She used to spy in the same way on Old Man Red Fox, and Frisky, his promising young hopeful.
In fact, what with Frisky spying on the fawns, and the fawns watching Frisky, these children of hostile tribes kept pretty close track of one another.
The summer passed on the whole, however, with no more adventure than the sound of the lonely "Hoo-woo-o-o-o" of a loon at twilight, or the sudden whirr of a startled pheasant's wings, or a quarrel between some wicked red squirrel caught robbing a crow's nest. (Or was it a crow that had robbed the squirrel's little hoard, and was getting handsomely scolded for his villainy?).
It had been one of those cool, crisp days when the sun shone just warm enough to feel good to the furred and feathered folk. Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, had been creeping up on a flying squirrel, who sat nibbling the ripe berries of the Solomon's Seal with her three little ones beside her, when the entire family took alarm and went leaping back to the beech-nut tree.
Now Frisky had not reached the age of six whole months in vain. He had sharp eyes, and he used them. And he had never seen a squirrel that could spread sail like that. He felt that his eyes must have deceived him.
He forgot his surprise at the very next turn of the trail, when he suddenly spied a tangle of wild grape vine that hung in a canopy of the luscious purple clusters over the stag-horn sumac.
Frisky Fox had never seen wild grapes before, though he had often passed the vines when the fruit was green. Now his keen little nose told him enough to make him eager for a taste.
But the fruit hung just too high. Leaping into the air, he occasionally got a nibble from the low-hanging bunches. But these only served to whet his appetite for more.
To add to his discontent, Fairy the Flying Squirrel suddenly sailed down from a tree-top, alighting on the very top of the grapevine canopy. And there she perched saucily and munched and sucked at grape after grape before his very eyes.
This was too much for Frisky. Around and around the vines he circled, screwing up his courage for a leap.
He finally discovered a place where the vine hugged a slanting tree trunk, and he climbed as far as he could.
The next instant Fairy had sailed back to her branch as easily as if she had been laughing at him. But Frisky didn't mind that. It would take just a stretch of his neck and his jaws would close on a great cluster of the fragrant fruit.