On examination I found that every bur had been
cut square off with about an inch of the stem adhering, and not one had
been left on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design. Whose
design? The squirrels'. The fruit was the finest I had ever seen in
the woods, and some wise squirrel had marked it for his own. The burs
were ripe, and had just begun to divide, not "threefold," but fourfold,
"to show the fruit within." The squirrel that had taken all this pains
had evidently reasoned with himself thus: "Now , these are extremely
fine chestnuts, and I want them; if I wait till the burs open on the
tree the crows and jays will be sure to carry off a great many of the
nuts before they fall; then, after the wind has rattled out what
remain, there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels, the
raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys and the pigs, to come
in for their share; so I will forestall events a little; I will cut off
the burs when they have matured, and a few days of this dry October
weather will cause everyone of them to open on the ground; I shall be
on hand in the nick of time to gather up my nuts.
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