They worked at this very diligently, and
also laid up a store of nuts and berries. They knew that they must not
only provide plenty of food for the winter, but also for the spring
months, when they could get little to eat beside the buds and bark of some
sort of trees, and the chance seeds that might still remain in the
pine-cones.
Thus the autumn months passed away very quickly and cheerfully with the
squirrels while preparing for the coming winter. Half the cold season was
spent, too, in sleep; but on mild, sunny days the little squirrels, roused
by the bright light of the sunbeams on the white and glittering snow,
would shake themselves, rub their black eyes, and after licking themselves
clean from dust, would whisk out of their house, and indulge in merry
gambols up and down the trunks of the trees, skipping from bough to bough,
and frolicking over the hard, crisp snow, which scarcely showed on its
surface the delicate print of their tiny feet and the sweep of their fine
light feathery tails. Sometimes they met with some little shrewmice
running on the snow. These very tiny things are so small, they hardly look
bigger than a large black beetle. They lived on the seeds of the tall
weeds, which they might be seen climbing and clinging to, yet were hardly
heavy enough to weigh down the heads of the dry stalks.
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