day I threw a pamphlet so as to strike 
just above his nose while at his mis- 
chief. It frightened him badly, and 
he suspected that the scare had come 
out of the wall. But he could not re- 
sist the fascination of this sport, and it 
was interesting to watch him approach 
and try by all sorts of devices of his 
tail to see if the enemy were within. 
If he were walking past or around 
anything that he feared he kept his 
tail stretched at full length on the side 
of his body that was next the object — 
sometimes he held it many inches from 
himself. If something moved sud- 
denly in front of him as he ran, his tail 
shot over him away ahead of his nose, 
as if projected there by his sudden 
stop. But it was the natural instinct 
of thrusting his tail at anything threat- 
ening him too suddenly for flight. 
Much of his play at times was a kind 
of mock fright in which he seemed to 
imagine himself pursued by all kinds 
of enemies — even myself — and the 
most familiar objects becoming ter 
rible. Then the use he made of his 
tail was most exaggerated, having in 
it perhaps some of the elements of ter- 
rifying the enemy, as seen in the 
swelled tails of cats, the bristles of 
hogs, dogs, etc. 
• One could not resist the impression 
that the tail was thrown out as a shield 
or a screen, but this did not always 
seem a satisfactory explanation, for it 
was certainly a very frail thing and 
very conspicuous. Besides, it would 
seem to furnish the enemy a good han- 
dle to catch hold of. 
The theory has been advanced that 
this last is the very purpose of this use 
of the tail; and from my study of this 
pet I became convinced that he thrust 
out his tail when suddenly surprised in 
the hope that it might be taken and his 
body left. The skin on the tail of most 
rodents (of which the squirrel is one) 
slips easily from the bone, and leaves, 
to a grasping enemy, often a little 
bunch of "hide and hair." So Bunny 
offers this — feeling that he would 
rather leave his tail in jeopardy and ro 
into life whole otherwise. The glass- 
snake (a lizard) in its efforts to escape, 
frequently breaks off a portion of its 
tail, which the pursuing enemy may 
stop to capture while the body wriggles 
into safety. 
This, likewise, is doubtless one of the 
reasons why the squirrel insists upon 
the tail's being always curled up over 
his back while he is absorbed in eating. 
It is not always merely a beautiful 
pose. As he thus sits in the trees his 
greatest enemies are the various large 
birds of prey which may dart down on 
him from above. Now, this mass of 
tail that is above him is apt to mislead 
the aim of the enemy, and, like the 
pioneer's cap thrust around the tree, is 
intended to draw the fire into a harm- 
less medium. 
There can be no doubt that a squir- 
rel uses his tail to steer him in a leap, 
much as the tail steers the boy's com- 
mon kite. Perhaps, also, it acts slightly 
as a balance, but in this respect its 
greatest use must lie in its "up and 
down" rudder effect — or rather para- 
chute-like effect — as he makes those 
tremendous leaps from a tall treetop 
to the earth. 
Here it comes well into play in les- 
sening the shock of alighting, an emer- 
gency enabling him to escape some 
enemies — as a weasel or mink, perhaps 
— which may chase him around in the 
trees. 
The arrangement of the long hairs, 
projecting out sidewise on the bone, is 
strikingly like that of the feathers on 
the tail of the very earliest reptile-like 
birds which had long bony tails, used 
doubtless as the squirel's, since they 
were down-sailers rather than up-flut- 
terers — if I may be allowed to so com- 
pound my words and ideas. Some 
other downward-leaping mammals 
have the hairs similarly arranged. An- 
other rodent, the anomalure, which 
flies down, as a flying-squirrel, by thin 
membranes, has special horny scales 
on the under side of its tail either to 
assist in climbing or to resist slipping 
down when a tree trunk is grasped. 
The squirrel's tail, therefore, is a fac- 
tor of his safety, as well as a feature of 
his ornamentation. 
Another use which he makes of it is 
that when he "lies down to pleasant 
dreams" it forms "the drapery of his 
couch" — a coverlid for his head and 
body. 
