28 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



back down, or the brown creepers, which can go up 

 a tree in long spirals but have to fly down. 



A red streak flashed down the limb on which the 

 nuthatch was working. That was the squirrel. A 

 fraction of a second ahead of the squirrel there was a 

 wink of gray and white. That was the nuthatch. 

 Before the squirrel could even recover his balance, 

 there was a cheerful rat-tat-tat just behind him on the 

 other side of the limb. As the squirrel turned, the 

 rapping sounded on the other side of the branch. 

 His bushy tail quivered, and using some strong 

 squirrel-language, he dived back into his hole. He 

 was hardly out of sight when the nuthatch was 

 tapping again at his door. Once more the squirrel 

 rushed out chattering and sputtering. Once more 

 the nuthatch was not there. Then he tried chasing 

 the bird around the limb, but there was nothing in 

 that. The nuthatch could turn in half the time and 

 space, and moreover did not have to be afraid of 

 falling, for a drop of fifty feet to frozen ground is 

 no joke even for a red squirrel. The aggravating 

 thing about the nuthatch was that, no matter how 

 hard the squirrel chased him, he never stopped for a 

 second, tapping away at the branch, feeding even as 

 he ran. Finally Mr. Squirrel went back to his house 

 and stayed there, while the nuthatch tapped in 

 triumph all around his hole, although muffled chat- 

 terings from within expressed the squirrel's unvar- 

 nished opinion of that nuthatch. 



When the nuthatch finally flew to another tree, we 

 got up and followed a path that twisted through a 



