I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 19 
Step by step, impelled by a fatal desire to learn 
more about that fascinating thing in the grass, 
Bunny steals forward — and is lost! 
The male squirrels come back from theif sum- 
mer vagabondage looking very much the worse 
for wear, the result of many a battle, no doubt, 
for they are incorrigible fighters. In the season 
of courtship the males are especially pugnacious, 
and will bite one another severely, or hurl one 
another from lofty limbs. The red squirrels, or 
chickarees, though hardly half as big, will whip 
the grays in a running fight every time; but when 
it comes to a clinch, the superior size and weight 
of the gray give him the victory. There is an 
eternal feud between them because the gray squir- 
rels are continually raiding the hoards of nuts and 
acorns which the provident chickarees stow away 
in odd corners against the coming of winter. The 
holes in our long post-and-rail fence is a favorite 
place of deposition, and in autumn this fence is 
pretty regularly patrolled by a chickaree. If a 
reconnoitring gray even approaches this fence, 
the red will dash at him like wildfire. 
One day a pan of shelled corn stood outside the 
1 There is no truth in the long-lived supposition that the victor 
in one of these knightly combats will mutilate his conquered foe; 
but squirrels are much troubled by parasites in the skin, and in 
certain external organs, and these sometimes cause sores which 
resemble wounds. They fight a good deal, especially the red 
squirrels, which are often obliged to defend their scattered winter 
stores against robbers of their own race, as well as against outsiders, 
