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[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
THE TRAGEDY.
We had a very cold snap the last fortnight in January. Morning after
morning the water, and also the milk, in the squirrel-house were frozen
into solid blocks of ice. I did not worry. I thought squirrels were
such hardy little animals. The year before, Bunty and Fritz had lived
happily through the same conditions, and been healthy and well all
the time. I did not take into account that both these squirrels, being
so tame and confiding, were never afraid to come inside the room, and
often spent the coldest nights sleeping together in the serge bag
hanging behind the curtains. This must have kept them very warm all
night. Peter and Ruby were, on the contrary, so wild and timid that
nothing would induce them to remain long in my room.
[Illustration]
Little Peter, it is true, did often slip into the serge bag in the
daytime; but the maid, drawing the curtains at night, annoyed and
startled him, and he generally bolted for the cage.
I consoled myself with the thought that he and Ruby would keep quite
warm cuddled up together in the sleeping-box. And besides, was not
Fritz exceedingly well and lively all the time out of doors?
[Illustration: I saw them huddled together on the floor of the cage.
_See page 54._]
Poor little things! I don’t think they did sleep together. The box
was partitioned inside, and I think each kept entirely to its own
compartment; and Peter, being the male, would come off worst as to
nesting material.
[Illustration]
I noticed that he was not well on the 25th January. The entry in my
diary is: “Peter looks miserable, eats scarcely anything, and sleeps
twenty-three hours and three-quarters out of the twenty-four.”
If then I had only known! If I had kept him inside my room, furnished
the serge bag with heaps of cotton wool, and never let him spend the
night in the outside cage, I should in all probability have saved his
little life.
It never entered my head at this time that he had got a chill. I
thought he was “out of sorts” with the approach of spring. I remembered
that Bunty had seemed seedy early in February the year before, and
that with complete change of diet she had quickly recovered. I
remembered that I had given her meal-worms, which she ate greedily from
my hand.
“Finger-sauce” always tempted her, whereas my poor, wild little Peter
would never come near me. He would feed while I was in the room, but if
I stirred so much as a hand would be off as fast as he could go. This
was most disheartening after nine months’ captivity, and after having
reared him from babyhood. There was something inherently untamable in
him, and though I longed inexpressibly to mother and warm and coax him,
I was powerless to make him better. His weakness increased, he became
cruelly emaciated, and I was compelled to watch day by day the advance
of a mortal illness.
He would never eat from my hand, and though I put meal-worms into his
food dish, he would not touch them. Sunflower seeds at this time were
almost the only things he would eat, and but few of them. I was afraid
that an exclusive diet of them was bad for his liver, and therefore
gave them but sparingly. Poor little fellow! had I only known it, they
were the best food for him, being most nutritious.
His fur was staring, and he never seemed to have strength enough to
clean himself. All his little lickings and bitings and scratchings
ceased. As the days passed he became more and more feeble. I only
saw him for five or ten minutes in the twenty-four hours. He became
painfully thin; his lustrous eyes were dim and apparently sunk in their
sockets, instead of bulging out as all squirrels’ eyes do.
[Illustration]
What vexed me was my powerlessness, and his pitiful shrinking from me.
When I tried to coax him with endearing words, and food in my hand,
he would feebly scramble away from me and cease eating altogether.
“Why, oh, why!” I asked myself bitterly, “did I ever have squirrels in
confinement?”
Fritz was perfectly well and strong out in the open, bounding about
from tree to tree, and voraciously hungry whenever he visited the stump
or the nut traps.
Still I never guessed that Peter was suffering from a chill.
“Squirrels,” I read in a natural history book--no natural history books
tell one much about them--“squirrels invariably die of one thing, and
that is inflammation of the lungs; and nothing can cure them--they die
in a very few days.”
It did not seem to me possible that Peter had inflammation of the
lungs. There was no cough, no running at the nose--just emaciation and
feebleness and loss of appetite. I gave him milk with sugar in it every
day. He took a few tiny laps of it, and I thought it must be nourishing
and helpful. I learnt afterwards that milk was one of the worst things
to give. The books said that squirrels died of lung trouble “in a very
few days.” Peter was ill more than four weeks. Soon he became too
feeble to crack his nuts, so I cracked them for him; and he would eat
perhaps one and a half during the five or ten minutes he was out of the
sleeping-box in the mornings.
It was melancholy to see the effort it was to the poor little creature
to climb back to his nest. He had to wait for breath and for strength
four or five times before he finally disappeared.
[Illustration]
By the 14th February Ruby, who had hitherto kept well and sprightly,
though she also slept twenty-three hours and a half out of the
twenty-four--unlike Fritz, who was to be seen several times a day in
the coldest weather--Ruby, to my great grief, began to exhibit the
same signs of illness as poor little Peter had shown. Her coat became
rough and staring, her eyes sunken and dull, and her appetite nil.
She grew as emaciated as he, and as painfully feeble. Morning after
morning it was more and more difficult to her to clamber down from her
sleeping-box, and worse to clamber up again. She, too, lost strength
even to crack her nuts. In vain I bought grapes and every dainty I
could think of.
[Illustration]
It was too pitiful to see them. Squirrels, as a rule, will rarely or
never eat together--as one springs up another springs down. If these
two happened to be feeding at the same hour, it was always in different
parts of the cage or of my room. There seems a sort of etiquette about
this, and it is never transgressed. But the day before my little
squirrels died, I saw them both huddled together on the floor of the
cage. Peter’s little fore paw was over Ruby’s neck, and their piteous
helplessness and feebleness were very touching.
It may be asked, why did I not take them into the warmth of my room
when I first noticed something amiss? But I was afraid of adding to
their distress--I was so firmly convinced that animals prefer to be
let alone when they are out of sorts, and that nature cures in her own
way with plenty of sleep. The nesting-box was six or seven feet from
the floor of the cage and difficult to get at, through perches and the
branches of the shrub that grew up inside against the wall. I ought to
have unhooked the box and brought the squirrels inside altogether long
ago, when day after day there was a black frost and a bitter biting
north-east wind.
I believe now, looking back, that if I had done this I should not have
lost them; but they were so nervous and shy, I was afraid of worrying
and distressing them by changing their quarters.
Unfortunately, the wall of my pets’ cage faced north. The winter
sunshine used to shine for an hour or so a day upon the top of the
climbing pole, and in health this sunny perch used to be a favourite
place with them. But when they were ill they never attempted to climb
as high. Having quenched their thirst, and nibbled an atom of food,
they struggled painfully to regain their box, and hid away for the rest
of the day.
[Illustration]
I felt it cruel to disturb them--“Sick animals curl themselves up
and sleep alone in the dark,” thought I, “and they will be best left
unmolested.” Besides, as I have said before, Bunty and Fritz had lived
all through last winter in the same place, and I did not imagine that
it could be the cold that was killing these two, more especially as the
cold snap was all over--February came in mildly. Fritz used to come
bouncing in to pay me a visit in the highest health and spirits, and in
the garden squirrel-house was there not the future Mrs. Fritz extremely
lively? They had managed to keep themselves well in spite of black
frosts and biting winds.
[Illustration]
Anything more different than a sick squirrel from a healthy one cannot
be conceived. The eyes, instead of protruding like carriage lamps,
become flattened and then sunk in, giving the impression of blindness.
The whole expression of the face becomes altered from mischievous
sprightliness, an intense vivacity, to a miserable, dumb suffering. The
tail is never curled over the back, but hangs down dejectedly; the ears
are far apart; and the movements, instead of being electric springs
and jerks, are mere crawlings, and are evidently made with great
difficulty, exhausting the poor little creature very much.
I have watched Ruby, consumed with thirst, peer over from the edge of
her box, and let herself go with a feeble bundling sort of slither
down the pole always used for ascents and descents. She would leap
feebly, with pauses for breath between; and then, to watch her climb
up again used to break my heart. It was only too evident that she found
it a most exhausting performance. She would cling weakly, and wait
for breath and strength to crawl up a few steps; then wait again, and
finally hoist herself the few inches on to her box with panting effort.
[Illustration]
To see animals suffer like this, and to be powerless to help, throws
a black cloud over life for the time being. I longed for my pets to
die, and wondered if I could chloroform them. Every morning on waking I
hoped to find them gone.
The end came on the last day of February, about five weeks after I had
first noticed that Peter was not quite himself, and a little over a
fortnight since Ruby had begun to droop.
[Illustration]
And here let me say, in parenthesis, that I had written to the
authorities at the Zoo for advice. The reply I received was kind
and courteous; but said that probably my pets were suffering from
consumption, and that nothing could be done. Perhaps I might try
a little Benger’s food. Now with all due deference to the larger
experience and knowledge of the Zoological Society, if I had known how
important it is to keep little mammals warm enough in their sleeping
quarters in cold weather, and if I had taken mine in at the very first
signs of illness and kept them in a warm place like the conservatory, I
cannot help thinking that I should have saved them.
[Illustration]
I think it is commonly supposed that nothing can be done for sick
squirrels because the first incipient signs of illness _are not noticed
and dealt with in time_.
On the morning of the day they died neither of them came out of the
sleeping-box at all. So after a while, with a good deal of difficulty,
I unhooked the box from the wall, and brought it inside. When I opened
the lid and looked in, each little animal was crouching in its separate
compartment hiding its little face in the darkest corner.
Ruby was too far gone to resist when I picked her up and slipped her
inside a warm flannel cosy, with a hot water-bag under it.
When I turned my attention to Peter, he suddenly leapt out and flew
round the room in an agony of terror. He scrambled somehow up the
_portière_ over the door, where he used to go to hide long ago in his
babyhood, and then fell with a scream. He would not let me pick him up,
but pantingly struggled out of my reach. After a time the poor little
thing somehow found his way to the old serge bag behind the curtain.
I tried to feed Ruby with warm sweetened milk, but scarcely a drop went
down. Her little body was just skin and bone. She feebly snuggled away
into the farthest corner of the cosy.
[Illustration]
And so the miserable day dragged on. Towards evening I thought I
must try to get some food down Peter’s throat, for his strength in
scrambling round the room had amazed me, and I did not despair of
somehow pulling him round yet. He seemed sound asleep in the serge bag,
so I lifted him down very gently, and sitting on the floor with the bag
in my lap, I attempted to get a teaspoonful of milk near his little
nose. But the moment I touched him he _screamed_ and sprang out, biting
my finger with extraordinary strength as I tried to stop him.
[Illustration]
To my horror, he tore up the window curtain with amazing rapidity and
attempted to run along the pole, a thing he had not done for many
weeks. But his strength gave out, he lost his footing, clung on upside
down for a miserable second, then _fell_ with a scream upon the hard
wooden floor. With a look at me I shall never forget, he dragged
himself (for his hindquarters were now paralyzed) behind the chest of
drawers.
I moved the piece of furniture and got him to drag himself out, and
with a supreme effort to scramble into his box, which was on a chair
close by. When I lifted the lid, a minute or two later, he was dead.
He was curled up, with a queer little smile upon his face, as if
triumphant that he had defied me to the last, and I--I could only be
thankful that his sufferings and his terror were ended.
Ruby’s eyes were glazing when I looked at her a little later, and she
died quietly half an hour after Peter had breathed his last.
I sent their two little bodies to be post-mortemed to a veterinary
college in North London, kindly recommended by the Zoo people. The
verdict was that Peter had died of acute congestion of the lungs, and
Ruby of pneumonia, complicated by nephritis of some standing.
[Illustration]
People who love animals do not need to be told how remorse and grief
poisoned my days for some time.
Why had I, in my stupid human misunderstanding, sacrificed these little
lives?--changed the existence of these blithe, merry little creatures
into dumb, lengthened suffering?
I was glad Peter had bitten me--I deserved it--and I hope it was some
satisfaction to him to do it.
[Illustration: Laurence hid himself in the twinkling of an eye. _See
page 75._]