Squirrel

skwer'rel, a bushy-tailed animal with active habits, living largely on nuts and other seeds. The name is from an old Latin word, and means a little fellow with a shadowy or shady tail. True squirrels live among trees. Their claws are suited for climbing and for clinging to stems and branches. In jumping, the tail floats out long and broad like a rudder. It enables its owner to hold his course or to swerve this way or that if in the meantime a desired branch has been swayed by the wind. If necessary to leap from a great height the squirrel jumps off, spreading out all fours to the utmost extent, and works its arched and flattened tail in a position to strike the air and retard the downward speed. A squirrel can leap fifty feet to the ground. John Bourroughs quotes an American traveler in Mexico to the effect that he saw a large black squirrel leap 600 feet from a cliff to escape from captivity. The animal fluttered slowly down, and lit on a ledge of limestone, combed its fur, took a drink, and made off into a thicket with a triumphant flourish of the tail that had served it in so great a need. "I have no doubt," adds Burroughs, "that our red squirrel would have made the leap safely."

The squirrel's teeth are adze-shaped, with sharp cutting edges admirably adapted to chisel their way through the shell of a nut. This the squirrel accomplishes while sitting up with its bushy tail following the curve of the back. It holds the nut up to its mouth with its front paws, and gnaws away, or else it holds its jaws stationary while it twirls the nut round and round against the teeth. The squirrel is an adept at knowing just where to cut a hole and how to extract the meat with the smallest possible hole. The intricate meat of a walnut, for instance, is gotten out somehow through a surprisingly small hole not much larger than a pea.

Squirrels are famous for their custom of providing in season of plenty against a time of want. In the autumn they store away a supply of nuts and seeds in hollow logs and holes in trees, or bury them one by one in the leaves and forest mold. How it is done no one can say, but after a snowfall which certainly obliterates all tracks and cuts off scent, a squirrel will scamper out into an untrodden patch of fresh snow and dig down straight to a nut without the slightest hesitation; then back again to a limb for its breakfast.

The squirrel usually sleeps and nests in hollow trees or often, especially in young timber where hollow trees are rare, a nest as large as a bushel basket is constructed of leaves, twigs, and grass in the crotch of a slender tree. The food consists of almost any kind of nuts,--walnut, beech, hickory, or hazel, according to locality, acorns, the seeds of the maple, ash, pine, grain from the farmer's bin or crib, and it must be confessed, the eggs of birds, though many a squirrel has had the worst of it when caught in the act by angry beaks.

The one squirrel of Europe is much like our common red squirrel or chickaree. North America is the favorite home of the squirrel. The red squirrel, the mischief-making meeko of the Northeastern Indian, and the chattering adjidaumo of Hiawatha, is found from the Ohio Valley and Pennsylvania to the northern limit of timber. The gray or black squirrel, varying in color according to locality, is found throughout North America east of the plains. The fox squirrel which attains a length of over two feet, tail included, also varies from gray to jet black. It is found from the latitude of Massachusetts southward. The Pacific States have two species. Mexico and Central America have a number. South America has but one. Australia has none.

The term squirrel has a wide application. When taken from the water the squirrel-fish gasps with a noise like the bark of a squirrel; squirrel-tail is a common name for wild barley; the squirrel-hawk is a reddish, rough-legged western hawk that preys on ground squirrels; squirrel-corn, so called from its grain-like tubers, is not corn but a pretty spring flower related to the Dutchman's breeches. A squirrel-bot is a fly whose larvae burrow in the hide of squirrels.

For other animals of the family, see articles on CHIPMUNK; GROUND SQUIRREL; FLYING SQUIRREL; PRAIRIE DOG; WOOD-CHUCK; RODENT.