110 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



real ''flight." The ''ground squirrel" or "strip- 

 ed gopher" of common speech was formerly abun- 

 dant on the campus at GrinnelL and constantly 

 tempting the town boys into processes of snaring 

 and "drowning out." Its alert erect form, its 

 whistle, its scamper homeward through the grass, 

 and its head emerging from the hole, were long too 

 familiar to command much notice from adults. In 

 the fields about Grinnell one occasionally sees an- 

 other species of "ground squirrel" — quite a 

 frisky, handsome creature, of fair size, reddish 

 fur, and bushy, grayish tail. 



Field mice are associated with nests of fine 

 grass, tiny tracks across the snow, and silent 

 forms pendent from the barb mre or osage thorn 

 larders of the butcher-birds. The conspicuously 

 arched underground paths of the pocket gophers 

 about the yard and in the fields, were of deep in- 

 terest every year in bo^^hood, when nature lore 

 first made its appeal. The earth mounds of the 

 moles were much more frequently seen than the 

 diggers themselves, though occasionally a scurry- 

 ing mole appeared — a being though so small, so 

 peculiar and foreign to daily life that it gave one a 

 curiously profound sense of the mystery and 

 strangeness of nature. Muskrat houses are known 

 probably to most Iowa boys in regions of quiet 

 waters, and the swimming muskrat is one of the 

 cherished early signs of spring. 



