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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 



100 



