8o DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



that the little bird might be more familiar with 

 the habits of the chipmunk than our city-bred 

 naturalists, and that perhaps she has good reasons 

 for driving the chipmunks from the trees. 



It was on account of this suspicion that I made 

 some experiments and attempted to discover what 

 sort of food well-fed chipmunks would eat. By 

 this I mean animals with a constant supply of food 

 at hand so that hunger could in no wise tempt them 

 to an unusual diet. Two chipmunks which I had 

 confined in a wire minnow box were most gentle 

 and interesting little pets and one of them now oc- 

 cupies a squirrel cage along side of me as I write. 



THE WHITE FOOTED MICE 



discovered years ago, that there is a bountiful 

 supply of food in the pantry of the log cabin, food 

 which is more palatable than that to be found 

 in the surrounding woods, so these beautiful little 

 creatures became a regular nuisance and were as 

 annoying to the housewife as are their degraded 

 brothers, the Asiatic mice, to the housewives of 

 our cities. Consequently I set traps for them and 

 caught five in one night. The little rascals had 

 deservedly forfeited their lives by taking their 

 abode in the pantry, but I did not care to become 

 their executioner, so I took a tin cracker box and 

 cut a hole in it as near as I could judge to be 

 about the size of a mouse's body; then filling the 

 tin box with soft nesting material and the five 

 mice, I placed it 



