Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/100

 under a walnut tree one July afternoon and picked him up in my hand. I took the precaution, however, to put my handkerchief over his head. Many severe nips that I had received in boyhood taught me that precaution.

The Rogue was a half-grown red squirrel. Just what was the matter with him I never determined. Possibly he had fallen and injured himself, or been stunned, for he was rather quiet for a day or two.

A squirrel under normal conditions rarely falls or hurts himself while running and jumping in the tree-tops. They will jump from incredible heights without injuring themselves. I once saw a red squirrel jump from the top of a maple which we estimated was a hundred feet high. He jumped to the top of the farmhouse where I lived when a boy. It was a good seventy-foot jump, but he floated down as gracefully as a dead leaf in autumn.

When a squirrel jumps from a great height he spreads his legs out, and flattens out his body so as to present as much surface as possible to the air. He also seems to fluff up his