The Squirrel's Harvest by Grant Allen — Read

NOW is the squirrel's harvest. Beech-mast and acorns are now in season. I was sitting this morning close to the smooth grey-mottled trunk of an immemorial beech at Waggoner's Wells when-pat-a-pat, pat-a noise hard by, as of hurrying and scurrying feet, attracted my attention. So loud it was, one might have almost said a troop of skirmishers from Aldershot at double-quick through the woodland, save that it came from overhead; and overhead skirmishing, from "the nations' airy navies, grappling in the central blue," is happily as yet a thing of the poet's prophetic imagination. I looked up into the tree, and there, to my surprise and delight, lo! half a dozen merry squirrels, all foraging together after the rich beech-mast, which forms the larger part of their winters provender. Even as I watched, one of the pretty harvesters descended the trunk nimbly with his sharp small claws, and approached unawares within a few feet of the spot where I was sitting.

No sooner did he see me, however, than he gave me one sharp glance from his keen black eyes, perpended for a second whether to trust me or not, and then, this way and that dividing the swift mind, came quickly at the end to the safe conclusion that men were bad lots, even when they pretend to be playing the observant philosopher. So up the smooth bark he darted, quick as thought, finding his foothold by magic, as is the wont of his race, all ignorant of Newton's troublesome theory of gravitation. Then, when he knew himself well out of reach and secure from pursuit, he turned and laughed back at me with those beady black eyes of his, in merry mood, as who should say, "Ah, great clumsy creature, _you_ can't follow me here! Don't you wish you had a gun? Wouldn't you like to catch me?"