I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 1 9 



Step by step, impelled by a fatal desire to learn 

 more about that fascinating thing in the grass, 

 Bunny steals forward and is lost ! 



The male squirrels come back from their sum- 

 mer vagabondage looking very much the worse 

 for wear, the result of many a battle, no doubt, 

 for they are incorrigible fighters. In the season 

 of courtship the males are especially pugnacious, 

 and will bite one another severely, or hurl one 

 another from lofty limbs. 1 The red squirrels, or 

 chickarees, though hardly half as big, will whip 

 the grays in a running fight every time ; but when 

 it comes to a clinch, the superior size and weight 

 of the gray give him the victory. There is an 

 eternal feud between them because the gray squir- 

 rels are continually raiding the hoards of nuts and 

 acorns which the provident chickarees stow away 

 in odd corners against the coming of winter. The 

 holes in our long post-and-rail fence is a favorite 

 place of deposition, and in autumn this fence is 

 pretty regularly patrolled by a chickaree. If a 

 reconnoitring gray even approaches this fence, 

 the red will dash at him like wildfire. 



One day a pan of shelled corn stood outside the 



1 There is no truth in the long-lived supposition that the victor 

 in one of these knightly combats will mutilate his conquered foe ; 

 but squirrels are much troubled by parasites in the skin, and in 

 certain external organs, and these sometimes cause sores which 

 resemble wounds. They fight a good deal, especially the red 

 squirrels, which are often obliged to defend their scattered winter 

 stores against robbers of their own race, as well as against outsiders. 



