CHUMMY TELLS THE STORY OF A NAUGHTY SQUIRREL
“Oh, how snug!” I exclaimed. “You have a little hall and a bedroom,
and how clean it is! The old birds say they like to see a bird tidy
his nest from one year to another. Do you keep the same mate?”
“I do,” he replied. “I always have Jennie, but as you probably know,
sparrows don’t pair till spring. In the winter the birds are in
flocks. Jennie is spending these hard months with her parents downtown
near the station because the food supply is better there. I often go
to see her, and I expect her back soon to begin housekeeping. We like
to get ahead of the others in nesting, for there are evil birds who
try every year to drive us from our desirable home.”
“Everything born has to fight,” I said cheerfully.
“I don’t know much about canaries,” said Chummy. “All that I have seen
were very exclusive and haughty, and looked down on us street birds.”
“Some of my family are that way,” I sighed, “but I have been much with
human beings and my little head has more wisdom in it.”
“I like you,” Chummy began to say heartily; then he stopped short,
cried out, and said, “Duck your head quick and come inside!”
I scuttled from his wide open hallway into his little bedroom,
wondering what had happened. A shower of nutshells had just been
dropped past our beaks. “Who’s doing that?” I asked.
“Squirrie—he hates me because he can’t get a foothold to explore this
house.”
“And who is Squirrie?” I asked.
“The worst little rascal of a squirrel that you ever saw. He respects
nobody, and what do you think is his favorite song?—not that he can
sing. His voice is like a crow’s.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of songs a squirrel would sing,” I said.
“I’ll run over it for you,” said Chummy, “though I haven’t a very good
voice myself.
“‘I care for nobody, no not I,
And nobody cares for me.
I live in the middle of Pleasant Street
And happy will I be!’
“Now what do you think of that for a selfish song in these hard
times?”
I laughed heartily. “Perhaps you take Squirrie too seriously. I’d like
to see the little rogue. Does he live in this house of yours?”
“Yes, right up over us under the roof. He gnawed a hole through from
the outside this summer, and stored an enormous quantity of nuts that
he stole from good Mrs. Lacey at the corner grocery on the next
street. He has an enormous place to scamper about in if he wishes to
stretch his legs. He says in the corner of it he has a delightfully
warm little bed-place, lined with tiny soft bits of wool and fur torn
from ladies’ dresses, for he has the run of most of the bedrooms in
the neighborhood. Have you seen the two old maids that live in the big
attic of this house?”
“Yes, my mistress calls them the bachelor girls,” I said politely.
“Girls,” he said scornfully; “they’re more like old women. Well,
anyway, they’re afraid of mice and rats, and when Squirrie wakes up
and scampers across the boards to his pantry to get a nut, and rolls
it about, and gnaws it, and nibbles it, they nearly have a fit, and
run to the landlady and hurry her up the three flights of stairs.
“She listens and pants, and says, ‘It must be a rat, it’s too noisy
for a mouse.’ Then she goes down cellar and gets a rat-trap and props
its big jaws open with a bit of cheese and sets it in a corner of the
room.
“Squirrie watches them through a tiny hole in the trapdoor in the
ceiling that he made to spy on them, and he nearly dies laughing, for
he loves to tease people, and he hisses at them in a low voice, ‘The
trap isn’t made yet that will catch me. I hope you’ll nip your own old
toes in it.’”
“What very disrespectful talk,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, he doesn’t care for anybody, and the other night his dreadful
wish came true, and he was so delighted that he most lost his breath
and had squirrel apoplexy.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
The sparrow ran his little tongue out over his beak, for he dearly
loves to talk, and went on, “You see, the bachelor ladies were moving
their furniture about to make their room look prettier, and they
forgot the trap, and Miss Maggie did catch her toe in it, and there
was such a yelling and screaming that it woke me out of a sound sleep.
“The lodgers all came running upstairs with fire extinguishers, and
flat irons, and pokers, and one man had a revolver. I thought the
house was on fire, and I flew out of my little hole in the wall to
this tree. I came here, and from a high limb I could look right in the
attic window. The lodgers were all bursting into the room and poor
Miss Maggie, in curl papers and pink pajamas, was shrieking and
dancing on one foot, and holding up the other with the trap on the toe
of her bedroom slipper.
“Out on the roof, Squirrie was bending down to look at her. He was
lying on his wicked little stomach, and he laughed so hard that at
last he had to roll over in the snow on the roof to get cool. He
looked terrible, and we all hoped he was going to pass away in the
night, but the next morning as we sat round on the tree talking about
him, and trying to think of some good thing he had done, he poked his
head out of the hole which is his front door, and made the most ugly
faces at us that you can imagine. He is certainly a dreadful creature,
and I shall be sorry for the housekeepers about here when the spring
comes.”
I smiled at Chummy’s earnestness and settled down more comfortably
with my breast against the bricks. The day was so pleasant that I
thought I would stay out a little longer. I knew by the look in his
little, bright eye that the sparrow liked talking to me. We were in a
patch of sunlight that crept in his front door, and after the long
cold winter the nice warm feeling on our feathers was very comforting.
“How does Squirrie trouble the housekeepers?” I asked.
“Well, to begin with, he bothers them because he has no home duties.
He is an ugly, odd, old bachelor, and never gets a mate in the spring,
because no self-respecting young squirrel will take up with such a
scamp.”
“Poor creature!” I said. “It is enough to make any one ugly to live
alone.”
Chummy went on: “Squirrie has been two years only in this
neighborhood. He never stays long anywhere, for his bad deeds make
enemies for him, and he is driven away. When he first came here he
lived in Snug Hollow, that big hole in the half-dead elm at the
corner. Just opposite the tree is a lodging-house. You can see it from
here, that one with the upper verandas. It is kept by a soldier’s
widow, and she is rather poor. She could not afford to put in window
screens, and Squirrie had a royal time with one of her lodgers, a
young student up in the third story. He was very odd, and would eat no
meat. He lived on nuts, cheese, fruit, eggs, and bread—just the
things Squirrie likes. So he made up his mind to board with the
student. The young man was a fresh-air fiend, and never closed his
windows. This just suited Squirrie, so whenever this young Dolliver
went over to the University, Squirrie would spring from a tree branch
to the roof, and was down on the veranda and into the room in a trice.
He rarely ate anything on the spot. He carried everything away to his
hole in the tree, so the student thought that the maid who did his
room must be stealing his things.
“He questioned her, but she said she knew nothing about his food. Then
he locked the chest of drawers where he kept his supplies. Squirrie
climbed up the back, enlarged a knothole and went in that way. The
student thought the girl must have a key. So he went to the landlady.
She dismissed the maid and got another, but the student’s things went
faster than ever.
“The next thing was that the student lost his temper and told the
soldier’s widow that she would do well to feed her maid better, and
she told him that if he didn’t like her house he could get out.
“However, she sent this second girl away and got another. It was the
same old story—nuts, fruit, cheese, bread still vanished. Then the
student got in a worse temper, and turned all the clothes out of his
trunk and made that his pantry, and carried the key in his pocket.
“Now he lost nothing, for Squirrie, clever as he was, could not get in
a locked trunk. He was up a tree, indeed, but he was clever enough to
find a way down. The soldier’s widow was his next victim, and he would
watch the windows and see where she was, and often when her back was
turned he would dart in the house, seize some bit of food, and run
away with it.
“‘Now,’ said the soldier’s widow, ‘this last girl is dishonest, too.
She can’t get into the student’s trunk, and she has turned against
me.’ So she sent her away, though the girl cried and said she was well
brought up, and would not steal a pin.
“By this time the house had such a bad name among maids that the
soldier’s widow could not get another, and she had too much work to do
and became thin and miserable, and still the stealing went on, till at
last she said, ‘I must be a thief myself, and don’t know it.’
“However, any one who does wrong is always paid up for it, and
Squirrie was soon caught. By this time he was so fat he could scarcely
run, and he had enough nuts and hard biscuits laid up to last him for
two winters. To keep down his flesh, he began to tease the dog in the
lodging-house. Not in the daytime, for he did not wish to be seen. He
used to chatter, chatter to Rover as he lay on the porch in the warm
summer evenings, and tease him by sitting up on his hind legs and
daring him to play chase. There was no cat in the house to head
Squirrie off, so he would run round and round the yard and sometimes
in the front door, and out the back, with old Rover loping after him,
his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his face quite silly.
“‘The dog has gone crazy,’ said the soldier’s widow one evening, as
she saw Rover running about the yard and sometimes down to the old
barn behind the house and back again. ‘He will have to be poisoned.’
“Rover was nearly crazy. He left the mischievous squirrel and ran to
his good mistress, and put his paws on her knees, but she did not
understand and pushed him away.
“I felt terribly and wondered whether I could not do something to
help.”
“How did you know all this?” I interrupted. “You would be in bed dark
evenings.”
“Why surely you know,” said Chummy, “that all birds of the day tell
their news to the birds of the night—to owls, to bats, and even to
some insects. Then, in turn, we get the news of the night. I had a
very smart young screech-owl watching Squirrie for me.”
“Yes, yes,” I said hurriedly. “We cage birds are more handicapped than
you wild ones. I know, though, about the bird exchange. I’ve heard the
old birds say that they have even had to depend on cockroaches
sometimes for items of news, when they couldn’t get about themselves.”
“Well,” continued Chummy, “I made up my mind something had to be done
to enlighten the soldier’s widow, so the next morning I just hovered
round and gave up all thought of breakfast for myself, though of
course I rose extra early, and fed the young ones before my mate got
up.
“I watched the soldier’s widow when she took the bottle of milk from
the refrigerator and put it on the pantry shelf. I watched her when
she poured some in a little pitcher and put it on the dining-room
table. I still kept my eye on her when she went to the back door to
speak to the vegetable man, but after that I watched Squirrie.
“The little beast was darting into the dining-room. He went straight
for the milk pitcher and holding on the edge with his paws, he ran his
head away down into it, to get a good long drink.
“I lighted on the window sill and gave a loud squawk. The soldier’s
widow turned round, looked past me, and saw Squirrie with his head in
the milk pitcher. She gave a loud and joyful squeal, dropped the
cabbage she was holding and ran in the room, just in time to see
Squirrie with a very milky face darting out the other door to the
front of the house.
“Oh, how happy she was! It had all come over her in a flash what a
goose she had been not to have guessed it was a squirrel that was
defrauding her. She ran up to the student’s room to tell him the good
news, and he went to the window and shook his fist at Squirrie and
called him the red plague.”
“What did Squirrie say?” I asked.
“Squirrie said, ‘I don’t care,’ and instead of hiding from them, as he
had always done before, he came boldly out on a branch, and licked his
milky paws. Then he moved six doors down the street to a house where
two maiden ladies lived. They have gone away now, but they kept a
small tea-room and sold cake and candy. Squirrie went creeping round
them, and they thought it was cute to have a little pet, so they used
to put nuts for him on their windows.”
“Didn’t they know what mischief he had done at the corner?” I asked.
“No—you young things don’t know how it is in a city. No one knows or
cares who lives near by. In the nice, kind country you know everyone
for miles round. Well, Squirrie got so familiar with these ladies that
he used to sleep in the house and tease the family cat. He didn’t do
much mischief at first. He knew he was in a good place, but one day
just before Easter, Satan entered into him, and he played the poor
ladies a very scurvy trick.
“They had been getting their baskets all ready for Easter sales, and
had them in rows on a big table—such cute-looking little Japanese
baskets, they were, all red and yellow and filled with layers of nuts
and candy.
“This day both ladies went downtown to buy more things for more
baskets, and Squirrie got into the room and began playing with those
that were finished. I saw him through the window, but what could I do?
When I chirped to him that he was a bad beast to spoil the work of the
two ladies who had been so good to him, he chattered his teeth and
made a face at me.
“Now, if he had just played with one or two baskets, it would not have
mattered so much, but he is like Silly Bob in cherry time.”
“Who is Silly Bob?” I asked.
“A robin who is weak in his head. Instead of eating a few cherries, he
runs all over a tree, and gives each cherry a dab in the cheek—ruins
them all and makes the gardeners furious with him. Squirrie ran up and
down the rows of tempting-looking baskets, so afraid was he that he
could not get all his mischief in before the ladies came back. He bit
a few straws on the top of each one, then he attacked the sides and
then the bottom. Then he tore the covers off and threw the candy and
nuts on the floor.”
“What! Out of every one?” I asked, in a shocked voice.
“Every one, I tell you. Oh, they were a sight! Every basket was
ruined. The nuts he carried off to his hole in the tree.”
“And what did the poor ladies say when they came back?” I asked.
“You should have seen their faces. They had paid fifty cents apiece
for the baskets, and you know how expensive nuts and candies and
raisins are. Then they got angry and hired a carpenter to come and
nail up Squirrie’s hole in the tree, taking good care to see that he
was out of it first. If he went near the house, they threw things at
him.”
“And what did Squirrie do?”
“He said he was tired of city life and needed country air, and he went
up on North Hill, and stayed till the ladies moved away, then he came
back to their neighborhood and played another trick almost as bad, on
a nice old grandfather.”