28 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
back down, or the brown creepers, which can go up 
a tree in long spirals but have to fly down. 
A red streak flashed down the limb on which the 
nuthatch was working. That was the squirrel. A 
fraction of a second ahead of the squirrel there was a 
wink of gray and white. That was the nuthatch. 
Before the squirrel could even recover his balance, 
there was a cheerful rat-tat-tat just behind him on the 
other side of the limb. As the squirrel turned, the 
rapping sounded on the other side of the branch. 
His bushy tail quivered, and using some strong 
squirrel-language, he dived back into his hole. He 
was hardly out of sight when the nuthatch was 
tapping again at his door. Once more the squirrel 
rushed out chattering and sputtering. Once more 
the nuthatch was not there. Then he tried chasing 
the bird around the limb, but there was nothing in 
that. The nuthatch could turn in half the time and 
space, and moreover did not have to be afraid of 
falling, for a drop of fifty feet to frozen ground is 
no joke even for a red squirrel. The aggravating 
thing about the nuthatch was that, no matter how 
hard the squirrel chased him, he never stopped for a 
second, tapping away at the branch, feeding even as 
he ran. Finally Mr. Squirrel went back to his house 
and stayed there, while the nuthatch tapped in 
triumph all around his hole, although muffled chat- 
terings from within expressed the squirrel’s unvar- 
nished opinion of that nuthatch. 
When the nuthatch finally flew to another tree, we 
got up and followed a path that twisted through a 
