The Squirrel family lived half-way up a tall tree in their cozy little home, lined with soft, dried leaves and white, fluffy cotton. Slicko and her siblings are getting jumping lessons today from Mr. Squirrel. Slicko meets a new friend and goes on an adventure which gets her into a bit of trouble. What will happen to poor Slicko?
By : Richard Barnum
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Half way up the side of a tall tree there was a round hole in the trunk. The hole was lined with soft, dried leaves, and bits of white, fluffy cotton, from the milkweed plant. And, if you looked very carefully at the hole, you might see, peering from it, a little head, like that of a very small kitten, and a pair of very bright eyes.
But it was not a kitten that looked from the little hole in the trunk of the tree. Kitties can climb trees, but they do not like to live in them. They would rather have a warm place behind the stove, with a nice saucer of milk.
Now if I tell you that the little creatures who lived in this hole-nest had big, fluffy tails, and that they could sit up on their hind legs, and eat nuts, I am sure you can guess what they were.
Squirrels! That’s it! In the nest, half way up the big tree in the woods, lived a family of gray squirrels, and I am going to tell you about them, or, rather, more particularly, about one of the little girl squirrels whose name was Slicko.
One morning Mrs. Squirrel, who had gotten up out of the nest early, to go out and get some breakfast for her little ones, came back very quickly, jumping from one tree branch to another, and fairly scrambling down into the nest where the little boy and girl squirrels of her family were still asleep.
“Why, what’s the matter, Mother?” asked Mr. Squirrel, in the queer, chattering language he and his wife used. “Why are you in such a hurry this morning? See, you have dropped a lot of nuts!”
He looked out over the edge of the nest, down to the ground, where he saw some of the nuts Mrs. Squirrel had dropped. She had been bringing them home for breakfast.
“What made you run so?” asked Mr. Squirrel, who had stayed home with the little ones, while his wife went after nuts.
“Well, I guess you’d have hurried too,” said the mamma squirrel, “if you saw what I saw!”
“What was it?” asked Mr. Squirrel, and he pulled his head in from the nest-hole, so that if any bad animals were down below on the ground they could not see him.
“It was a man, with a dog and a gun,” said Mrs. Squirrel. “He was out hunting, and I’m almost sure he saw me!”
“My, that would be too bad!” exclaimed Mr. Squirrel. “Do you think he followed you to shoot you?”
“I hope not,” said Mrs. Squirrel. “I ran as fast as I could when I saw him, and I did not hear his gun go off, but I did hear the dog bark.”
“Hum!” said Mr. Squirrel, in his own language, and he seemed as worried as your papa might be if he heard there was a bad animal, or a runaway horse, coming after you. “So the hunter did not shoot his gun, eh?”
“Not that I heard,” answered Mrs. Squirrel. “But he may be trying to find this nest.”
“I’ll look out and see if he is coming,” said Mr. Squirrel.
“Be careful he doesn’t see you,” said Mrs. Squirrel.
“I will,” replied her husband. And then he carefully, carefully peeked out of the hole of the nest in the hollow trunk of the tree. Squirrels are smarter than we think. Though they do not know how to shoot a gun, they know that a gun can hurt them, and when one is shot off in the woods, all the squirrels, and the birds and wild creatures, are very much frightened, and run to hide...
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