For the largest and finest chestnuts I had last fall I was indebted
to the gray squirrels. Walking through the early October woods one
day, I came upon a place where the ground was thickly strewn with
very large unopened chestnut burrs. On examination, I found that
every burr had been cut square off with about an inch of the stem
adhering, and not one had been left on the tree. It was not
accident, then, but design. Whose design? The squirrels'. The
fruit was the finest I had ever seen in the woods, and some wise
squirrel had marked it for his own. The burrs were ripe, and had
just begun to divide, not "threefold," but fourfold, "to show the
fruit within." The squirrel that had taken all this pains had
evidently reasoned with himself thus: "Now, these are extremely
fine chestnuts, and I want them; if I wait till the burrs open on
the tree, the crows and jays will be sure to carry off a great many
of the nuts before they fall; then, after the wind has rattled out
what remain, there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels,
the raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys and the pigs,
to come in for their share; so I will forestall events a little: I
will cut off the burrs when they have matured, and a few days of
this dry October weather will cause every one of them to open on
the ground; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather up my
nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to take the chances of a
prowler like myself coming along, but he had fairly stolen a march
on his neighbors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burrs, I
was half prepared to hear an audible protest from the trees about,
for I constantly fancied myself watched by shy but jealous eyes.
It is an interesting inquiry how the squirrel knew the burrs would
open if left to lie on the ground a few days. Perhaps he did not
know, but thought the experiment worth trying.
The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American product, and might
serve very well as a national emblem. The Old World can beat us on
rats and mice, but we are far ahead on squirrels, having five or
six species to Europe's one.