FLYING SQUIRRELS 259 



a dog killed three foxes in as many suc- 

 cessive days. Reynard has fine gifts of in- 

 visibility, but a man with foxes on his mind 

 will be likely to find them. 



This same near neighbor of mine takes 

 now and then an otter ; only three or four 

 weeks ago he showed me the skin of one on 

 its stretching-board ; and the otter is an ani- 

 mal that I not only have never seen in this 

 part of the world, but never expect to see. 

 I have n't that kind of an eye. As for musk- 

 rats, the trapper takes them almost without 

 number; " rats," he calls them ; while to me 

 it is something like an event if once or twice 

 a year I happen to come upon one swimming 

 in a brook. 



Another of these seclusive races, that man- 

 age to live close about us unespied by all 

 except the most inquisitive of their human 

 neighbors, is the race of flying squirrels. 

 Whether they are more or less common than 

 red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks, 

 it would be difficult to say ; but while red 

 squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks flit 

 before you wherever you go, you may haunt 

 the woods from year's end to year's end with- 



