Part 19

Sometimes you read in nature-books that the woodchuck is good to eat. Don't believe it. I ought to know. I ate one once. Anyone is welcome to my share of the world's supply of woodchucks. When I camped out as a boy, we had to eat everything that we shot: and one summer I ate a part of a woodchuck, a crow, a green heron, and a blue jay. The chuck was about in the crow's class.

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We humans have different feelings toward the different Sleepers. One may respect the bear, and have a certain tempered regard for the coon, or even the skunk. Everyone, however, loves that confiding, gentle little Sleeper, the striped chipmunk--"Chippy Nipmunk," as certain children of my acquaintance have named him. He is that little squirrel who lives in the ground and has two big pockets in his cheeks. Sometimes in the fall you may think that he has the mumps. Really it is only acorns. He can carry four of them in each cheek. Once I met a greedy chipmunk who had his pockets so full of nuts that he could not enter his own burrow. Although he tried with his head sideways, and even upside-down, he could not get in. When he saw me coming, he rapidly removed two hickory nuts from which he had nibbled the sharp points at each end, and popped into his hole, leaving the nuts high, but not dry, outside. When I carried them off, he stuck his head out of the hole, and shouted, "Thief! Thief!" after me in chipmunk language, so loudly that, in order not to be arrested, I carried them back again.

Almost the first wild animal of my acquaintance was the chipmunk. During one of my very early summers, probably the fourth or fifth, a wave of chipmunks swept over the old farm where I happened to be. They swarmed everywhere, and every stone wall seemed to be alive with them. It was probably one of the rare chipmunk migrations, which, although denied by some naturalists, actually do occur.

Chippy usually goes to bed in late October, and sleeps until late March. He takes with him a light lunch of nuts and seeds, in case he may wake up and be hungry during the long night. Moreover, these come in very handy along about breakfast-time, for when he gets up there is little to eat. Then, too, he is very busy during those early spring weeks. In the first place, he has to sing his spring song for hours. It is a loud, rolling "Chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck," almost like a bird-song, and Chippy is very proud of it. Then, too, he has to find a suitable Miss Chipmunk and persuade her to become Mrs. Chipmunk, all of which takes a great deal of time. So the nuts which he stores up are probably intended rather for an early breakfast than a late supper.

An Indian writer tells how the boys of his tribe used to take advantage of the chipmunk's spring serenade. The first warm day in March they would all start out armed with bows and arrows, and at the nearest chipmunk-hole one would imitate the loud chirrup of the chipmunk. Instantly every chipmunk within hearing would pop out of his hole and join the chorus, until sometimes as many as fifty would be singing at the same time, too busily to dodge the blunt arrows of the boy-hunters.

Besides his song the chipmunk has another high-pitched note, and an alarm-squeal which he gives as he dives into his burrow. There are two phases of Eastern chipmunks, the Northern and the Southern, besides the Oregon, the painted, and the magnificent 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 chipmunk had eaten about half of the snake, when he suddenly stopped and let the remainder drop, and then sat and reflected for a full minute. At the end of that time he became actively ill, and after losing all of that fresh snake-lunch, scampered away, an emptier, if not a wiser, chipmunk.

In spite of his gentle ways Chippy lives in a world of enemies. Hawks, snakes, cats, boys, and dogs, all are his foes. More than all the rest put together, however, he fears the devilish red weasel, which runs him down relentlessly above and below the ground alike. Only in the water has the chipmunk a chance to escape. Although the weasel can hold him for a few yards, yet in a long swim the chipmunk will draw away so far from his pursuer that he will generally escape. Underground, if given a few seconds' time, he also escapes by a method known to a number of the underground folk. Dashing through a series of the main burrows, he runs into a side gallery, and instantly walls himself in so neatly that his pursuer rushes past without suspecting his presence.

For many years one of the out-of-door problems to which I was unable to find the answer was how a chipmunk could dig a burrow and leave no trace of any fresh earth. I examined scores of new chipmunk-holes, but never found the least trace of fresh earth near the entrance. His secret is to start at the other end. This sounds like a joke, but it is exactly what he does. He will run a shaft for many feet, coming up in some convenient thicket or beneath the slope of an overhanging bank. All the earth will be taken out through the first hole, which is then plugged up. This accounts for the heaps of fresh earth which I have frequently seen near chipmunk colonies, but with no burrow anywhere in sight.

The Band was on the march. The evening before, at story-time, Sergeant Henny-Penny and Corporal Alice-Palace had listened spellbound while the Captain told them of the adventures of trustful Chippy-Nipmunk when he tried to get change for a horse-chestnut from Mr. G. Squirrel, who it seems was of a grasping and over-reaching disposition, and how Chippy wrote home about the transaction signing himself "Butternutly yours." The story had made such a sensation that the flattered Captain had promised, on the next day, which was a half-holiday, to take the whole Band up to Chipmunk Hill, where old Mr. Prindle had named and tamed a chipmunk colony.

Late afternoon found them plodding up the grass-grown road which led to the lonely little house on top of the hill, where Mr. Prindle had lived since days before which the memory of the Band ran not. They found the old man seated on the porch in a great Boston rocker, and glad enough to see them all. The Captain introduced them in due form, from First Lieutenant Trottie down to Corporal Alice-Palace.

"'T ain't everybody," said Mr. Prindle, pulling Second Lieutenant Honey's ear reflectively, "that would climb five miles up-hill to see an old man. How would a few fried cakes and some cider go?"

There was an instantaneous vote in favor of this resolution, in which Alice-Palace's good-time noise easily soared like a siren-whistle above all the other expressions of assent.

"Be careful and don't swallow the holes," Mr. Prindle warned them a few moments later, as he brought out a big panful of brownish-red, spicy fried cakes cooked in twisted rings.

The Band promised to use every precaution, and there was an adjournment of all other business until the pan and the pitcher were alike empty.

"Are your chipmunks still alive?" queried the Captain, as they all sat down on the vast, squatty-legged settee next to Mr. Prindle's rocker.

"Yes, indeed," replied the latter, "they've been with me nigh on to four years now."

Alice-Palace's eyes became very big.

"Not Chippy-Nipmunk?" she whispered to the Captain.

"Exactly," replied that official, "and then some."

Thereafter, at Mr. Prindle's suggestion, they all sat stony-still and mousy-quiet while he made a funny little hissing, whistling noise. From under the porch there came a scurrying rush, and the two bright eyes of a big striped chipmunk popped up over the edge of the porch-step. A minute later, from two holes in a near-by bank, two other chipmunks dashed out. They all had ashy-gray backs, with five stripes of such dark brown as to look almost like black. Their tails had a black, white-tipped fringe, while the gray color of the back changed into clear orange-brown on their flanks and legs.

"This one is James," announced Mr. Prindle, as the first chipmunk hurried across the porch toward his chair. "His full name is James William Francis," he explained, "after a second-cousin of mine who looked a good deal like him. I generally call him James for short. The other two are Nip and Tuck," he went on. "Old Bill will be along in a minute. You see," he continued, "he's an old bachelor and lives all by himself quite a ways off."

"What about James?" inquired Honey.

"He's been a widower," said Mr. Prindle, sadly, "ever since his wife stayed out one day to get a good look at a hawk."

As he spoke, another chipmunk came around the end of the porch and hastened to join the other three.