Meantime, my fame as a tickler had spread abroad, and I used to give up hours to it each day. I might better have spent the time in writing, but it was so noisy that I could not write, except to make hasty notes in my note-book, and I was there to study Natural History. An old grey Squirrel from the next county brought her entire family of young for me to tickle, and when I refused, she bit one of my ears until the blood came in a bright red stream. Bismarck drove her away and Kitchi-Kitchi stanched the bleeding with a bit of Rabbit fur she brought from the woods for the purpose.
Kitchi-Kitchi was devotedly attached to me. She would stop eating a nut any time to scamper down the tree-trunk and perch upon my arm or shoulder. She would sit upon my shoulder while I performed my manifold household duties, and would occasionally precede the broom, sweeping the floor with her tail. She would stay in my cabin long after I had told her to go home, and when I put her out, she would return by way of the window or chimney, cross the room, climb me, and put her head down between my collar and neck, barking meanwhile unless I spoke to her, stroked her, or tickled her. It used to give me an uncanny feeling when she ran up my spine while I was writing in my ledger—in other words, the climate disagreed with me.
It fell to my lot this Summer to hear a Squirrel singing a duet with itself. It sounds as though the voice were split, the high part coming through the nose, and the low tones through the throat. It is always a lively tune, perfectly rhythmical, interspersed with gales and gusts and cyclones of very human laughter. It is not generally known that Squirrels sing, but Little Brothers of the Woods can find out a great deal if they only give their minds to it and buy plenty of books.
At length, I missed Kitchi-Kitchi, and my heart grew sick with foreboding. I feared lest one of those terrible tragedies of the woods had taken place and my little friend’s life had thus been sacrificed. The end of a wild animal is always a tragedy—the pitiless law of the wilderness, supported by claw and tooth and fang, has so ordained.
Meeko and Bismarck were as usual, except that they carried a great many nuts and mushrooms up one particular tree. Determined to find out, I climbed, and there on her nest, pale and worn with the long vigil, but still cheerful, sat Kitchi-Kitchi.