SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 195 



weather, and plunge! down comes the nut, and 

 splash! there he goes like a twinkling into the beech 

 splash! over into the oak, there to twirl around chuck- 

 ling down into his hole for the rest of the day. The 

 little fellows always chuckle in the greatest glee when 

 they thus escape you and find refuge in their hollow 

 limbs, snickering away at you from their safe old 

 strongholds with the most taunting derision and self- 

 assurance. 



I have seen them make their summer nests. Once 

 I was especially fortunate. I had gone to the woods 

 to sleep beneath the trees; and, upon awaking, as I 

 was lying upon the moss and gazing at the leaves above 

 me, I was suddenly further aroused by the splash of a 

 large gray squirrel in the branches then another and 

 another, from various directions, until five had come 

 to the rendezvous. They were in a walnut-tree of 

 moderate size, just across the brook from my resting 

 place, and I could see them very distinctly. They 

 would bite off leafy sprays from the outstretching 

 boughs, and then run up the tree, and each would fasten 

 his own sprig and twist it in some way with the other 

 twigs of the nest. It did not take them very long, 

 for they worked quite hard at it, and in less than an 

 hour they had made quite a comfortable home, appar- 

 ently, for they left off work, and three of them leaped 

 away and sought other employment. The two remain- 

 ing may have been a pair, and this may have been their 

 housewarming, or a barn-raising on the part of their 

 neighbors. They soon went up into their leafy cocoon, 

 and did not come out again while I was there. Thoreau 

 used to climb the trees and look into their hiding places, 



