A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 



skulking and hiding all along his journey. His ene- 

 mies are keen and watchful and likely to appear at 

 any moment, and he knows it, not so much by 

 experience as by instinct. His young are timid and 

 watchful the first time they emerge from the den 

 into the light of day. 



Then a red squirrel comes spinning along. By 

 jerks and nervous, spasmodic spurts he rushes 

 along from cover to cover like a soldier dodging the 

 enemy's bullets. When he discovers me, he pauses, 

 and with one paw on his heart appears to press a 

 button, that lets off a flood of snickering, explosive 

 sounds that seem like ridicule of me and my work. 

 Failing to get any response from me, he presently 

 turns, and, springing from the wall to the bending 

 branch of a near apple-tree, he rushes up and disap- 

 pears amid the foliage. Presently I see him on the 

 end of a branch, where he seizes a green apple not 

 yet a third grown, and, darting down to a large 

 horizontal branch, sits up with the apple in his 

 paws and proceeds to chip it up for the pale, unripe 

 seeds at its core, all the time keenly alive to possible 

 dangers that may surround him. What a nervous, 

 hustling, highstrung creature he is — a live wire at 

 all times and places ! That pert curl of the end of his 

 tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting through 

 the shell of a nut, is expressive of his character. 

 What a contrast his nervous and explosive activity 

 presents to the more sedate and dignified life of the 

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