46 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



alone each digging a den for himself. I do not 

 know if they left home, or if mother sent them 

 away. 



The ground-hog hibernates, but the prairie- 

 dog, closely related to him, usually does not. In 

 watching the ground-hog one day I noticed 

 that two kinds of chipmunks hibernated and 

 that bumblebees were also hibernaters. It was 

 fun to examine a nest in which the bees were 

 having a peace sleep with stings not working. 

 There was no need of a fellow running and strik- 

 ing after making a friendly call, which bees so 

 often pretend to understand is not friendly. 



Ground-hogs are found in a majority of states 

 in the Union. They are also called wood-chuck, 

 rock-chuck, chucker, and marmot. If their 

 home is close to a garden or a grain field they 

 are likely to be unpopular with the owner be- 

 cause of too many raids on those things which 

 the owner wants for himself. They are some- 

 times dug out by wolves, foxes, and even by 

 bears. I often wondered how all this weather 

 lore was given to the ground-hog. 



The second autumn I still half believed in signs 

 and wandered looking for bear tracks and every- 

 thing that was supposed to reveal advance 

 weather secrets. A number of hunters and trap- 

 pers and also other people were asked how to 

 tell for certain that birds and beavers were 



