From earliest childhood he evinced great fondness for animals, and watched with lively interest all the little creatures of the woods and fields.  He was familiar with all their haunts, and they gave names to the localities of his neighborhood.  There was Turkey Causeway, where wild turkies abounded; and Rabbit Swamp, where troops of timid little rabbits had their hiding places; and Squirrel Grove, where many squirrels laid in their harvest of acorns for the winter; and Panther Bridge, where his grandfather had killed a panther.

Once, when his father and the workmen had been cutting down a quantity of timber, Isaac discovered a squirrel’s nest in a hole of one of the trees that had fallen.  It contained four new-born little ones, their eyes not yet opened.  He was greatly tempted to carry them home, but they were so young that they needed their mother’s milk.  So after examining them, he put them back in the nest, and with his usual busy helpfulness went to assist in stripping bark from the trees.  When he went home from his work, toward evening, he felt curious to see how the mother squirrel would behave when she returned and found her home was gone.  He accordingly hid himself in a bush to watch her proceedings.  About dusk, she came running along the stone wall with a nut in her mouth, and went with all speed to the old familiar tree.  Finding nothing but a stump remaining there, she dropped the nut and looked around in evident dismay.  She went smelling all about the ground, then mounted the stump to take a survey of the country.  She raised herself on her hind legs and snuffed the air, with an appearance of great perplexity and distress.  She ran round the stump several times, occasionally raising herself on her hind legs, and peering about in every direction, to discover what had become of her young family.  At last, she jumped on the prostrate trunk of the tree, and ran along till she came to the hole where her babies were concealed.  What the manner of their meeting was nobody can tell; but doubtless the mother’s heart beat violently when she discovered her lost treasures all safe on the warm little bed of moss she had so carefully prepared for them.  After staying a few minutes to give them their supper, she came out, and scampered off through the bushes.  In about fifteen minutes, she returned and took one of the young ones in her mouth, and carried it quickly to a hole in another tree, three or four hundred yards off, and then came back and took the others, one by one, till she had conveyed them all to their new home.  The intelligent instinct manifested by this little quadruped excited great interest in Isaac’s observing mind.  When he drove the cows to pasture, he always went by that tree, to see how the young family were getting along.  In a short time, they were running all over the tree with their careful mother, eating acorns under the shady boughs, entirely unconscious of the perils through which they had passed in infancy.