise. It is pathetic 

 to note the hush in a forest that follows the sound of a gun; every song, 

 every voice, every movement is stilled and every little heart filled with 

 nameless terror. How any man or boy can feel manly when, with this 

 scientific instrument of death in his hands, he takes the life of a little 

 squirrel, bird or rabbit, is beyond my comprehension. In pioneer days 

 when it was a fight for existence, man against the wilderness, the matter 

 was quite different; but now it seems to me that anyone who hunts what 

 few wild creatures we have left, and which are in nowise injurious, is, 

 whatever he may think of himself, no believer in fair play. 



Within my own memory, the beautiful black squirrel was as common 

 in our woods as was his red cousin ; the shot-gun has exterminated this 

 splendid species. Well may we rejoice that the red squirrel has, through 

 its lesser size and greater cunning, escaped a like fate; and that pug- 

 nacious and companionable and shy, it lives in our midst and climbs our 

 very roofs to sit there and scold us for coming within its range of vision. 



