THE SQUIRREL'S HARVEST. 



mood, as who should say, " Ah, great 

 clumsy creature, you can't follow me here ! 

 Don't you wish you had a gun ? Wouldn't 

 you like to catch me ? " 



This quaint quality of roguishness, so 

 sadly rare in northern animals, the squirrel 

 possesses, with not a few other monkey-like 

 peculiarities. Such mental traits seem, 

 indeed, to spring direct from the wild life 

 of the woodland. The freedom which the 

 squirrel enjoys in his native trees the 

 power he possesses of evading pursuit by 

 darting along the small twigs at the end 

 of a bough gives him a sense of triumph 

 over dog or man which often results in a 

 positive habit of nothing less than conscious 

 mockery. The opossum and the monkeys, 

 equally tree-haunting beasts, have acquired 

 from similar causes the same delight in 

 insulting and ridiculing their baffled enemies. 

 Very monkey-like, too, is the squirrel's 

 pretty way of holding an acorn between 

 his two fore-paws to feed himself; while in 

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