318 Sporting Sketches 



they do the jay, for both quite frequently balk the 

 hunter's effort by kicking up a row at a critical 

 moment and thus warning every creature within 

 earshot that man, the dreaded, is about. 



The red squirrel is apt to be troublesome in other 

 ways. He is here, there, and everywhere, about the 

 barns and cribs, stealing grain to hide in various 

 places, storing nuts in the attic, where he persists in 

 running races and clattering about when you most 

 desire to sleep, and he it is who litters your velvet 

 lawn with countless fragments of pine and fir cones, 

 until what was a sward of beauty looks like a swirl 

 of scraps. All of these might be forgiven, as in 

 doing them the creature merely follows its instincts ; 

 but there are graver charges against him. 



Quick, alert, beautiful, and interesting he may be, 

 yet he has a more than sufficiently strong dash of 

 evil in his nature. To see him cosily hunched upon 

 a limb, his red banderole of a tail draped over his 

 back while he enjoys a siesta ; or when sitting upon 

 his haunches, while his nimble fore paws handle 

 cone, nut, or other food with astonishing dexterity, 

 one never would suspect him of being guilty of any 

 graver crime than petty larceny. Again, as he 

 bounds over the lawn, or rushes along the, to all but 

 him, precarious footing of a narrow and perhaps 

 crooked fence top, or darts up one tree and flings 

 himself to the next in reckless abandon, he appears 

 the personification of the wild, the free, and the 

 innocent. And, lastly, when he hangs head down- 

 ward on a tree-bole, and coughs, scolds, and swears 

 at you in sputtering wrath, as though the torrent of 

 his rage ran freer in the inverted position, it is hard 



