200 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



kee small boys, I never knew why). The approach 

 of danger to a ground-squirrel colony or a com- 

 munity of chipmunks is heralded by the alarmed 

 peeps and squeaks of the first animal to spy it, and 

 the cry is taken up all down the line. I have 

 entered a Rocky Mountain meadow and heard the 

 little, shrill, warning cheep-cheep go across the grass 

 and nodding chalice cups like a spreading fire, while 

 whisk, whisk, whisk down into their holes scurried 

 the greenish-gray bodies, to poke black, curious 

 eyes out again a few minutes later. Just so I have 

 seen a man who could imitate a big horned owl hoot 

 at the edge of a pond at night, and heard the 

 thwacks of muskrat tails on the water go receding 

 up the edge like the alarm-beat of policemen's 

 clubs on the curb, and the splash of the rats as they 

 dove to safety. 



Yet the woodchuck, that largest and laziest of 

 common rodents, makes no effort to conceal his 

 burrow, and, like the grasshopper, lays up nothing 

 for the winter. No, that isn't true. He lays up 

 fat. Perhaps his laziness, his indolent if watchful 

 hours of sunning on the pasture rocks, his easy 

 feeding on tender grasses, clovers, and, when pos- 

 sible, succulent farm vegetables and crops, shows 

 the shrewdest sense. It enables him to sleep the 

 winter through without eating. Certainly he has 

 survived. It is not true, as some assert, that this 

 sleep is unbroken during the cold winter, for many 

 times, before Candlemas Day, I have found holes 

 with a packed track between the front and back 

 entrance, showing the chuck has been out more than 

 once for air. But I have never found tracks leading 



