UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
No doubt the chipmunk has many narrow es- 
capes from hawks. A hunter told me recently of a 
hawk-and-chipmunk incident that he had witnessed 
the day before in the woods on the mountain. He 
was standing still listening to the baying of his 
hound on the trail of a fox. Suddenly there was a 
rush and clatter of wings in the maple-trees near 
him, and he saw a large hawk in pursuit of a chip- 
munk coming down, close to the trunk of a tree, like 
a thunderbolt. As the hawk struck the ground, the 
hunter shot him dead. He had the squirrel in his 
claw as in a trap, and the hunter had to pry the 
talon open to free the victim, which was alive and 
able to run away. From the description I guessed 
the hawk to be a goshawk. What the chipmunk was 
doing up that tree is a mystery to me, since he sel- 
dom ventures far from the ground; but the truth of 
the incident is unquestioned. 
When the chipmunk is in the open, the sense of 
danger is never absent from him. He is always on 
the alert. In his excursions along the fences to col- 
lect wild buckwheat, wild cherries, and various 
grains, he is watchfulness itself. In every trip to his 
den with his supplies, his manner is like that of the 
baseball-player in running the bases — he makes a 
dash from my study, leaping high over the grass and 
weeds, to an apple-tree ten yards away; here he 
pauses a few seconds and nervously surveys his 
course ahead; then he makes another sprint to a 
12 
