Nature alone can tell you how to pose the tail to represent the state of the animal's feelings. Try to look at your work with the eye of an artist, analyze it, and catalogue its faults, so that you will be sure to avoid them in the next specimen.
If the hair needs no more washing, comb it out carefully at the last moment, and set your specimen on a shelf to dry, out of the dust if possible, and out of the sunshine, and watch it while it is drying to see that the head and feet dry in good shape. At the end of two weeks, or perhaps three, the little mammal will be dry and hard, and ready for the last touches. Pull out all the pins which have been holding the toes, ears, lips, or eye corners in place, and if they leave any holes, fill them up with putty. I have not told you how to stuff a head with the mouth open, and model the soft parts in papier-maché and wax, because you will hardly want to try anything so difficult at present, and it involves processes which cannot be described within the limits of this chapter.
When your mammal is quite dry, dress the fur with a fine comb and brush, and beat it with a small piece of whalebone or a little switch, to make it stand out from the skin, full and fluffy, as in life. This end must be accomplished, no matter how long it takes.
Procure some tube colors, oil and turpentine, equal parts, and a small sable brush, with which to tint the eyelids and the end of the nose their natural color. Put a little varnish and turpentine, equal parts of each, on the toe-nails, and, in short, do everything you can that will give the specimen the look of a living animal. If it _looks stuffed_, put it in the darkest corner of your cabinet, and try another. The glass eyes must be cleaned with great care, and polished with a soft cotton rag until they glisten.
At the last moment change the rough board pedestal for a permanent one, either of black walnut, polished, or ash, planed and sand-papered very smooth, and covered with two coats of shellac. If you have perched your squirrel on the top of a small stump, sawed off square at the bottom, or upon a large branch, with a section of the trunk serving as a base, of course no artificial base is necessary. Artificial branches for mounted birds are bad enough, but for mammals they are altogether too bad, and should never be used.