26 



COMMON MAMMALS OK WKSTKHN MONTANA. 



with strychnine held in (lour paste. When such baits are pouched 

 the coat ina is dissolved by the mouth juices and the strychnine set 

 free and then absorbed through the lining of the pouches, directly 

 into the blood. Very few of these animals poisoned by the writer 

 have eaten any of the bail, practically all having been killed di- 

 rectly through the cheek pouches. 



The baits recommended for chipmunks (Formulas TIT and IV) 

 are both very effective against side-striped ground squirrels. 



PINE SQUIRRELS. 



INJURY TO CROPS. 



Although pine squirrels (fig. IT) are abundant throughout the 

 coniferous timber of western Montana, they do not as a rule cause 



Fig. 17. — Young pine squirrel. 



any serious loss of crops. After the extensive forest fires of 11)10, 

 however, they attacked many of the apple orchards situated near the 

 foothills along the edges of the Bitterroot Valley, doing considerable 

 damage in some of them. A rancher living near Florence reported 

 that his two boys shot 200 pine squirrels from the trees in a 5-acre 

 apple orchard. So far as the author has been able to find out, 

 these animals have never before seriously damaged apples in the 

 Bitterroot, and it seems probable that they were driven to do so in 

 the fall of 1!)10 by the unusual scarcity of their natural food, result- 

 ing from the" great fires of late summer. Up to the 1st of September 

 no damage of this sort was reported in 1911. 



A less important sort of damage for wdiich pine squirrels are re- 

 sponsible is the cutting off of the tips of numerous pine boughs. In 

 thick stands of timber this damage is unimportant, but solitary trees 

 are often seriously injured. 



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