CHAPTER VI
CHUMMY TELLS THE STORY OF A NAUGHTY SQUIRREL
OH, how snug!” I exclaimed. “You have a little hall and a bedroom, and how clean it is! The old birds say they like to see a bird tidy his nest from one year to another. Do you keep the same mate?”
“I do,” he replied. “I always have Jennie, but as you probably know, sparrows don’t pair till spring. In the winter the birds are in flocks. Jennie is spending these hard months with her parents downtown near the station because the food supply is better there. I often go to see her, and I expect her back soon to begin housekeeping. We like to get ahead of the others in nesting, for there are evil birds who try every year to drive us from our desirable home.”
“Everything born has to fight,” I said cheerfully.
“I don’t know much about canaries,” said Chummy. “All that I have seen were very exclusive and haughty, and looked down on us street birds.”
“Some of my family are that way,” I sighed, “but I have been much with human beings and my little head has more wisdom in it.”
“I like you,” Chummy began to say heartily; then he stopped short, cried out, and said, “Duck your head quick and come inside!”
I scuttled from his wide open hallway into his little bedroom, wondering what had happened. A shower of nutshells had just been dropped past our beaks. “Who’s doing that?” I asked.
“Squirrie—he hates me because he can’t get a foothold to explore this house.”
“And who is Squirrie?” I asked.
“The worst little rascal of a squirrel that you ever saw. He respects nobody, and what do you think is his favorite song?—not that he can sing. His voice is like a crow’s.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of songs a squirrel would sing,” I said.
“I’ll run over it for you,” said Chummy, “though I haven’t a very good voice myself.
“‘I care for nobody, no not I,
And nobody cares for me.
I live in the middle of Pleasant Street
And happy will I be!’
“Now what do you think of that for a selfish song in these hard times?”
I laughed heartily. “Perhaps you take Squirrie too seriously. I’d like to see the little rogue. Does he live in this house of yours?”
“Yes, right up over us under the roof. He gnawed a hole through from the outside this summer, and stored an enormous quantity of nuts that he stole from good Mrs. Lacey at the corner grocery on the next street. He has an enormous place to scamper about in if he wishes to stretch his legs. He says in the corner of it he has a delightfully warm little bed-place, lined with tiny soft bits of wool and fur torn from ladies’ dresses, for he has the run of most of the bedrooms in the neighborhood. Have you seen the two old maids that live in the big attic of this house?”
“Yes, my mistress calls them the bachelor girls,” I said politely.
“Girls,” he said scornfully; “they’re more like old women. Well, anyway, they’re afraid of mice and rats, and when Squirrie wakes up and scampers across the boards to his pantry to get a nut, and rolls it about, and gnaws it, and nibbles it, they nearly have a fit, and run to the landlady and hurry her up the three flights of stairs.
“She listens and pants, and says, ‘It must be a rat, it’s too noisy for a mouse.’ Then she goes down cellar and gets a rat-trap and props its big jaws open with a bit of cheese and sets it in a corner of the room.
“Squirrie watches them through a tiny hole in the trapdoor in the ceiling that he made to spy on them, and he nearly dies laughing, for he loves to tease people, and he hisses at them in a low voice, ‘The trap isn’t made yet that will catch me. I hope you’ll nip your own old toes in it.’”
“What very disrespectful talk,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, he doesn’t care for anybody, and the other night his dreadful wish came true, and he was so delighted that he most lost his breath and had squirrel apoplexy.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
The sparrow ran his little tongue out over his beak, for he dearly loves to talk, and went on, “You see, the bachelor ladies were moving their furniture about to make their room look prettier, and they forgot the trap, and Miss Maggie did catch her toe in it, and there was such a yelling and screaming that it woke me out of a sound sleep.
“The lodgers all came running upstairs with fire extinguishers, and flat irons, and pokers, and one man had a revolver. I thought the house was on fire, and I flew out of my little hole in the wall to this tree. I came here, and from a high limb I could look right in the attic window. The lodgers were all bursting into the room and poor Miss Maggie, in curl papers and pink pajamas, was shrieking and dancing on one foot, and holding up the other with the trap on the toe of her bedroom slipper.
“Out on the roof, Squirrie was bending down to look at her. He was lying on his wicked little stomach, and he laughed so hard that at last he had to roll over in the snow on the roof to get cool. He looked terrible, and we all hoped he was going to pass away in the night, but the next morning as we sat round on the tree talking about him, and trying to think of some good thing he had done, he poked his head out of the hole which is his front door, and made the most ugly faces at us that you can imagine. He is certainly a dreadful creature, and I shall be sorry for the housekeepers about here when the spring comes.”
I smiled at Chummy’s earnestness and settled down more comfortably with my breast against the bricks. The day was so pleasant that I thought I would stay out a little longer. I knew by the look in his little, bright eye that the sparrow liked talking to me. We were in a patch of sunlight that crept in his front door, and after the long cold winter the nice warm feeling on our feathers was very comforting.
“How does Squirrie trouble the housekeepers?” I asked.
“Well, to begin with, he bothers them because he has no home duties. He is an ugly, odd, old bachelor, and never gets a mate in the spring, because no self-respecting young squirrel will take up with such a scamp.”
“Poor creature!” I said. “It is enough to make any one ugly to live alone.”
Chummy went on: “Squirrie has been two years only in this neighborhood. He never stays long anywhere, for his bad deeds make enemies for him, and he is driven away. When he first came here he lived in Snug Hollow, that big hole in the half-dead elm at the corner. Just opposite the tree is a lodging-house. You can see it from here, that one with the upper verandas. It is kept by a soldier’s widow, and she is rather poor. She could not afford to put in window screens, and Squirrie had a royal time with one of her lodgers, a young student up in the third story. He was very odd, and would eat no meat. He lived on nuts, cheese, fruit, eggs, and bread—just the things Squirrie likes. So he made up his mind to board with the student. The young man was a fresh-air fiend, and never closed his windows. This just suited Squirrie, so whenever this young Dolliver went over to the University, Squirrie would spring from a tree branch to the roof, and was down on the veranda and into the room in a trice. He rarely ate anything on the spot. He carried everything away to his hole in the tree, so the student thought that the maid who did his room must be stealing his things.
“He questioned her, but she said she knew nothing about his food. Then he locked the chest of drawers where he kept his supplies. Squirrie climbed up the back, enlarged a knothole and went in that way. The student thought the girl must have a key. So he went to the landlady. She dismissed the maid and got another, but the student’s things went faster than ever.
“The next thing was that the student lost his temper and told the soldier’s widow that she would do well to feed her maid better, and she told him that if he didn’t like her house he could get out.
“However, she sent this second girl away and got another. It was the same old story—nuts, fruit, cheese, bread still vanished. Then the student got in a worse temper, and turned all the clothes out of his trunk and made that his pantry, and carried the key in his pocket.
“Now he lost nothing, for Squirrie, clever as he was, could not get in a locked trunk. He was up a tree, indeed, but he was clever enough to find a way down. The soldier’s widow was his next victim, and he would watch the windows and see where she was, and often when her back was turned he would dart in the house, seize some bit of food, and run away with it.
“‘Now,’ said the soldier’s widow, ‘this last girl is dishonest, too. She can’t get into the student’s trunk, and she has turned against me.’ So she sent her away, though the girl cried and said she was well brought up, and would not steal a pin.
“By this time the house had such a bad name among maids that the soldier’s widow could not get another, and she had too much work to do and became thin and miserable, and still the stealing went on, till at last she said, ‘I must be a thief myself, and don’t know it.’
“However, any one who does wrong is always paid up for it, and Squirrie was soon caught. By this time he was so fat he could scarcely run, and he had enough nuts and hard biscuits laid up to last him for two winters. To keep down his flesh, he began to tease the dog in the lodging-house. Not in the daytime, for he did not wish to be seen. He used to chatter, chatter to Rover as he lay on the porch in the warm summer evenings, and tease him by sitting up on his hind legs and daring him to play chase. There was no cat in the house to head Squirrie off, so he would run round and round the yard and sometimes in the front door, and out the back, with old Rover loping after him, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his face quite silly.
“‘The dog has gone crazy,’ said the soldier’s widow one evening, as she saw Rover running about the yard and sometimes down to the old barn behind the house and back again. ‘He will have to be poisoned.’
“Rover was nearly crazy. He left the mischievous squirrel and ran to his good mistress, and put his paws on her knees, but she did not understand and pushed him away.
“I felt terribly and wondered whether I could not do something to help.”
“How did you know all this?” I interrupted. “You would be in bed dark evenings.”
“Why surely you know,” said Chummy, “that all birds of the day tell their news to the birds of the night—to owls, to bats, and even to some insects. Then, in turn, we get the news of the night. I had a very smart young screech-owl watching Squirrie for me.”
“Yes, yes,” I said hurriedly. “We cage birds are more handicapped than you wild ones. I know, though, about the bird exchange. I’ve heard the old birds say that they have even had to depend on cockroaches sometimes for items of news, when they couldn’t get about themselves.”
“Well,” continued Chummy, “I made up my mind something had to be done to enlighten the soldier’s widow, so the next morning I just hovered round and gave up all thought of breakfast for myself, though of course I rose extra early, and fed the young ones before my mate got up.
“I watched the soldier’s widow when she took the bottle of milk from the refrigerator and put it on the pantry shelf. I watched her when she poured some in a little pitcher and put it on the dining-room table. I still kept my eye on her when she went to the back door to speak to the vegetable man, but after that I watched Squirrie.
“The little beast was darting into the dining-room. He went straight for the milk pitcher and holding on the edge with his paws, he ran his head away down into it, to get a good long drink.
“I lighted on the window sill and gave a loud squawk. The soldier’s widow turned round, looked past me, and saw Squirrie with his head in the milk pitcher. She gave a loud and joyful squeal, dropped the cabbage she was holding and ran in the room, just in time to see Squirrie with a very milky face darting out the other door to the front of the house.
“Oh, how happy she was! It had all come over her in a flash what a goose she had been not to have guessed it was a squirrel that was defrauding her. She ran up to the student’s room to tell him the good news, and he went to the window and shook his fist at Squirrie and called him the red plague.”
“What did Squirrie say?” I asked.
“Squirrie said, ‘I don’t care,’ and instead of hiding from them, as he had always done before, he came boldly out on a branch, and licked his milky paws. Then he moved six doors down the street to a house where two maiden ladies lived. They have gone away now, but they kept a small tea-room and sold cake and candy. Squirrie went creeping round them, and they thought it was cute to have a little pet, so they used to put nuts for him on their windows.”
“Didn’t they know what mischief he had done at the corner?” I asked.
“No—you young things don’t know how it is in a city. No one knows or cares who lives near by. In the nice, kind country you know everyone for miles round. Well, Squirrie got so familiar with these ladies that he used to sleep in the house and tease the family cat. He didn’t do much mischief at first. He knew he was in a good place, but one day just before Easter, Satan entered into him, and he played the poor ladies a very scurvy trick.
“They had been getting their baskets all ready for Easter sales, and had them in rows on a big table—such cute-looking little Japanese baskets, they were, all red and yellow and filled with layers of nuts and candy.
“This day both ladies went downtown to buy more things for more baskets, and Squirrie got into the room and began playing with those that were finished. I saw him through the window, but what could I do? When I chirped to him that he was a bad beast to spoil the work of the two ladies who had been so good to him, he chattered his teeth and made a face at me.
“Now, if he had just played with one or two baskets, it would not have mattered so much, but he is like Silly Bob in cherry time.”
“Who is Silly Bob?” I asked.
“A robin who is weak in his head. Instead of eating a few cherries, he runs all over a tree, and gives each cherry a dab in the cheek—ruins them all and makes the gardeners furious with him. Squirrie ran up and down the rows of tempting-looking baskets, so afraid was he that he could not get all his mischief in before the ladies came back. He bit a few straws on the top of each one, then he attacked the sides and then the bottom. Then he tore the covers off and threw the candy and nuts on the floor.”
“What! Out of every one?” I asked, in a shocked voice.
“Every one, I tell you. Oh, they were a sight! Every basket was ruined. The nuts he carried off to his hole in the tree.”
“And what did the poor ladies say when they came back?” I asked.
“You should have seen their faces. They had paid fifty cents apiece for the baskets, and you know how expensive nuts and candies and raisins are. Then they got angry and hired a carpenter to come and nail up Squirrie’s hole in the tree, taking good care to see that he was out of it first. If he went near the house, they threw things at him.”
“And what did Squirrie do?”
“He said he was tired of city life and needed country air, and he went up on North Hill, and stayed till the ladies moved away, then he came back to their neighborhood and played another trick almost as bad, on a nice old grandfather.”
CHAPTER VII
MORE ABOUT SQUIRRIE
WHY, Squirrie is the mischief-maker of the neighborhood,” I said.
“He is indeed, and I would not advise you to cultivate him. He would be sure to get you into trouble.”
“What did he do to the grandfather?” I asked.
“Caused him to commit sin by beating an innocent dog,” said Chummy solemnly.
“Who was the dog?” I asked.
“Pluto was his name, but we all called him Cross-Patch, because he had a snarly temper. He was a good dog, though, for he tried so hard to overcome his faults. He had been a thief, but Grandfather had reasoned with him, and whipped him, till at last he was a perfectly honest dog—but he got a bad beating that Christmas.”
“Who was Grandfather?” I asked.
“Grandfather was a nice foreign man who lived in a little house round the corner. He had made some money in selling old clothes, and he was bringing up his daughter’s children. At Christmas time he had saved enough money to buy a nice tree for his grandchildren. He stayed up late Christmas eve to trim the tree, and Cross-Patch watched him. The blinds were up and another red squirrel called Chickari, who was a tremendous climber, told me that he watched the old man too, and it was pretty to see him hanging little bags of candy and candles and strings of popcorn on the branches.
“When he got through, he said, ‘Now, doggie, don’t you touch anything, and when the children strip the tree in the morning, you shall have your share of good things.’
“Cross-Patch wagged his tail. He had had a good supper, and was not hungry, and then he was a reformed dog.
“Unfortunately the old man, in trotting to and fro from the kitchen to the dining-room, where the tree was, forgot to bring Cross-Patch out, and he had to sleep in the room with the tree. Of course he touched nothing, but didn’t that scamp of a squirrel get in through some hole or corner.”
“What were those squirrels doing out on a winter night?” I asked.
“Red squirrels don’t sleep like logs through the winter, as some squirrels do,” said Chummy. “Chickari was prowling because his supplies had run low. Squirrie was out for mischief. He has a long head and always lays up enough and more than enough. Perhaps he felt the Christmas stir in the air. Anyway, he got into this old rickety cottage and ran up and down the Christmas tree, as if he were crazy, but he scarcely touched anything at the top. Just to tease Cross-Patch he nibbled and bit and tore at everything on the lower limbs.”
“Why didn’t Cross-Patch chase him?” I said indignantly.
“He did, but what can a dog do with a lively squirrel? Besides Cross-Patch could not see very well, although there was a moon shining in the room. He is getting old. However, he became so angry that at last he made a splendid leap in the air, and caught the tip end of Squirrie’s tail which is like a fine bushy flag. He got a mouthful of hair, and the tail did not look so fine afterward.
“Just when the noise was at its worst, Grandfather woke up and came in. Of course, Squirrie hid, and there stood Cross-Patch trembling in every limb, his sorry eyes going to the torn candy bags and popcorn strewed over the floor.
“‘So—you are a backslider,’ said the old man. ‘Well, you have robbed my children, and I shall have to beat you.’ He was a patient old man, but now he was angry, and Cross-Patch was getting some good whacks and stripes from a rope end, when he began to choke over the squirrel fur in his mouth.
“The old man stopped beating, stared at him, and took the little bunch of fur that Cross-Patch spat out, and examined it. Then he dropped his rope and went to the tree.
“His face fell, and he looked sad. ‘Punish first, and examine afterward,’ he said. ‘How many persons do that with children. Why did I not observe that a dog could not have so despoiled this little tree without knocking it over? It is that pest of a squirrel who has been here. I might have known. Dog, I beg your pardon,’ and he shook hands quite solemnly with Cross-Patch who took on the air of a suffering martyr.”
“And what did Squirrie do?” I asked. “Was his heart touched?”
“Not a bit of it. He went home chuckling, but what do you think he found?”
“I don’t know much about squirrel ways,” I said.
“I do,” said Chummy, “and they are fine-spirited little creatures, except the few that like to suck birds’ eggs and kill young. All the sparrows liked Chickari, and after that night he was a perfect hero among us. He knew Squirrie pretty well, and was sure he would remain to gloat over his mischief, so he whipped off to his cupboard—”
“Whose cupboard?” I asked. “His own, or Squirrie’s?”
“Squirrie’s—you know the little scamp’s old home in the tree called Snug Hollow had been boarded up, and the only place in the neighborhood he had been able to get was a poor refuge up on a roof. Well, Chickari knew where it was, and he had dashed off to it, and carried away nearly all of Squirrie’s nice winter hoard before he got back. Wasn’t Squirrie furious! He danced with rage on the moonlit roof when he got home. So a sparrow who slept up there told us. The noise woke him up, and he could plainly see Squirrie scampering, leaping, chattering—nose now up, now down, his four legs digging the snow, his tail wig-wagging! Oh, he was in a rage! He had to go south for the rest of the winter, but he came back in the spring, more wicked than ever, for it was in the following June that he became a murderer.”
“A murderer!” I said in a horrified tone.
“Yes—I will tell you about it, if you are not tired of my chirping.”
“No, no—I just love to hear you,” I said warmly.