UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



of a fox; I offered her my lunch and, holding her, 

 even put it in her mouth, but she threw it disdain- 

 fully from her, and rushed on along that steaming 

 trail. She had but one thought or sense at that mo- 

 ment: she was beside herself about that fox, and 

 her attention could not be diverted from it. My 

 chipmunk w^hen at work was alike obsessed; he 

 knew nothing but his w ork and the danger from his 

 enemies . 



Day by day the mound of fresh earth grew and 

 spread back more and more toward the hole out of 

 which it came, till it seemed about to cover it. At 

 times the squirrel either worked at night or else very 

 early in the morning before I was on the scene. But 

 later he was not on his job till past mid-forenoon. 

 For two or three days he promptly appeared at 

 eleven o'clock. He would come leaping over the 

 grass from some point behind my camp and quickly 

 resume his excavating. Once he found some fresh 

 peach-pits upon his mound; these arrested his at- 

 tention; he seized them one by one, nibbled off the 

 bits of pulp that were still clinging to them, then 

 dropped them and took up his task. He usually 

 knocked off work by or before two in the afternoon. 



Evidently he has no partner and will spend the 

 winter in his subterranean retreat alone. I think 

 this is an established chipmunk custom, rendered 

 necessary, it may be, by the scant supply of air in 

 such close quarters, three feet undergroimd, and 



32 



