IX. Wild Animals Near Home
Do you live on a farm? Or in a small town with woods and fields around it? There is a creek, perhaps, a swamp, hillside pastures, stone or rail fences bordered by briars. Then you have animal neighbors as wild and shy as any you will see when the menagerie comes to town. Take a long tramp over the country after a light snowfall. Don't take a dog with you. Take an opera glass, a microscope and a camera. Walk in the face of the wind, or all the little wild creatures will get early news of you and vanish.
Watch for foot-prints—trails of tiny tracks in the snow. Those are calling cards. Some nature-lovers can read every kind of track as easily as you read print. They can tell where a rabbit has gone across country by long jumps, and sat on his haunches in places to "stop, look, listen!" They can tell where squirrels have played tag around a tree; where field mice have chased each other around a straw stack; where muskrats have come up the bank of a frozen pond; where a chipmunk has sunned himself on an old stump lookout.
There are very few places in America where some of these rodents—little gnawing animals—are not to be found. But city children often know the common gray squirrel and the little brown chipmunk, better than country children do. That is a pity, for where they are not hunted all our native squirrels become very tame.
In a city park if you sit on one bench day after day and scatter peanuts or popcorn near you, the squirrels will learn to come to be fed. They leap on the bench, by and by, eat from your hand and go into coat pockets for nuts. Be patient at first, and keep wide awake, or you will miss seeing little switch-tail when he slips, a gray shadow, down a tree. Flash he comes, stops, "freezes" on his haunches, bright eyes watching, ears and plume up. Shelled corn scattered about a farm or country school yard will coax him out of the woods. Don't try to catch him or he will never come back.
What a pretty little fellow! All silver-gray, brownish-gray or even black, he is, for squirrels of the same family vary in color, just as foxes do. A little ten-inch furry bundle of fun, with a ten-inch banner of a tail! He plays tag, leap-frog, runs races on walls, rolls up and coasts down hill. He is just as curious about you as you are about him. He is very gossipy, chattering all day, but he
