THE PINE NUTS
“IT is the queerest thing!” exclaimed the Ranger’s wife, “what can
have become of those pine nuts I was saving for Christmas. I had fully
a peck in that basket on the top shelf.” She looked doubtfully at
Fuzzy-Wuzz.
“The cub never could have done it,” the Ranger said. “If he had climbed
up there, he would have knocked down a lot of stuff.”
“No, but what can have become of the nuts? There isn’t a sign of mice,
either. And we never have a human thief, away up here in the mountains.
Besides, what a funny thing it would be for a thief just to take the
pine nuts and nothing else.”
“The thief must be some one of our furry friends, some one who is
especially fond of nuts,” suggested the Ranger.
“There is a tiny hole gnawed in the wall up there. I thought it might
be a mouse, but they always leave some sign.”
“Let’s see, now, if there aren’t some footprints to tell the story,”
and the Ranger climbed up on the window sill and began peering about
with a lighted match. “Ho, ho!” he called.
For there, faintly outlined by the dust, was a footprint like that of a
tiny squirrel,--the print of a long, hind foot, with its five delicate
toe marks. And on the edge of the hole the Ranger’s sharp eyes had
spied a hair,--a single hair of some one’s orange colored fur.
“It’s a chipmunk, and he must have sat up here on his hind legs to
sample a nut before he stuffed his cheeks. But imagine how many trips
he must have had to make to carry away all those nuts!”
“Perhaps there was more than one.”
“That’s right. But there are so many tracks running through the dust
that this is the only clear one I see. Must have been made just this
morning, for no dust has settled in it yet. Well, now, the nuts are
gone. And I don’t believe they’ll come for anything more. That frost
last night will send them into winter quarters.”
The Ranger was right about the chipmunks. But he little dreamed what
had driven them to it. Had Fuzzy-Wuzz not found and gobbled up the
nuts they had gathered for themselves, Chuck and Chipper never would
have gotten up the courage to come so often to the cabin, where
Clickety-Clack, the owl, prowled about the dark corners looking for
just such tid-bits as they would make for him.
As it was, Chuck and Chipper were going to have a well-stocked cache
that winter.
“As an actual fact,” said the Ranger that evening, when they had told
the children about it, “I don’t begrudge the little rascals what they
have taken, they are such good foresters.”
“Foresters!” exclaimed the boy, dragging his father to the arm chair by
the fire and snuggling against his knees, for he scented a story.
“You see,” his father told him, “they bury so many nuts that they often
forget where they put them, and these nuts that are planted that way
grow into trees.”
“My!” exclaimed the boy, “wouldn’t a chipmunk be surprised if he knew
he planted trees!”
“He doesn’t know it. It is just a part of Mother Nature’s wonderful
plan for keeping this old world going.”
The children’s mother suddenly laughed. “What do you think I saw
to-day?” she asked them. “Fuzzy-Wuzz curled up asleep under a tree and
looking so much like a hump of earth that a chipmunk hopped off the
trunk and landed square on his nose. I don’t know which was the more
surprised, the cub or the chipmunk.”