90 WINTER 



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, on one occasion when he was 

 hunting, saw a gray squirrel miss its footing in a tree 

 and fall, breaking its neck upon a log beneath. 



I have frequently known squirrels to fall short dis- 

 tances, and once I saw a red squirrel come to grief 

 like this gray squirrel. He was scurrying through 



the tops of some lofty pitch 

 pines, a little hurried and 

 flustered at 

 sight of me, 

 and, neariug 

 the end of a high branch, was in the act 



O ' 



sgz of springing, when the dead tip cracked 

 under him and he came tumbling head- 

 long. The height must have been forty 

 feet, so that before he reached the ground he had 

 righted himself, his tail out and legs spread, 

 but the fall was too great. He hit the earth heav- 

 ily, and before I could reach him he lay dead upon 

 the needles, with blood oozing from his eyes and 

 nostrils. 



Unhoused and often unsheltered, the wild things 

 suffer as we hardly yet understand. No one can esti- 

 mate how many of our wild creatures die in a year 



