Squirrel Nutkin

My youngest and I studied "Squirrels"
today . We watched one go up
and down a tree in our front yard last
week with leaves in her mouth, up to
the well formed nest in the crook of the
branches. The door was midway in the
front where she popped in and out.
It was better than a movie.
So finally today, we read
Anna Comstock's The Handbook of Nature
Study about squirrels. You'd think we
knew about them since they are all around
us!

Some favorite quotes:

From Thoreau who lived at Walden Pond
in Concord, Mass on squirrels. We went
there for a day this past summer:

-- I never saw one walk -- and then suddenly,
before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of
a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all
imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the
universe at the same time...

"A squirrel always establishes certain
roads to and from his abiding place and
almost invariably follows them. Such
a path may be entirely in the treetops,
with air bridges from a certain branch of
one tree of another or it may be partially
on the ground between the trees. "

Air bridges and sililoquizing~~
Shakespeare in some respects!
But of course, Beatrix Potter did
the best in Squirrel Nutkin.

As Emma dry brushed the nest
in the tree in her Nature
Journal quietly
on the front porch,
a real Squirrel Nutkin came
right up the stairs and went in
between the slats ~~ giving her
the greatest exclamation of JOY as
she bounded inside to tell me.
One of those moments from
God!

Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis