The New Noah Read Free Page A

in a
half-moon, camouflaging them with grass and bushes. We had to do this while it was dark, and we had to be very quiet about it, so that the squirrels would not know we were there. Then, the nets
being ready, we went and hid under some large bushes at the very edge of the strip of forest and waited there, drenched with dew, until the dawn broke. In the mountains the climate is much colder
than in the lowlands, and so by the time the sun rose we were frozen and our teeth were chattering with cold.
    Presently, as the morning mist swirled about us in great white clouds, we heard some loud angry ‘chuckchuck’ noises echoing from the trees around us, and the hunters whispered that
this meant the squirrels were preparing to come down for their breakfast. Soon, peering through the leaves towards the part of the grass fields where our nets were concealed, I saw a strange object
bobbing up and down. It looked exactly like a long black and white balloon, and I could not for the life of me think what it could be. I pointed it out to the hunters and they explained that it was
a squirrel’s tail bobbing up and down above the grass stalks while its body was hidden from view. Very soon this solitary ‘balloon’ was joined by several others, and as the mist
rose we could see the squirrels themselves hopping cautiously from tussock to tussock, sitting up on their great black and white striped tails.
    When we judged that they were far enough away from the trees, we rose from our cramped positions and spread out in a line. Then I gave the signal and we all walked slowly out into the grass
field. Our appearance was greeted with a chorus of loud frightened chucking noises from the squirrels in the trees behind us. The ones in the grass field, however, just sat and stared at us
suspiciously. Our plans to walk forward, driving the squirrels farther and farther away from the trees and slowly to the nets, and then, once they were within the circle of the nets, suddenly to
charge down and stampede them, so that in their panic they would run into the mesh before they saw us, did not, however, work out quite the way we expected.
    One of the squirrels, more cunning than the rest, suddenly realized that we were driving him away from the sanctuary of the tall trees, and so he broke away to the left, skirted round the line
of hunters and raced back into the forest. The other squirrels sat and watched, obviously undecided as to whether or not they should follow him. They were not quite within the circle of the nets,
but I felt that if we did not charge them they would all break away and get round us as the first squirrel had done. So we all charged forward, shouting and yelling and waving our arms, trying to
appear as frightening as possible. The squirrels took one look at us and turned and fled.
    Two of them broke away to the left and right, and three others ran straight into the net and within a few seconds were struggling helplessly in the mesh. It was an extremely difficult job to
disentangle them, for they uttered loud snarling grunts of rage and bit savagely at our hands with their orange-coloured teeth. They were quite handsome animals, with russet-red upper parts,
lemon-yellow bellies, and the big black and white ringed tails, each of which measured about eighteen inches in length. Now that the squirrels in the forest knew we were trying to catch them, it
was useless to go on with the hunt, and so we had to be content with the three that we had captured.
    We carried them back to camp in thick canvas bags and placed them in a nice roomy cage with a good supply of fruit and vegetables, and left them to settle down. After they had thoroughly
explored the cage, they ate up all the food that I had put in it and then curled up and went to sleep.
    It was very early the next morning when I discovered how these squirrels had come by their name. I was woken up at dawn by a very strange noise coming from the cage, and on creeping from