Chipmunk 
the sunshine of every warm day we have, to retire and become 
dormant again, like the dormouse, at the approach of a cold 
wave or snow weather. 
Those first few weeks of confinement in November must be 
a strange experience for such an active sun-loving creature as the 
chipmunk. To go down out of the bright October sunlight into 
a chamber utterly devoid of any light of any kind, there to remain 
groping about in the dark among its companions, squeezing 
through narrow side passages, depending on food packed away 
in the nest itself or in side galleries branching off from the main 
chamber, eating and sleeping in those cramped quarters and get- 
ting ever drowsier and drowsier, at last losing consciousness al- 
together, to awake and become aware in some inexplicable man- 
ner that it is time to come out into the daylight once more—this, 
indeed, must be a life of strange contrasts. 
But while the dormouse is supposed to be chronically sleepy 
at all times, owing probably to its fondness for being abroad at 
night and sleeping all day, even in the longest days of summer, 
the chipmunk, when it is awake, is most unmistakably awake 
from sunrise to sunset, apparently without even a nap at midday 
when the days are at their longest and hottest. 
These ground squirrels are at times rather destructive neigh- 
bours, about their worst vice being that of digging up newly 
planted corn. They display a great deal of cleverness in the mat- 
ter of locating the seed which is usually covered with an inch 
or two of earth. Their cheek pouches, which reach back almost 
to their shoulders, enable them to carry away astonishingly large 
loads and, as they often persist in their nefarious work until the 
corn is several inches high, the damage wrought by a few families 
of them is sometimes considerable. 
Generally speaking, it is only in the spring when their sup- 
plies are running short and before the berries have begun to ripen 
that they err in this direction. They seldom trouble the ripe 
corn to any great extent, even in seasons when nuts are scarce. 
In the West they appear to be much more destructive, and are 
popularly looked upon as a decided nuisance. They eat all kinds 
of berries, strawberries, raspberries and dewberries; while apples, 
pears and tomatoes also find favour in their eyes. 
Early in the spring they go searching for the coral-red berries 
of the wintergreen and mitchella, where the crisp gray moss is 
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