96 BOMBAY DUCKS 



But the language of the squirrel on such an occasion 

 is as London milk is to neat whisky, when compared 

 with what he says when "a lurking villain crow," who 

 has been watching the theft from afar, pounces down 

 upon him in the verandah and robs him of his booty. 

 Then, indeed, is the wrath of the little mammal a sight 

 for the gods ! 



It seems to me that the Madras squirrel is especially 

 depraved. As I have already said, in Upper India 

 the squirrels never, or, at any rate, very rarely, enter 

 bungalows. It is true that in that part of the world 

 the doors and windows are protected from the inroads 

 of insects by chiks, but these are usually so ill-fitting 

 as to form no sort of a barrier to a pushing squirrel. 

 The fact of the matter is that the Madras squirrel is to 

 the squirrel of other parts of India what the cockney is 

 to the rustic, or the town sparrow is to his country 

 cousin. 



Colonel Cunningham bears me out in this. He 

 states that in Calcutta they rarely invade the interior of 

 houses, and he ought to know, for he lived there for 

 thirty years. The Madras squirrel is as much at home 

 among the rafters of a room or in the punka ropes 

 as he is among the branches of a tree. He nests by 

 preference in the bungalow, and, such are the ways of 

 native architects and builders, that the interior of the 

 bungalow furnishes endless eligible sites which are 

 snatched up as eagerly as unlet houses in Madras at 

 the beginning of the winter season. 



Not being a dog in the manger and having no use for 

 the various crannies under the roof, I should have no 



