90 WINTER 



' 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, on one occasion when hewas^/' 

 hunting, saw a gray squirrel miss its footing in a tree ! ' 

 and fall, breaking its neck upon a log beneath. 



I have frequently known squirrels to fall short dis- ^ 

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

 like this gray squirrel. He was scurrying through 

 the tops of some lofty pitchi 

 pines, a little hurried and* 



flustered at \ 

 sight of me, Sf%\ 

 and, Hearing y 

 the end of a high branch, was in the act N . 



ig, when the dead tip cracked <T ^ 



v( < *'^P#l'1p > under him and he came tumbling head-INK* 

 long. The height must have been forty ^ -^ 

 feet, so that before he reached the ground he hadiK- 

 righted himself, his tail out and legs spread, \J^ 

 but the fall was too great. He hit the earth heav-^J*p 

 ily, and before I could reach him he lay dead upon v s ' 

 the needles, with blood oozing from his eyes and VA 

 nostrils. 



Unhoused and often unsheltered, the wild things }{ , 

 suffer as we hardly yet understand. No one can esti-y V 

 mate how many of our wild creatures die in a year \L o 



