e red squirrel does not lay by a store of food for winter
use, like the chipmunk and the wood-mice; yet in the fall he sometimes
hoards in a tentative, temporary kind of way. I have seen his
savings--butternuts and black walnuts--stuck here and there in saplings
and trees near his nest; sometimes carefully inserted in the upright
fork of a limb or twig. One day, late in November, I counted a dozen or
more black walnuts put away in this manner in a little grove of locusts,
chestnuts, and maples by the roadside, and could but smile at the wise
forethought of the rascally squirrel. His supplies were probably safer
that way than if more elaborately hidden. They were well distributed;
his eggs were not all in one basket, and he could go away from home
without any fear that his storehouse would be broken into in his
absence. The next week, when I passed that way, the nuts were all gone
but two. I saw the squirrel that doubtless laid claim to them, on each
occasion.

There is one thing the red squirrel knows unerringly that I do not
(there are probably several other things); that is, on which side of the
butternut the meat lies. He always gnaws through the shell so as to
strike the kernel broadside, and thus easily extract it; while to my
eyes there is no external mark or indication, in the form or appearance
of the nut, as there is in the hickory-nut, by which I can tell whether
the edge or the side of the meat is toward me. But examine any number of
nuts that the squirrels have rifled, and, as a rule, you will find they
always drill through the shell at the one spot where the meat will be
most exposed. Occasionally one makes a mistake, but not often. It stands
them in hand to know, and they do know. Doubtless, if butternuts were a
main source of my food, and I were compelled to gnaw into them, I should
learn, too, on which side my bread was buttered.

The cheeks of the red and gray squirrels are made without pockets, and
whatever they transport is carried in the teeth. They are more or less
active all winter, but October and November are their festal months.
Invade some butternut or hickory grove on a frosty October morning, and
hear the red squirrel beat the "juba" on a horizontal branch. It is a
most lively jig, what the boys call a "regular break-down," interspersed
with squeals and snickers and derisive laughter. The most noticeable
peculiarity about the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of
duet. In other w