200 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
of Eastern chipmunks, the Northern and the South- 
ern, besides the Oregon, the painted, and the magnifi- 
cent golden chipmunk of the West. All of them have 
the same dear, gentle ways. 
When I was a boy, a chipmunk was a favorite pet. 
Flying squirrels were too sleepy, red squirrels too 
restless, and gray squirrels too bitey for petting 
purposes. Chippy is easily tamed, and moreover 
does not have to be kept in a cage, which is no place 
for any wild animal. I knew one once who used to 
go to school in a boy’s pocket every day; and he 
behaved quite as well as the boy, which is not saying 
much. Sometimes he would come out and sit on the 
desk beside the boy’s book, so as to help him over 
the particularly hard places. 
The chipmunk, like most of the Sleepers, has a 
varied diet. He eats all kinds of nuts and weed-seeds, 
and also has a pretty taste in mushrooms. It was 
a chipmunk who once taught me the difference 
between a good and a bad mushroom. I saw him 
sitting on a stump, nibbling what seemed to be a red 
russula, which tastes like red pepper and acts like 
an emetic if one is foolish enough to swallow much 
of it. When I came near, he ran away, leaving his 
lunch behind. On tasting the mushroom I found that, 
although it was a red russula, it was not the emetica, 
and I learned to recognize the delicious alutacea. 
Sometimes, sad to say, Chippy eats forbidden 
food. A friend of mine found him once on a low 
limb, nibbling a tiny, green grass-snake. The chip- 
munk had eaten about half of the snake, when he 
