They were all very
glad when they met again, after the perils and fatigues of the voyage.
The first thing to be done was to look for something to eat, for their
early rising had made them very hungry. They found abundance of pine-cones
strewn on the ground, but, alas for our little squirrels! very few
kernels in them; for the crossbills and chiccadees had been at work
for many weeks on the trees; and also many families of their poor
relations, the chitmunks or ground squirrels, had not been idle, as
our little voyagers could easily guess by the chips and empty cones
round their holes. So, weary as they were, they were obliged to run
up the tall pine and hemlock trees, to search among the cones that
grew on their very top branches. While our squirrels were busy with
the few kernels they chanced to find, they were started from their
repast by the screams of a large slate-coloured hawk, and Velvet-paw
very narrowly escaped being pounced upon and carried off in its
sharp-hooked talons. Silver-nose at the same time was nearly frightened
to death by the keen round eyes of a cunning racoon, which had come
within a few feet of the mossy branch of an old cedar, where she sat
picking the seeds out of a dry head of a blue flag-flower she had found
on the shore.
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