A Tale of a Tail

Trail Wood #122 Earl Plato
In his early June log Teale continued with his view of the natural world. Let’s move on to a lighter subject.
Elaine and I have many grandchildren.
One, eight year old named Ashlyn, is a budding naturalist. Recently a garter snake headed for a hole. As it wiggled in Ashlyn grabbed its tail. She extricated it and showed it to her siblings. It peed on her arm an orange colored liquid . No problem for her. Quite a girl.
Ed teale a fully grown naturalist tells of his “tail pulling” tale one mid June at Trail Wood. We read as follows:
“ Probably I will never do it again. Certainly I have never done it before. I have just pulled a chipmunk’s tail. It is hard to say which of us - the chipmunk or I - is more surprised. It has happened this way.
Leaving the pasture as we come home Nellie and I draw near to the apple tree beside the terrace wall overlooking the slope to Hampton Brook. From a lower limb we have suspended half of a coconut shell to hold sunflower seeds for chickadees and nuthatches during he winter. This year we have continued feeding on into June - a fact that has not escaped the eye of one of our chipmunks.
As I draw close I notice That its head is invisible, thrust down inside the shell. But its tail is hanging down on he outside. On an impulse I creep silently toward it, never expecting to succeed in my attention to give he hanging tail a little tug. The chipmunk blasts out of the shell. It scatters the sunflower seeds. Its wild leap into space carries it to the grass below. There it bolts away and vanishes in a crevice un the wall. In all the long history of Trail Wood it no doubt will be the only chipmunk ever to have its tail pulled by a man.”
Note: How many animal tails have you pulled?