“Bless me, I do believe I have been asleep!” said a squirrel, one fine morning in early spring, when the delicious warmth of the sun had reached him in his winter retreat, and roused the lazy little fellow from a two months’ nap. The truth is, that he and his family had fallen asleep at the first setting in of the cold weather, and had passed the dismal winter in a state of profound repose, except, that, during a warm day or two in January, they had roused themselves for a short time, and eaten a few nuts and acorns from their winter store.

“Yes, I have certainly been asleep,” said the squirrel, “and I fancy I have had a pretty long nap too. Well, I declare, my lazy wife and children are lying there still, curled up like so many dead things! Hallo, Mrs. Brush! come, get up and eat some breakfast. Here is the sun shining in most gloriously at the mouth of the hole, and I hear the blackbird’s merry whistle in the grove below. Ah! they wont move, so I’ll have a run this fine morning, and see how the world looks now. Perhaps when I come back they may be awake.”

So Master Brush went to the entrance of his nest, which was situated at a great height from the ground, in a commodious hollow of a magnificent oak-tree.

“Oh joy!” he exclaimed, when he had looked around him for half a minute, “I see those delicious buds are beginning to sprout. Nobody can tell how I long for some fresh green food again! Nuts and acorns are all very well, but then they are terribly dry. Here goes for a leap, then!”

So saying, the active little fellow sprang from his hole, and if you had seen him, you would have thought that no animal without wings could have ventured upon such a leap without being dashed to pieces upon the ground. But Brush had nothing to fear; for though he had no wings, he knew that his beautiful bushy tail, and his legs, stretched out straight from his body, would bear him up in the air, and prevent his falling too heavily. Then he had very strong legs for his size, especially his hind legs, and his claws were so sharp and hooked, that he could skip along the boughs, without the least danger of falling off, and he could even run up and down the perpendicular trunks of trees, almost as easily as we can walk upon the level ground.

So when Brush leaped from the entrance of his hole, instead of falling to the earth, he pitched lightly upon a bough of the tree a long way below him, and ran along it for a short distance. Then he leaped to another bough still lower, from the end of which, he very easily reached the next tree, and so on, from tree to tree, till he found himself in a well-known grove of young larches, at some distance. Here he immediately fell to work, nibbling the fresh green buds and tender bark. He sat upright, as squirrels generally do when they are eating, using his fore-feet as hands to hold his food, and very pretty he looked. But I think, that, if the gamekeeper had seen him injuring the young trees, he would not have been very well pleased, and perhaps he would have put his gun to his shoulder and shot poor little Brush, if he had not received orders to the contrary. For though his master knew that the squirrels injured his young trees sometimes, he would not allow them to be killed.

This gentleman had a particular reason for protecting the squirrels in his woods. One day the gamekeeper shot a very fine one, and brought it up to the house as a present for his master’s little daughter Jane, who was confined with a disease from which she never recovered. At first, the child was pleased with her new plaything, but her tender heart was pained when she saw its beautiful eyes becoming dim, and recollected that, perhaps it had left in its nest some young ones, that were perishing for want of its care. Her grief was increased by fancying that, as the animal had been killed on purpose for her, she had been the cause of its death, and though her parents said all they could to comfort her, they could hardly make her believe that she was not to blame; for when people are very ill they often have strange fancies.

Poor little Jane died a few days after, and almost the last words she spoke were, “Papa, don’t let Harvey kill any more squirrels.” Her father carefully attended to this request of his darling little girl his only child the joy of his heart and though, like most country gentlemen, he was exceedingly angry if any person stole his game, I believe he would rather have lost fifty pheasants or hares than one squirrel. And so would I, had I been poor little Jane’s papa!

But we must not forget Master Brush, who has been seated all this time in the larch-plantation, making a famous meal upon the aromatic buds and tender bark. “Ah!” said he to himself, “if those lazy creatures in the nest yonder did but know what delicious food there is here!” Then he continued munching and skipping about the trees for some time longer. But presently the weather began to change. The sun hid his glorious face behind dark clouds; a fierce easterly wind whistled through the trees; a cold driving rain came on, and winter seemed to be returned again.

“Oh, dear me,” said Brush, “this will never do! I don’t like this sort of thing at all! the nest is the best place I declare.”

When he reached his own tree, he was obliged to ascend to his nest by a different way, for squirrels cannot leap up to any place that is very far above them; so he ran along the ground for a little distance, to the bottom of the oak, which was surrounded by a very close thicket of brambles.

In this thicket lived several families of dormice, who were Brush’s relations, and the waggish squirrel called out to one of them as he passed, “Hallo, cousin Gotobed! The summer is almost over. If you don’t make haste, all the nuts and acorns will be gone!” But there was no possibility of making his cousin Gotobed hear; for you must know, that a dormouse is a very sleepy little fellow indeed; even more so than a squirrel.

Brush was soon in his own warm nest, where he found all his family safe, and sound asleep, as he had left them. This nest, as I have mentioned, was made in a hole in the upper part of a very large oak-tree, and was almost as dry and warm as any bedroom in our houses. It was lined with dry leaves and soft moss, and in another part of the hole, which was large enough for five or six squirrels’ nests, there was a great heap of nuts, acorns, and beechmast, which the careful Brush and his family had collected in the autumn.

Besides this stock of food, there were two more hoards, hidden in holes in different parts of the tree for the cunning squirrels thought, that, if some thief should wish to rob them of their treasures, he would not be very likely to discover all three of their storehouses.

If it were not for this large stock of provisions, the poor squirrels would be starved to death, in very mild winters, because then they do not sleep so much, and fresh food cannot be procured.

When Brush was in his comfortable nest, safe from the cold wind and rain, though he had almost filled his stomach with young buds, he thought he would try one of his nuts, just to see how they had kept through the winter. Holding the nut in his hands, his sharp teeth soon gnawed through the shell, and when he had reached the kernel, the dainty little fellow would not eat a bit till he had carefully removed every particle of the dry brown skin from it.

“A very sweet nut, I declare,” said he, “nuts are not to be despised, after all. Dear me, I think I feel rather sleepy again! Nuts are not bad things, but as I was saying before, rather dry, when one has nothing else. But really I am very sleepy. ’Tis either the cold wind, or the famous breakfast I have made, I suppose; very sleepy indeed, upon my word.”

The last words sounded exactly as your voice would, if your head was covered up under the bed-clothes. The truth is, that, while Brush was talking to himself, he had gradually changed his position from sitting upright to lying down on his side. Then he slowly rolled himself up into a round ball, with his head and back closely covered by his beautiful tail. This served him famously for a blanket, and so we may say, that his last words were really spoken with his head under the bed-clothes.

By way of filling up the time till the fine weather returns, and our sleeping friend uncurls himself again, I will give you a very short description of another sort of squirrel, which lives in the woods of America, and is even a much better leaper than ours. It is called the flying squirrel, though that is not a very proper name, for it cannot really fly; I mean that it cannot raise itself from the ground, like a bird can. But it can leap to a surprising distance, for besides a large bushy tail, it has a very curious membrane, or skin, on each side of its body, reaching from the fore to the hind leg. So when the flying squirrel leaps, it stretches out this skin as wide as possible, and as the air bears it up, it appears almost to fly from one tree to another. Travellers who have seen them, tell us that when a number of them leap at the same time, they appear, at a distance, like leaves blown off by the wind.