62 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



spect are the nearest to being old fogies, as I never could 

 detect anything on their part that the most vivid imagi- 

 nation could construe into " having fun." 



About August 15th these chipmunks, and all the 

 others in the neighborhood, appeared to settle down to 

 work in "real earnest." Instead of playful, careless 

 creatures, living from hand to mouth, they became sober 

 and seemed very busy. Instead of keeping comparatively 

 near home, they wandered off quite a distance for them, 

 and filling both cheek-pouches full of corn, or later in 

 the . year, with chincapins and acorns, home they would 

 march, looking, in the face, like children with the 

 mumps. How much they can carry at one time, in their 

 cheek-pouches, I know, from actual measurement, but 

 am afraid to say, as the statement would be " hard to 

 swallow," and so the inquisitive reader may determine 

 the matter to his own satisfaction. 



This habit of storing up quantities of food against the 

 coming winter was continued, in this case, and I suppose 

 it is so generally, until the first heavy white frosts, when 

 the chipmunks give up to a great degree their out-door 

 life. The food thus gathered, usually nuts and corn, is, 

 I believe, partly consumed when they go into winter 

 quarters, and before they begin their hibernating sleep, 

 which may not be for some time. This impression is 

 based on the result of digging out a nest as late as the 

 3d of November. The last time I had seen a chip- 

 munk belonging to this nest was October 22d. Twelve 

 days after, I very carefully closed the three passages that 

 led to it, and calculating about where the nest was, I dug 

 down until I came upon it. I found four chipmunks 

 very cozily fixed for winter, in a roomy compartment, 

 and all of them thoroughly wide awake. Their store of 

 provisions was in a smaller room or store-house immedi- 



