24 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP 



hoards of food reported laid up for winter use. 

 Our grays store no " hoards " in the ordinary sense 

 of the word, though both our red and our ground 

 squirrels do so. 



What the gray squirrels do is this : as soon as 

 nuts and acorns begin to ripen in the autumn, they 

 gather them with great industry, and bury them 

 one by one, separately. They do this diligently and 

 furtively, attracting no more attention than they 

 can help. Hopping about in the grass until they 

 have chosen a place, a hole, perhaps two inches 

 deep, is hastily scraped out, the nut is pushed to 

 the bottom and covered up. The animal then 

 stamps down the earth and hurries away, hoping 

 it has not been seen. They never bury the food 

 given them or found in the summer, but in the fall 

 will save and bury along with their wild provender 

 the nuts and occasionally grains of corn taken from 

 the window-sills. 



Whether any of these are dug up before mid- 

 winter I do not know ; I think not. The squirrels 

 wander off into the woods when the mast is ripe, 

 and get fat upon the oily food. But when this 

 harvest is over, and their stores must be drawn 

 upon, their ability in discovering them is wonder- 

 ful. They seem to know precisely the spot in the 

 grass where each nut is buried, and will go directly 

 to it; and I have seen them hundreds of times, 

 when the snow was more than a foot deep, wade 

 floundering through it straight to a certain point, 



