However, like many other indifferent singers that I have met in my day,
our striped vocalist goes on with his music, as if he thought there
never was another, or certainly not more than one other quite as
finished a singer as himself. Well, the boy who is unacquainted with the
tricks of this little fellow, as was once my own case, steals along
carefully toward the stump, thinking that the squirrel is so busy with
his music, that he is perfectly unconscious of any thing else that is
going on, and that it is just the easiest matter in the world to catch
him. Half a dozen times, at least, I have tried this experiment, before
I became satisfied that I was not the only interested party who was wide
awake. "Chip, chip, chip," sings the squirrel. He does not move an inch.
He does not vary his song. His eyes seem half closed. The boy advances
within a few feet of the squirrel. He reaches out his hand to secure his
prize, when down goes the striped vocalist into his hole, always
uttering a sort of laugh, as he enters his door, and seeming pretty
plainly to say, though in rather poor Anglo-Saxon, it must be confessed,
"No, you don't."
Whoever takes the pains to dig into the earth, where the striped
squirrel has made his nest, will find something that will amply repay
him for his trouble. The hole goes down pretty straight for some feet;
then it turns, and takes a horizontal direction, and runs sometimes a
great distance.
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