Rollo at Play | Page 9

it is not certain;
sometimes the trap gets sprung accidentally. However, you may go and
ask your father if he thinks it worth while for me to leave my work long
enough to go down and see."
Rollo came back with the permission granted, and they all set off;
Rollo and James running on eagerly before.
When they came to the trap, they found it shut. Jonas took it up, and

tipped it one way and the other, and listened. He heard something
moving in it, but did not know whether it was anything more than the
corn cob. Then he said he would open the trap a very little, and let
Rollo peep in.
He did so. Rollo said it looked all dark; he could not see any thing.
Then Jonas opened it a little farther, and Rollo saw two little shining
eyes, and presently a nose smelling along at the crack.
"Yes, here he is, here he is," said Rollo; "look at him, James, look at
him;--see, see."
They all peeped at him, and then Jonas took the box under his arm, and
they returned home.
Jonas told the boys he was not willing to keep the squirrel a prisoner
very long, but he would try to contrive some way by which they might
look at him. Now, there was, in the garret, a small fire-fender, which
had been laid aside as old and useless. Jonas recollected this, and
thought he could fix up a temporary cage with it. So he took a small
box about as large as a raisin-box, which he found in the barn, and laid
it down on its side, so as to turn the open side towards the trap, and
then moved the trap close up to it. He then covered up all the rest of the
open part of the box with shingles, and asked James and Rollo to hold
them on. Then he carefully lifted up the cover of the trap, and made a
rattling in the back part of it with the spindle. This drove the squirrel
through out of the trap into the box.
When Jonas was sure that he was in, he took the old fender and slid it
down very cautiously between the trap and the box, so as to cover the
open part entirely, and make a sort of grated front, like a cage. Then he
took the trap away, and there the little nut-cracker was, safely
imprisoned, but yet fairly exposed to view.
That is, they thought he was safely imprisoned; but he, little rogue, had
no idea of submitting without giving his bolts and bars a try. At first, he
crept along, with his tail curled over his back, in a corner, and looked at
the strange faces which surrounded him. "Let us give him a little corn,"

said Rollo; "perhaps he is hungry;" and he was just slipping some
kernels in between the wires of the fender, when Bunny sprang forward,
and, with a jump and a squeeze, forced his slender body between two of
the wires that were bent a little apart, leaped down upon the barn floor,
ran along to the corner, up the post, and then crept leisurely along on a
beam. Presently, he stopped, and looked down, as if considering what
to do next.
The moment he escaped, the boys exclaimed, "O, catch him, catch
him," and were going to run after him; but Jonas said that it would do
no good, for they could not catch him again now, and had better stand
still and see what he would do.
He soon began to run along on the beam; thence he ascended to the
scaffold, and made his way towards an open window. He jumped up to
the window sill, and then disappeared. The boys all ran around, outside,
and were just in time to catch a glimpse of him, running along on the
top of the fence, down towards the woods again.
"Do let us run after him and catch him," said Rollo.
"Catch him!" said Jonas, with a laugh, "you might as well catch the
wind. No, the only way is to set our trap for him again. I meant to let
him go, myself; but he is not going to slip through our fingers in that
way, I tell him." So Jonas went down that night and set the trap again.
For several days after this, the trap remained unsprung, and the boys
began to think that they should never see him again. At last, however,
one day, when Rollo was playing in the yard, he saw Jonas coming up
out of the woods with the trap under his arm. Rollo ran to meet him,
and was delighted to find that the squirrel was caught again.