i 9 8 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



His more distant cousin, the ground-squirrel (in- 

 cluding the gay little chipmunk) , has also maintained 

 itself. Indeed, anybody who has ever camped in 

 one of the timber-line parks in the Rocky Mountains 

 knows that in such spots the ground-squirrel is the 

 most prominent thing in the landscape. In spite of 

 foes, from the hawks, foxes, mink, and weasels of 

 the East to the grizzly bears of the West (who dig 

 out the ground-squirrels frequently), these gre- 

 garious and cheerful little fellows manage to thrive. 

 A striped chipmunk running on and under and over 

 a gray New England stone wall, or a larger Columbia 

 River ground-squirrel in the high Rockies of Mon- 

 tana sitting on his hind legs and pressing a startled 

 peep out of his stomach with his front paws, is a 

 pretty sight, which delights all sorts of people. The 

 ground-squirrels live in burrows, or tunnels well un- 

 derground, frequently of great length. A chipmunk 

 burrow will go straight down three feet, then run 

 for half a hundred feet under the surface, with sev- 

 eral nest chambers lined with leaves, and one or 

 more back entrances. Here the winter food is 

 stored and the winter spent. The most interesting 

 feature of these tunnels, however, is not their ex- 

 tent, but the fact that you never find any excavated 

 earth at the mouths. A great quantity must be 

 taken out, but it is all carried away by the squirrel 

 presumably in his (or her) cheek pouches, and either 

 scattered on the grass or piled at some distance, 

 under a bush. Yet I have never yet seen a chip- 

 munk carry the earth thus, nor found any one else 

 who has seen him do it. Enos Mills tells me he has 

 only seen them push or drag out the dirt. The ani- 



