BISMARCK, THE RED SQUIRREL 



take home, and always chuckled when he got 

 it. Perhaps he was laughing at me for being 

 an easy mark, or it may have been squirrel 

 for " I thank you a thousand times." How- 

 ever that may be, he was welcome, for I 

 thought of the baby squirrels starving along 

 on a cone-seed diet. 



Bismarck would eat all kinds of meat 

 even fat pork but he preferred cooked meat 

 to raw. While the famine was on he turned 

 his attention to many kinds of food found in 

 the woods. I made a record of each variety, 

 and religiously tasted of everything he used. 

 Frozen barberries and chokeberries were pre- 

 ferred to all others. I found the barberries 

 had lost much of their usual sourness; the 

 chokeberries were sweet and palatable. While 

 the former remained on the bushes through 

 the winter, the latter were soon exhausted, for 

 they were food for quail, grouse, blue jays, 

 and mice. The berries of the greenbrier, stag- 

 horn sumach, and rosehips were used spar- 

 ingly. The greenbrier berries had a sweetish 

 taste; the staghorn sumachs were sour and 

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