Chickaree and the Vandals

I WAS cutting firewood in the primeval Douglas fir forest when he first appeared. Clearly he had come to investigate the source of the racket made by the gasoline-driven saw.

As the engine sputtered, choked, coughed, and then clattered on, Chickaree edged nearer and nearer, slipping first behind one can and then another on the flat surface of a six-foot stump. He was now so close that when he stuck his head up over a can of hard grease I saw his whiskers move inquiringly on either side of his blunt nose. Without warning, the engine backfired with a series of explosions like small artillery. At the first bang, Chickaree (red or pine squirrel we call him on the Atlantic Coast) fled with a flip of his fluent tail, and we saw him no more that day.

The truck on which we had moved the heavy dragsaw stood a few rods away on a road just swamped through the timber, and in it were some Sweet Boughs, brought along to stave off the chronic hunger of the stout Norwegian youth who was helping me. Not wishing to carry the uneaten apples back home, I hid them at the butt of a second-growth fir, covering them with the leaves of a near-by sword fern that rose clean and untrammeled.

When we returned to the woods the next morning I caught Chickaree in the act of finishing the last apple. He was sitting on top of the broken-down sword fern, deftly peeling the thin yellow skin from a chunk of fruit the size of a hen’s egg. At my approach he slipped behind the fir trunk, still holding the piece of apple in his formidable yellow teeth, peered cautiously round at me, and then vanished in the brush.

On this occasion I had brought down a box filled with Sweet Boughs, and placed it on top of a stump beside the truck. Before night the young Norwegian had eaten most of the apples. Forgetting the squirrel, at the end of the day I left behind the half dozen that remained in the box. When I returned the next morning I found that his lordship had eaten part of the largest and mellowest one, and generously sampled another.

The Norwegian, resenting the theft of his mid-morning lunch, carried the box up to the stump on which we kept the cans and tools. Shortly before noon, as I stood easing the saw through a pitchy knot, I saw Chickaree approaching in a series of graceful loups over the great blocks of sawn timber left behind as we moved down the log. He came on as if bound for nowhere in particular— just fooling about to pass the time.

Pausing on the edge of a block that had been tilted above its fellows, he stuck up his small ears, which seemed too close together for the lower part of his substantial head, and for a time watched with the still regard characteristic of wild things the contraption that provoked so much sound and fury; then he sauntered leisurely over to the box of apples. The ruse was so obvious, so suggestive of the transparent deceptions practised by all of us, that I stood and laughed until the little fellow paused and eyed me for all the world as if he suspected that I had ‘caught on.’

But Chickaree’s love of apples had not run away with a caution older than the first Sweet Bough, older even than the giant firs about him. The box was some eight inches deep, and, standing as it did within a rod of us, he dared not venture into it, as he would have been at our mercy if we chose to creep up on him. Twice he slid in sideways, keeping one eye on us to the last moment, but sprang out again with an alacrity that I suspect only a weasel could equal. For a time he sat on the edge of the box motionless, apparently weighing the pros and cons of the situation; then he dropped soundlessly down and circled a few times about the treasure he had so set his heart upon, as if, like a lover, he found a subtle gratification in mere propinquity.

In one end of the box I had cut a hole for the insertion of my hand when I used it as a milking stool, and through this Chickaree slipped, carefully drawing his tail in behind him. Apparently he thought that by entering the box in this surreptitious way he could keep the vandals at the saw from knowing he was there.

After a few minutes of hiding, he cautiously emerged with an apple that must have weighed more than he did. Grasping it in his human-like hands, he sank his teeth deep into the side, shook it to be sure he had a good hold, and then made for the trunk of a second-growth fir. Tipping his head back until the apple projected well out over his now straight back, he started up the trunk of the tree at a brisk clip, moving with a steadiness and smoothness quite unlike the red squirrel’s usual jerky motion. It looked as if the serious nature of the business in hand made him dispense with all the superfluous fancy gestures common to his kind. That he could even lift the apple surprised me; his present feat seemed nothing short of prodigious. Swiftly but surely, up and up he went, his sinuous tail hugging the rough bark as if he were using it for a prop.

At the height of about fifteen feet he came to a slender branch, green at the tip, but bristling on either side with dead, mossencrusted twigs. Still holding the apple, he started out along its smooth upper surface. But climbing straight up the side of the tree with the apple directly above his head, and under him the rough-ridged bark in which to hook his needle-like claws, proved a much easier task than carrying his treasure along a horizontal branch less than two inches through. At times the apple wabbled dangerously, and the game little fellow had to work with a dexterity that really put him on his mettle.

‘The thief,’ as the Norwegian youth branded him, had proceeded about eight feet in this hazardous fashion before I perceived what he had in mind. Reaching a place where a couple of dead twigs had grown close to each other, he carefully deposited the apple so that it rested between them and against the branch. He let go of his prize with caution, then nudged it gently with his nose, just to try it out. Turning round, he looked down at us with an air of triumph laughable to see.

But one Sweet Bough was not enough to rescue from the noisy vandals who had so ruthlessly invaded his quiet retreat. Darting down the trunk, he reentered the box and emerged with an exceptionally large apple, the one from which he had already eaten the red side when it was back on the other stump. Even the remaining half must have weighed quite as much as the first Sweet Bough, and, owing to its irregular shape, he had added difficulties in balancing it above his head.

When about twelve feet from the ground the soft pulp began to give way under the pressure of his teeth, and he performed the seemingly impossible feat of securing a new hold without touching the apple with his paws, deftly balancing the awkward thing on the tip of his nose until, with a lightninglike jab, he once more sank his teeth into it. This time they held, and on up he went, a good twelve feet above the first treasuretrove, as if in the second venture he were taking no chances on the possible agility of the strange creatures over by the log.

At this height there were a number of branches to choose from. Selecting the sturdiest of them, he made his way out to a spot at which it forked; in the V-shaped opening he placed the apple, the gnawed side up, rocked it gently a couple of times with his right paw, and then started back down the tree.

This time, however, he did not stop to taunt us. Hastening away over the sawn blocks, he disappeared into an undergrowth of hazel bushes, from which, earlier in the season, he doubtless had gathered a generous supply of nuts and stored them in some near-by hollow trunk beyond the reach of the boldest marauder, furred or feathered, that might come that way.

Throughout this fascinating little drama I found it hard to restrain the young Norwegian from seizing the two remaining apples and carrying them to a place of safety. The squirrel gone, he brought them to the log we were sawing and placed them within easy reach. He had stepped round to oil the driving shaft when I spied Chickaree’s head rising unobtrusively above the edge of a block; the next moment there was a blurred streak of red, the flash of an orange belly, and one of the two apples was gone.

The Norwegian turned in time to see Chickaree scurrying down the log, but was too slow to overtake the brazen thief with the chunk of bark hurled after him. Out of immediate danger, the squirrel leapt across to the trunk of a broad-leaved maple, scrambled up nearly to the top with his booty, and, after placing it securely between branching twigs, proceeded to taunt the youth in squirrel language that sounded highly abusive, if not downright scurrilous.

The Norwegian eyed his vilifier solemnly and uttered a parting malediction scarcely printable as he took up the sole remaining apple, sank his fine white teeth into it, and between bites expressed in no uncertain terms his opinion of thieves in general, and of one in particular.