SQUIJKBELS. 347 



nor do I believe it possible to tame them ; and yet in the 

 pairing season, in the month of May, I have seen them in 

 amatory pursuit come into my camp and run about it, 

 ignoring my presence altogether. Oil one occasion two of 

 them, climbed up to my head, and from thence jumped 

 through the smoke-hole in the roof. If any animal pos- 

 sesses conversational powers, certainly the squirrel does. 

 It would be in vain for me to try to describe the twenty 

 different noises they give utterance to, further than that 

 one is not unlike the striking of an alarm clock. 



The ground squirrel is a beautiful little animal, striped 

 lengthwise along the back with red, white, and brown. As 

 his name implies, he is not a tree climber, and seems to 

 prefer the outskirts of a settlement or the sunny side of a 

 snake fence to the forest. He too has a house or burrow 

 in the ground, and lays by a store of food ; but, unlike the 

 other species, rarely if ever comes out in the winter season. 

 Nor yet can he be said to hybernate ; he simply stops at 

 home, and takes his ease, enjoying, in the bosom of his 

 family, the fruits of his summer's toil. His food is much 

 the same as that of the red squirrel. 



The red squirrel and the flying squirrel plague the 

 trapper at times by stealing his baits of fish or flesh, and 

 getting caught in his traps, to the exclusion of more valu- 

 able fur, but I never suspected my little friend the ground 

 squirrel of carnivorous, not to say predatory propensities, 

 until I caught one (a female) walking off with a chicken. 

 There was no doubt about the matter ; she was caught in 

 flagrante ddictu, cutting the cheeper's throat behind the 

 old hen's back, and then carrying it off to her den pro- 

 bably to her young ones. I forgave the first offence ; but 



