i68 The Mammals of Colorado 
to burrow up through three feet of snow at that season to get 
out on the surface. An animal taken at that time was 
exceedingly fat. One was lately seen, November 8th, 
above Manitou, at 8,000 feet, and one was taken Novem- 
ber nth, at 6,700 feet in the foot-hills near Colorado 
Springs. 
The capacity of the cheek pouches is something surprising. 
I took one with twenty-seven acorns from the scrub oak in 
its pouches. It is hardly necessary to say that its head 
appeared to be greatly swelled. 
Mr. Harold Durand saw one, near Querida, enter a hole 
or crack in the bank of a gulch in which was a Mountain 
Bluebird's nest containing three young just about ready 
to fly. The old birds were greatly excited, and two of 
the young came out, and Mr. Durand found, on inves- 
tigating, the third one dead, and freshly killed and still 
warm. 
Another instance of flesh-eating which came to my own 
notice was in the case of a closely allied species (C. cinerascens) 
in the Yellowstone Park. This was a few years ago when 
two friends and myself were riding along one of the roads in 
the Park and saw the squirrel come up on a log carrying a 
young meadow mouse {Microtus sp.) in its mouth. Sitting 
upright on the log, and holding the mouse in its paws, the 
squirrel proceeded to eat the mouse, beginning at the head, 
and ate the head and part of the body while we watched it. 
As this was on the edge of a meadow the mouse had probably 
been caught in the grass. 
No doubt these animals destroy quite a few eggs and young 
birds during the breeding season, and in this way may be 
considered harmful, while the destruction of such an animal 
as the meadow mouse may be called beneficial, though to 
be sure in such a place as the Yellowstone Park these mice 
do little or no damage. 
