WAYS OF NATURE 
Yesterday in my walk I saw where a red squirrel 
had stripped the soft outer bark off a group of red 
cedars to build its winter’s nest with. This also 
seemed fit, — fit that such a creature of the trees 
should not go to the ground for its nest-material, and 
should choose something soft and pliable. Among 
the birches, it probably gathers the fine curling 
shreds of the birch bark. 
Beside my path in the woods a downy woodpecker, 
late one fall, drilled a hole in the top of a small dead 
black birch for his winter quarters. My attention 
was first called to his doings by the white chips upon 
the ground. Every day as I passed I would rap upon 
his tree, and if he was in he would appear at his door 
and ask plainly enough what I wanted now. One 
day when I rapped, something else appeared at the 
door— I could not make out what. I continued my 
rapping, when out came two flying-squirrels. On the 
tree being given a vigorous shake, it broke off at the 
hole, and the squirrels went sliding down the air to 
the foot of a hemlock, up which they disappeared. 
They had dispossessed Downy of his house, had car- 
tied in some grass and leaves for a nest, and were as 
snug as a bug in a rug. Downy drilled another cell 
in a dead oak farther up the hill, and, I hope, passed 
the winter there unmolested. Such incidents, comic 
or tragic, as they chance to strike us, are happening 
all about us, if we have eyes to see them. 
The next season, near sundown of a late Novem- 
20 
