THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



in front, or from some coign of vantage in the barn, 

 and flings his anger or his contempt upon me. 



No other of our wood-folk has such a facile, emo- 

 tional tail as the red squirrel. It seems as if an elec- 

 tric current were running through it most of the 

 time; it vibrates, it ripples, it curls, it jerks, it arches, 

 it flattens; now it is like a plume in his cap; now it is 

 a cloak around his shoulders; then it is an instru- 

 ment to point and emphasize his states of emotional 

 excitement; every movement of his body is seconded 

 or reflected in his tail. There seems to be some au- 

 tomatic adjustment between his tail and his vocal 

 machinery. 



The tail of the gray squirrel shows to best advan- 

 tage when he is running over the ground in the woods 

 and a long, graceful, undulating line of soft silver 

 gray the creature makes ! In my part of the coun- 

 try the gray squirrel is more strictly a wood-dwel- 

 ler than the red, and has the grace and elusiveness 

 that belong more especially to the sylvan creatures. 



The red squirrel can play a tune and accompany 

 himself. Underneath his strident, nasal snicker you 

 may hear a note in another key, much finer and 

 shriller. Or it is as if the volume of sound was split 

 up into two strains, one proceeding from his throat 

 and the other from his mouth. 



If the red squirrels do not have an actual game of 

 tag, they have something so near it that I cannot 

 tell the difference. Just now I see one in hot pursuit 

 108 



