CHAPTER XXVII
PRETTY PAWS, THE PINE SQUIRREL
ONE hot day Fuzzy-Wuzz had gone to sleep in a pine tree when he was awakened by a little high-pitched bark, like the yap of a young fox.
He opened one eye cautiously. There on a limb higher up stood a squirrel, scolding him for all she was worth. But she was not like the gray squirrels he had seen. She was dark brown, and her under side, and all four paws were a rich orange color. Her tail was bordered with yellow.
It was Pretty Paws, the pine squirrel. She was a member of the Douglas squirrel tribe, (named after the man who discovered them). She must have considered the little bear an intruder, the way she scolded. Was this her particular pine tree, he wondered?
His little black eyes twinkling, he climbed a little higher,—though he was pretty near the top for even his small weight. At that she scolded more angrily than ever, fairly rising into the air with the ferocity of her barking. She was joined by her mate, who also barked at Fuzzy.
“Ha, ha!” thought the little bear, “there must be a reason for all this noise they are making. I must find out what it is.” And he wondered if such small creatures could really hurt a bear cub, as they were surely threatening to do.
The wind, which had been blowing through the tree top, came to a rest, and with that, Fuzzy caught a delightful odor. It was the odor of mushrooms. Where could they be, away up here in the tree top, he asked himself? He meant to find out, for of all the plants that grew in those woods, he loved mushrooms best. He climbed a few steps higher. The squirrels leapt to a branch below. They were now facing him, and threatening to eat him alive.
He made a sudden rush at them, with a deep throated “Woof!” They backedaway. At that, his eyes twinkled more than ever. They were only bluffing.
He climbed to the next limb,—the tree top swaying with his weight. There, spread out along the limb in the sunshine, drying, he saw what had smelled so wonderful,—a whole row of mushrooms. But how could they have gotten away up there? For they were mushrooms that he had found on the ground. He gobbled them greedily.
He thought he understood now why the squirrels had scolded so. These were the mushrooms they had collected, and laid out to dry for winter use. But they had been his mushrooms, he told himself, when they grew on the ground beneath the tree. Never mind, he would make them his again.
The children, attracted by the barking in the tree top, called their father to tell them what it was. These pine squirrels, he explained, were cousins to the red squirrels of the East.
Just now Pretty Paws and her mate were calling loudly for all their friends and relatives to come and help them scare the cubaway. But Fuzzy munched right on, enjoying each mushroom in turn.
Almost instantly the woods resounded with the call notes of neighboring pine squirrels, who were coming to see what the trouble was all about,—for squirrels are mighty curious about all that is going on about them. Some of them helped scold Fuzzy, others sang and trilled almost like birds.
The first litters of young were out that afternoon, and some of these orange-breasted sprites became so excited that they simply rushed up and down their tree trunks, playing tag in joyous excitement.
“I’ll catch you, if you don’t shut up!” Fuzzy woofed at them as he finished his feast and descended awkwardly, tail end first, till he could drop from a lower branch like a fat little bag of flour.
But though he spent all that afternoon, and many another, chasing Pretty Paws and her friends, as they came down to gather pine seeds and insect larvæ, he never once succeeded in getting so much as a mouthful of fur. Before he could grab them, theywere safe on a limb, flirting their tails saucily at him and calling him all sorts of names.
Later he saw Pretty Paws racing through the tree tops with a great brown creature in hot pursuit. It was a pine marten, or sable,—a rare animal for even those mountains. Fuzzy didn’t believe the squirrel had a chance in the world.
He watched while Pretty Paws went leaping from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, and the marten after her. As agile as herself, for all his great size, was that marten. How it ended Fuzzy never knew, for he could not follow fast enough. But if it wasn’t Pretty Paws herself who barked at him next day, it was her twin sister.