Gray Squirrel 



For the red-shouldered hawks are dangerous enemies, and the 

 hours they habitually choose to spend in hunting correspond 

 exactly with the squirrel's working hours from sunrise to ten 

 o'clock in the morning and from three in the afternoon until near 

 sunset. They watch cat-like for an opportunity to take some un- 

 happy squirrel unawares, or circling high above the treetops their 

 keen eyes penetrate the foliage from constantly varying positions, 

 searching branch and hole and the carpet of fallen leaves beneath 

 till, perceiving the flicker of a burly tail, the long wings close 

 of a sudden fan-like, and the hunter goes down with a rush to 

 match his quickness against the quickness of a squirrel. Or the 

 still more treacherous goshawk and cooper's hawk, with their 

 narrower wings and slender, yacht-like build, shoot along with baf- 

 fling swiftness through the undergrowth, just in order to surprise 

 the busy harvesters at their work. 



The gray squirrels also know that, in the fall, the men that 

 are found in the woods, unlike the town variety, carry guns 

 and feed on squirrels to a certain extent. With very little en- 

 couragement gray squirrels will soon learn to pay you frequent 

 visits, in your room, if you will only leave a window open for 

 them within jumping distance of their treetop, a few nuts or a 

 piece of cake quickly overcoming their shyness. In fact, they often 

 prove to be something of a nuisance about the house. Even in 

 places where they are looked upon as legitimate game they lose 

 much of their fear of man during the close season of spring 

 and summer. 



Their habits vary but little whether they live in deep forests or 

 within the limits of a town. Finding a suitable hole in the tree, they 

 enlarge it to suit them, preferring to have plenty of room inside to 

 move about in. The other day I watched one gathering dead leaves 

 for his bed in an old apple-tree. He would run out along the 

 branches to where the brown leaves hung shrivelled in clusters of 

 two or three, rustling in the November wind. Biting off the twig 

 that bore them, he would hurry back with it to his hole. 

 Once the leaves were all brushed from the twig as he went in, 

 and, if ever there was evident surprise and annoyance, it was 

 depicted on his little gray face when a few seconds later he peered 

 out of his doorway, looking for the leaves that he missed. Often 

 half a dozen or more will occupy the same hole, and though 

 the old males are apt to be unpleasantly ugly and tyrannical, 



