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step and her foot was fast, when every frantic effort 

 for freedom only tangled her the worse. In the nest 

 above were four other tiny mummies, a double 

 tragedy that might with care have been averted. 



A similar fate befell a song sparrow that I dis- 

 covered hanging dead upon a barbed-wire fence. By 

 some chance it had slipped a foot through an open 

 place between the two twisted strands, and then, flut- 

 tering along, had wedged the leg and broken it in 

 the struggle to escape. 



We have all held our breath at the hazardous trav- 

 eling of the squirrels in the treetops. What other 

 animals take such risks, leaping at dizzy heights 

 from bending limbs to catch the tips of limbs still 

 smaller, saving themselves again and again by the 

 merest chance. 



But luck sometimes fails. My brother, a careful 

 watcher in the woods, was hunting on one occasion, 

 when he saw a gray squirrel miss its footing in a 

 tree and fall, breaking its neck upon a log beneath. 



I have frequently known them to fall short dis- 

 tances, and once I saw a red squirrel come to grief 

 like the gray squirrel above. He was scurrying 

 through the tops of some lofty pitch pines, a little 



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