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Franklin's Spermophile — Part 3
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These ground squirrels are at times rather destructive neighbours, about their worst vice being that of digging up newly planted corn. They display a great deal of cleverness in the matter of locating the seed which is usually covered with an inch or two of earth. Their cheek pouches, which reach back almost to their shoulders, enable them to carry away astonishingly large loads and, as they often persist in their nefarious work until the corn is several inches high, the damage wrought by a few families of them is sometimes considerable.
Generally speaking, it is only in the spring when their supplies are running short and before the berries have begun to ripen that they err in this direction. They seldom trouble the ripe corn to any great extent, even in seasons when nuts are scarce. In the West they appear to be much more destructive, and are popularly looked upon as a decided nuisance. They eat all kinds of berries, strawberries, raspberries and dewberries; while apples, pears and tomatoes also find favour in their eyes.
Early in the spring they go searching for the coral-red berries of the wintergreen and mitchella, where the crisp gray moss is drying out around the stumps of long-forgotten pines. In a way they are hunters, too; I have seen them chasing the big, noisy, banded-winged locusts of late summer, running beneath them, as they fly along and pouncing on them when they finally come to earth. One of these big fellows must make a very satisfactory luncheon for an animal no larger than a chipmunk, everything being eaten but the wings and the extremities of the legs.
Like most rodents, they are a little too fond of robbing birds' nests; I am inclined to think, however, that they are less destructive in this direction than either squirrels or mice. I once watched a pair of them stalking some spotted sandpipers by the edge of a mill pond. They would creep up under cover of the water weed, or lie in ambush behind dried wood or a lily pad standing aslant in the mud; when they fancied themselves near enough they would rush out, sometimes both together, and the frightened sandpipers would open their long wings and lose some critical moments in getting their balance, and then take their stiff-winged flight low over the water with anxious whistlings.
The chipmunks were so active and determined about it all that, seeing them from the other bank, I at first mistook them for weasels. The sandpipers at last betook themselves away up stream to the meadows to be red of the nuisance.
June 5th, 1900, I have just been examining the chipmunk holes on the hill in the pasture. They are, evidently enough, all constructed in about the same manner, the chief object in view being concealment. All agree in having the opening noticeably smaller than the rest of the tunnel. The short, thick grass around it is green and untrampled to the very edge, and though scarcely an inch in length, pretty well conceals the narrow doorway. There is not the least particle of loose dirt scattered anywhere about.
The turf at the mouth of the burrow is soft and elastic, but at the depth of an inch the hole becomes suddenly larger, I should say at least twice as large as at the opening, and the walls are packed surprisingly hard.
At a considerable distance, under the low-growing branches of some young pines, I found a little pile of newly-dug earth, something over a foot in diameter and two or three inches high. Yellow subsoil undoubtedly brought there as fast as it was dug out in the making of one or another of the burrows, the nearest of which is several rods away.
Close by one of the recently made burrows I noticed where the chipmunk had originally intended having his doorway and twice been obliged to abandon his work on account of unforeseen obstruction beneath the surface; roots or stones probably, for it seems imperative that the shape should be almost perpendicular for the first few feet. One of these abandoned attempts was only an inch deep and an inch in diameter at the surface, at the bottom it was flat and decidedly larger. There was no dirt scattered near, so that apparently even from the very beginning every particle that is removed is discreetly carried away in the cheek pouches of this wily little rodent.
The other hole that was started a few feet away is six inches deep and corresponds exactly with the first six inches of the finished burrow, the walls being packed equally hard. It looks as if the little chap that made it had dug out a passage just large enough to squeeze into, and as he worked along, had enlarged it by continually turning around and packing it on all sides with his feet, in this manner insuring firm walls for his home, and at the same time lessening the quantity of earth to be removed.