THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 137 



on into it, taking his hole with him, at a rate 

 that has defied more than one industrious pur- 

 suer. Just how he breathes while this is going 

 on is more than I know, for he fills the passage 

 behind him with the debris of his digging, but he 

 evidently does find air enough, for after tiring 

 out the excavating hunter and waiting a reason- 

 able time he digs up and out and proceeds to the 

 deglutition of kitchen gardens with an artistic 

 thoroughness that has been his since days of the 

 Pilgrim Fathers, and I will not undertake to say 

 how long before that. I do not doubt that the 

 first Indian that ever planted corn and beans and 

 ''iskooter-squashes" said the same things about 

 the woodchuck that I do, in his own language; 

 and I believe that the woodchuck then, as he does 

 now, just wrinkled his stubby black nose and re- 

 tired to his burrow to sleep upon it while the 

 garden digested. 



No one to look casually at the woodchuck 

 would think he was hard to get, but he is. The 

 first time I ever glimpsed one I learned that. 

 The woodchuck was eating second-crop clover in 

 a hayfield that had been mown about three weeks 

 before. A little cocker spaniel and I were stroll- 

 ing in the field when suddenly we heard a squeal 



