This same near neighbor of mine takes now and then an otter; only three or four weeks ago he showed me the skin of one on its stretching-board; and the otter is an animal that I not only have never seen in this part of the world, but never expect to see. I haven’t that kind of an eye. As for muskrats, the trapper takes them almost without number; “rats,” he calls them; while to me it is something like an event if once or twice a year I happen to come upon one swimming in a brook. Another of these seclusive races, that manage to live close about us unespied by all except the most inquisitive of their human neighbors, is the race of flying squirrels. Whether they are more or less common than red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks, it would be difficult to say; but while red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks flit before you wherever you go, you may haunt the woods from year’s end to year’s end without seeing hide or hair of their interesting cousin. Flying squirrels stir abroad after dark; not because their deeds are evil (though they are said to like small birds and birds’ eggs), but because--well, as the wise old nursery saw very conclusively puts it, because “it is their nature to.” Several times during the past winter I made attempts to see them (the story of one of these attempts has been told in a previous chapter), but always without success, though twice I was taken to a nest that was known to be in use. The other day I went to the same place again, the friend who conducted me having found a squirrel there that very forenoon. He shook the tree, a small gray-birch, with a nest of leaves and twigs perched in its top, and out peeped the squirrel. “See him?” said my friend. “Yes.” Then he gave the tree a harder shake, and in a moment the creature spread his “wings” and sailed gracefully away, landing on the trunk of an oak not far off, at about the height of my head. There he clung, his large handsome eye, full of a startled emotion, fastened upon me. I wondered if he would let me put my hand on him; but as I approached within three or four yards he scrambled up the tree into the small branches at the top. He was going to take another flight, if the emergency seemed to call for it, and the higher he could get, the better. The oak was too big to be shaken, but a smaller tree stood near it. This my companion shook in the squirrel’s face, and again he took flight. This time he passed squarely over my head, showing a flat outspread surface sailing through the air, looking not the least in the world like a squirrel or any other quadruped. Again he struck against a trunk, and again he ran up into the treetop. And again he was shaken off. Four times he flew, and then I protested that I had seen enough and would not have him molested further. We left him in a maple-top, surrounded by handsome red flower-clusters.