DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY
For several weeks the smell of wood smoke had come from the South. It
was that warning smoke that had kept the Ranger ready at a moment’s
notice from the fire lookouts to summon a hundred helpers from the
lumber camp to cut a fire trench, for in the drier woods of California
raged fearful forest fires.
About that time the cubs began to notice that their woods were being
visited by a number of furred and feathered folk who did not belong
there. Foxes slunk along the shadows as if aware that they were in
unknown territory. A prickly porcupine family, a mother and four
children, came lumbering, fearless and unafraid in their protecting
spines. A black and white striped skunk and her five kittens came soon
after, leaving tiny bearlike footprints, and when one of the young foxes
would have pounced on the littlest kitten, the kitten turned its back
and raised its plumy tail, and stamped its feet angrily, and the mother
fox signalled for her son to run fast, or something terrible would
happen. The skunks also were completely unafraid.
Birds flew in increasing numbers through the tree tops, a few deer came
feeding in a famished manner on the ferns and bracken, and any number of
brown little cottontails came gnawing hungrily at every bit of green
stuff they could reach without being caught. Douglas the squirrel
watched from his tree top in amazement. For it was the squirrels who
came in greatest numbers—gray squirrels and red squirrels and little
striped chipmunks. These fairly swarmed through the tree tops, while the
smoke yellowed the stifling air and the sun glowed red all day long. The
woods in which they had had their homes had burned, and while the wind
for the most part came from the sea and blew the smoke eastward, the
more experienced of the four-footed folk knew that the way to escape was
neither to go with the wind nor against it, but at right angles to the
march of the flames.
Douglas, who had come to feel that he owned the woods around Mother
Brown Bear’s den, swore and scolded and barked insults at the refugees,
but it didn’t do him a particle of good. The best he could do was to
hold his own particular spruce tree from their onslaught. The rich,
nut-filled spruce cones and the great, heavy yellow pine cones on which
he had feasted fat all summer, and all the huge stores of these good
things that he had hidden in every hollow log and cranny of the
rocks—all these riches that would have lasted him for years if left
undisturbed were being appropriated by the starving hordes whose own
stores had been burned.
If the cubs hadn’t been so fond of nuts themselves that they really
preferred them to squirrel meat, they would have had a great time that
summer, for some of the younger squirrels were not a bit cautious.
“What are all you folks coming here for, anyway?” Douglas demanded, as
an old gray squirrel came running along his favorite limb.
“For something to eat,” answered the old fellow wearily, cutting off a
spruce cone and turning it rapidly in his paws as he cut one scale after
another to lay bare the nut. “Personally, I mean to keep on till I find
a certain grove of lodgepole pines that I happen to know about.”
“Why, are they better than these?” Douglas demanded impudently.
“The nuts are no better, perhaps, but there are sure to be more of them.
I’ve traveled many a weary mile since my youth, for my family has been
driven by fire, or drouth and poor nut crops, to one grove after
another; but never yet have I known a lodgepole not to be full of nuts;
for if one year’s crop has failed, there are still the crops of past
years clinging to the branches. No, sir! I never knew a grove of
lodgepole pines where there weren’t nuts in abundance.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you move into one long ago?” Douglas was still
rude.
“Why don’t you move somewhere else yourself?” asked the old squirrel
patiently.
“Because this is _my_ tree! These are _my_ woods! This is my _home_! My
family and friends all live right around here. What a question to ask!
Why should I move? Why should I go some place else?” he barked, his tail
jerking angrily at every phrase.
“Don’t you see,” the old squirrel chittered mildly, “that _we_ love our
homes? Why, every last one of us had our own tree that no one else ever
dreamed of intruding upon, except to run through the branches when it
didn’t seem safe on the ground. Of course we never objected to anyone
running across our back yard if he had to. But no one ever dreamed of
touching our stores. Why, we knew every twig and knothole, and every
place a nut was hidden. I assure you we never would have left our homes
if we hadn’t been driven to it. But I can see your heart has never been
softened by trouble. You have had life too easy here.” But Douglas was
not listening. He had started down to fight and threaten and try to
drive a family of half-starved refugees from some stores he had thought
safely hidden along the under side of a log. Mrs. Douglas, ashamed of
her mate, stayed close to her nest, though she saw her pantries being
invaded. “I do hope Douglas won’t give them a wrong impression about our
family,” she told herself.
Just then Chinook, the little brown bear, came along. “I’ll eat you
alive!” he challenged Douglas, and started merrily after him. By the
time Douglas had thrown his pursuer off the track and returned to the
scene, his stores had been raided by dozens of immigrant squirrels.
“Now I’ll have to work hard all fall,” Douglas complained to any who
might listen, “to collect enough for winter.”
“Why not?” called the old squirrel. “It isn’t the way of the woods to
corner more than you can eat. What right had you to those nuts, when
others were starving? No one will bother your cache if you keep it down
to a reasonable size, but beyond that, these woods are for all. If
anything, it is you red squirrels who do the stealing from us gray
squirrels,”
What Douglas retorted wouldn’t be fit to print.
“My!” chirped a young gray squirrel who had been down getting a quick
lunch. He had been following his more experienced fellow refugee for
miles. “I had the awfullest time crossing the open spaces! Did you ever
see so many hawks and owls in your life?”
“That is why I always went around the long way where I could leap from
one tree to another,” said the old squirrel. “We didn’t cross half as
many open spaces as some of those young fellows who got caught.”
“How ever did you know where to go?” marvelled the young squirrel.
“Oh, I always have an eye out for a possible emergency, and every time I
go on a vacation ramble, I notice where there is good feeding, and then
I try to make a mental map of the region. You young fellows are more
agile, but you haven’t had our experience, all the same. Every summer,
when it gets to a time when everything is ripe and I can live off the
country, I go forest-cruising, and I don’t do it altogether for a good
time, either.”
“That brown squirrel with the orange underneath, he’s a handsome
fellow,” ventured the young gray squirrel.
“Douglas?” The old squirrel sniffed in disgust. “I much prefer that
fellow,” nodding to where a big Oregon chipmunk sat on a stump and gave
every passer-by a sociable “Chuck! Chuck!” He had only a few black
stripes to adorn the brown of his coat.
“Why, he’s the plainest chipmunk I ever saw,” said the young gray
squirrel. “Not half as handsome as ours.”
“All the same, I’ll wager he never has a grouch like the kind your
handsome Douglas has just been exhibiting. You certainly come to know
squirrel nature when a big calamity like this rubs off our surface
manners!”
“You certainly do, sir,” agreed the young squirrel. “Here comes Douglas
back again.”
“To jaw us, I suppose. If I weren’t so rheumatic, I’d lick him for his
impudence.”
“I’ll lick him for you,” volunteered the young squirrel, and the last
thing Chinook saw, Douglas was being chased ferociously through the tree
tops.