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Updated: May 8, 2025
Siccatee suddenly stopped, hugging the two nuts tightly to her breast with her funny little paws, and whisking her tail nervously up and down, making waves in the pretty, gray fur, while her nervous little mouth worked convulsively. For, oh, what should she do if they found her treasures?
Siccatee found out that they came to the house at the foot of the hill every year, and very sorry she was, for it was only last year that they had spoiled one of her best storehouses. This year something far more terrible happened. Of all her four children, Siccatee loved best of all little Graycoat, who was certainly a very beautiful baby squirrel.
But Siccatee herself was too frightened to go down on the beach, for she was a very nervous little thing. Sentre, her husband, was quite daring, and not easily frightened. They had worked very hard together, and their children, who were now getting quite strong and big, had done their best to help them.
Quick as a flash she bounded behind a tree, for, with her wonderfully quick eyesight and senses always on the alert, she scented danger in a moment. Once behind a tree, nothing could be seen of Siccatee but her bright eyes and just the tip of her bushy tail. And even these were not noticed by the Humans. After all, the Horrible Humans were only a little boy and a little girl.
And very good they thought it so good that in a few moments the egg was empty and the two young squirrels were quarreling over the shell. But Siccatee soon settled that by a scolding and several sharp pats. But she had not finished her lesson yet, and next showed them how to eat a nut. She held the nut very much in the same way that she had held the egg.
Only that morning Siccatee woke up feeling quite bright and cheerful, for she had accumulated nearly enough winter food for herself and her little ones; but then, that very afternoon, just as she was taking two big beechnuts to one of her secret hiding-places, she saw two Horrible Humans standing close to it.
At last Siccatee grew disgusted and left that tree to go to another, and then another, and still another; springing such distances and at such a height that the children thought she would be dashed to pieces every moment. But not a bit of it. Siccatee, like all squirrels, was very sure-footed, and rarely made a false step.
Graycoat neither moved nor answered, and at last with a pitiful little cry Siccatee lay down by the cage, put one little paw through the bars as though in a last appeal to her darling, and, shivering with cold and anguish, drew one long sobbing breath, and lay just as still as Graycoat.
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