If I had been farther off he might have scolded at me.

March 12. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

Observe the waxwork twining about the smooth sumach. It winds against the sun. It is at first loose about the stem, but this ere long expands to and overgrows it. 

Observed the track of a squirrel in the snow under one of the apple trees on the southeast side of the Hill, and, looking up, saw a red squirrel with a nut or piece of frozen apple in his mouth, within six feet, sitting in a constrained position partly crosswise on a limb over my head, perfectly still, and looking not at me, but off into the air, evidently expecting to escape my attention by this trick. 

I stood and watched and chirruped to him about five minutes so near, and yet he did not at once turn his head to look at me or move a foot or wink. The only motion was that of his tail curled over his back in the wind. At length he did change his attitude a little and look at me a moment. Evidently this is a trick they often practice. 

If I had been farther off he might have scolded at me. 

Snowed again last night, as it has done once or twice before within ten days without my recording it, — robin snows, which last but a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1857

A red squirrel with a nut or piece of frozen apple in his mouth. See March 18, 1857 ("A red squirrel runs nimbly before me along the wall, his tail in the air at a right angle with his body"); December 16, 1855 ("One sits twirling apparently a dried apple in his paws, with his tail curled close over his back") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel