12 SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS 



teeth, and suck the sweet liquid as it slowly 

 oozes out. It is not much as food, but evidently 

 it helps. 



I have said the red squirrel does not lay by a 

 store of food for winter use, like the chipmunk 

 and the wood-mice ; yet in the fall he sometimes 

 hoards in a tentative, temporary -kind of way. I 

 have seen his savings — butternuts and black 

 walnuts — stuck here and there in saplings and 

 trees near his nest ; sometimes carefully inserted 

 in the upright fork of a limb or twig. One day, 

 late in November, I counted a dozen or more 

 black walnuts put away in this manner in a 

 little grove of locusts, chestnuts, and maples by 

 the roadside, and could but smile at the wise 

 forethought of the rascally squirrel. His sup- 

 plies were probably safer that way than if more 

 elaborately hidden. They were well distributed ; 

 his eggs were not all in one basket, and he could 

 go away from home without any fear that his 

 storehouse would be broken into. in his absence. 

 The next week, when I passed that way, the 

 nuts were all gone but two. I saw the squirrel 

 that doubtless laid claim to them, on each oc- 

 casion. 



There is one thing the red squirrel knows un- 

 erringly that I do not (there are probably several 

 other things) ; that is, on which side of the but- 



