BACHELOR LIFE AGAIN
[Illustration]
BANNERTAIL was left to himself, like a bachelor driven to his club. He
had become very wise in woodlore so that the food question was no longer
serious. Not counting the remnant of the nuts still unearthed, the
swelling buds of every sweet-sapped tree were wholesome, delicious food,
the inner bark of sweet birch twigs was good, there were grubs and
borers under flakes of bark, the pucker berries or red chokeberries that
grow in the lowlands still hung in clusters. Their puckery sourness last
fall had made all creatures let them alone, but a winter weathering had
sweetened them, and now they were toothsome as well as abundant
sustenance.
[Illustration]
Another, wholly different food, was added to the list. With the bright
spring days the yellow Sapsucker arrived from the South. He is a crafty
bird and a lover of sweets. His plan is to drill with his sharp beak a
hole deep through the bark of a sugar-maple, so the sap runs out and
down the bark, lodging in the crevices; and not one but a score of trees
he taps. Of course the sun evaporates the sap, so it becomes syrup, and
even sugar on the edges. This attracts many spring insects, which get
entangled in the sticky stuff, and the Sapsucker, going from tree to
tree in the morning, feasts on a rich confection of candied bugs. But
many other creatures of the woods delight in this primitive sweetmeat,
and Bannertail did not hesitate to take it when he could find it.
Although animals have some respect for property law among their own
kind, might is the only right they own in dealing with others.
Amusement aplenty Bannertail found in building "drays," or tree nests.
These are stick platforms of the simplest open-work, placed high in
convenient trees. Some are for lookouts, some for sleeping-porches when
the night is hot, some are for the sun-bath that every wise Squirrel
takes. Here he would lie on his back in the morning sun with his belly
exposed, his limbs outsprawling, and let the healing sun-rays strike
through the thin skin, reaching every part with their actinic power.
Bannertail did it because it was pleasant, and he ceased doing it when
it no longer pleased him. Is not this indeed Dame Nature's way? Pain is
her protest against injury, and soothingness in the healthy creature is
the proof that it is doing good. Many disorders we know are met or
warded off by this sun-bath. We know it now. Not long ago we had no
fuller information than had Bannertail on such things. We knew only that
it felt good at the time and left us feeling better; so we took it, as
he took it, when the need of the body called for it, and ceased as he
did, when the body no longer desired it.
_THE WARDEN MEETS AN INVADER_