A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 



sharp, jerky, machine-like. He does nothing slowly 

 or gently; everything with a snap and a jerk. His 

 progression is a series of interrupted sallies. When 

 he pauses on the stone wall he faces this way and 

 that with a sudden jerk; he turns round in two or 

 three quick leaps. So abrupt and automatic in his 

 movements, so stiff and angular in behavior, yet he 

 is charged and overflowing with life and energy. One 

 thinks of him as a bundle of steel wires and needles 

 and coiled springs, all electrically charged. One of 

 his sounds or calls is like the buzz of a reel or 

 the whirr of an alarm-clock. Something seems to 

 touch a spring there in the old apple-tree, and 

 out leaps this strident sound as of spinning brass 

 wheels. 



When I speak sharply to him, in the midst of his 

 antics, he pauses a moment with uplifted paw, 

 watching me intently, and then with a snicker 

 springs upon a branch of an apple-tree that hangs 

 down near the wall, and disappears amid the foli- 

 age. The red squirrel is always actively saucy, ag- 

 gressively impudent. He peeps in at me through a 

 broken pane in the window and snickers; he strikes 

 up a jig on the stone underpinning twenty feet away 

 and mocks; he darts in and out among the timbers 

 and chatters and giggles; he climbs up over the door, 

 pokes his head in, and lets off a volley; he moves by 

 jerks along the sill a few feet from my head and 

 chirps derisively; he eyes me from points on the wall 

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