200 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



squirrel is suddenly scared, one will make as much noise 

 as a dog or a large animal, in his leaps down the hill- 

 side. They can, if necessary, however, as I have said, 

 be very wary, and can slide along among the dry fallen 

 leaves with scarcely a sound to betray them. 



The word squirrel means, from its Greelc derivation, 

 shadow-tailed; that is, the squirrel is enabled to use its 

 tail for a shadow, which was a conception character- 

 istic of the poetic mind of the Greeks. Thoreau, how- 

 ever, was not quite satisfied with that, and made the 

 following whimsical suggestion: "Squirr, 'to throw with 

 a jerk,' seems to have quite as much to do with the 

 name as the Greek 'skia,' 'oura,' shadow and tail." 

 Yet the philologists are right, and the historic deriva- 

 tion will have to stand, no matter how well the little 

 animal may happen to fulfill in its motions the meaning 

 of this other dialect word that is spelt so much like 

 its rightful name. 



I do not believe that squirrels see distinctly, unless 

 their attention is drawn to an object through fear or 

 some other cause. Then they rivet their gaze on it 

 with something of a ferret-like intensity of look in their 

 little black eyes, to crawl toward it, perhaps, by short 

 leaps along a branch, or by coming down gradually on 

 the trunk, or perhaps, and more likely, to scamper away 

 with a little "chuck! chuck!" I remember one morn- 

 ing sitting at the bottom of a hickory, after setting a 

 twitch-up, and being nearly startled out of my skin by 

 suddenly hearing stealthy scratchings on the bark just 

 at my side. Keeping as motionles and still as death, 

 I hesitatingly and slowly turned my eyeballs sideways, 

 and there, within two feet of me, on the tree trunk. 



