n Chink that day as he sheepishly sneaked out of sight behind
the tent.

CHIPMUNKS

Every one recognizes as a Chipmunk the lively little creature that, with
striped coat and with tail aloft, dashes across all the roads and
chirrups on all the log piles that line the roads throughout the
timbered portions of the Park. I am sure I have often seen a thousand of
them in a mile of road between the Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Geyser
Basin. The traveller who makes the entire round of the Park may see a
hundred thousand if he keeps his eyes open. While every one knows them
at once for Chipmunks, it takes a second and more careful glance to show
they are of three totally distinct kinds.

THE GROUND-SQUIRREL THAT PRETENDS IT'S A CHIPMUNK

First, largest, and least common, is the Big Striped Ground-squirrel,
the Golden Ground-squirrel or Say's Ground-squirrel, called
scientifically _Citellus lateralis cinerascens_. This, in spite of its
livery, is not a Chipmunk at all but a Ground-squirrel that is trying
hard to be a Chipmunk. And it makes a good showing so far as manners,
coat and stripes are concerned, but the incontrovertible evidence of its
inner life, as indicated by skull and makeup, tells us plainly that it
is merely a Ground-squirrel, a first cousin to the ignoble Picket-pin.

I found it especially common in the higher parts of the Park. It is
really a mountain species, at home chiefly among the rocks, yet is very
ready to take up its abode under buildings. At the Lake Hotel I saw a
number of them that lived around the back door, and were almost tamed
through the long protection there given them. Like most of these small
rodents, they are supposed to be grain-eaters but they really are
omnivorous, and quite ready to eat flesh and eggs, as well as seeds and
fruit. Warren in his "Mammals of Colorado," tells of having seen one of
these Ground-squirrels kill some young Bluebirds; and adds another
instance of flesh-eating observed in the Yellowstone Park, where he and
two friends, riding along one of the roads, saw a Say Ground-squirrel
demurely squatting on a log, holding in its arms a tiny young Meadow
Mouse, from which it picked the flesh as one might pick corn from a cob.
Meadow Mice are generally considered a nuisance, and the one devoured
probably was of a cantankerous disposition; but just the same it gives
one an unpleasant sensation to think of this elegant little creature, in
appearance, innocence personi