THE GROUND SQUIRRELS OP CALIFORNIA. 



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bulge in the middle portion of its body. This proved to mark the loca- 

 tion of a full-grown ground squirrel, which had been swallowed entire, 

 head first. 



Near the mouth of Tejon Creek, Kern County, on July 16, 1914, C. L. 

 Camp (MS) watched a rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus) about three 

 feet and a half long, swallow a ground squirrel. He describes the 

 incident essentially as follows: The snake had just bitten the squirrel 

 on the side of the face below the eye. The squirrel flopped about for 

 five or ten minutes and then dropped over a bank and died, out of sight 

 of the snake. The snake then slowly crawled down over the bank after 

 its prey, found it, touched it all over with the end of its tongue, and 

 then seized the animal by the nose. The squirrel moved slightly. The 

 snake drew back and waited motionless for some time. The snake then 

 got a fresh hold on the squirrel's nose, pulled the body out straight, 

 and started to work its jaws over the squirrel's head. Things went 

 rapidly as far as the squirrel's ears, then operations proceeded more 

 slowly. The snake writhed about and gradually worked its jaws over 

 the shoulders of the squirrel, first moving the upper jaw forward with 

 slight jerks and then pulling up on the lower jaw. Finally, after the 

 rodent had been half swallowed, we approached closer to take a picture 

 and the snake disgorged the squirrel as the result of a violent effort 

 lasting a minute or so. We went away and in a little while the snake 

 returned to its food and had swallowed it almost completely within 

 15 or 20 minutes more. 



On Pine Flats, in the San Gabriel Mountains, a large, lazy rattler 

 was secured which showed a bulge about halfway along its body. Dis- 

 section disclosed a full-grown California Ground Squirrel which had 

 been swallowed. (Grinnell, J. and H. W., 1907, p. 53.) 



On San Emigdio Creek, Kern County, on the morning of April 23, 

 1918, the attention of J. Dixon (MS) was attracted by the nervous 

 barking and peculiar actions of a large male ground squirrel. With 

 the aid of the binoculars, the actions of the squirrel, which was less than 

 75 yards distant, were easily followed. The squirrel was obviously 

 much wrought up and his sharp, nervous notes were quite different in 

 pitch and intensity from the ordinary metallic alarm note. The ani- 

 mal's attention was continually focused upon an opening just beneath 

 a certain small white rock at the edge of a stone pile. While his atten- 

 tion thus remained fixed, the squirrel kept running back and forth in 

 a semicircle about thirty inches distant from the object concerned. 

 During this time the squirrel's tail, which was held arched over his 

 back, was twitched violently sideways every time he barked. The 

 alarm notes were uttered during a momentary pause at the end of 

 each advance in the arc-shaped path of the squirrel. The squirrel's 

 whole demeanor reminded the observer of that of a pup that has cor- 

 nered some old pussy cat and still hesitates to make an attack. Having 

 witnessed three similar performances by ground squirrels, in San Diego 

 County, the observer proceeded to investigate and found, as in the three 

 previous instances, that a coiled rattlesnake was the cause of the excite- 

 ment. In the present case there were two, a male and female, tightly 

 coiled together at the mouth of a squirrel burrow, and they were dis- 

 patched. An hour later this same squirrel, which was easily identified 

 by a peculiarity in its pelage due to wear, was observed digging a new 



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