airy striped chipmunk, half
squirrel, half spermophile. He is about the size of a field mouse, and
often made us think of linnets and song sparrows as he frisked about
gathering nuts and berries. He likes almost all kinds of grain,
berries, and nuts,--hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, strawberries,
huckleberries, wheat, oats, corn,--he is fond of them all and thrives
on them. Most of the hazel bushes on our farm grew along the fences as
if they had been planted for the chipmunks alone, for the rail fences
were their favorite highways. We never wearied watching them,
especially when the hazel-nuts were ripe and the little fellows were
sitting on the rails nibbling and handling them like tree-squirrels.
We used to notice too that, although they are very neat animals,
their lips and fingers were dyed red like our own, when the
strawberries and huckleberries were ripe. We could always tell when
the wheat and oats were in the milk by seeing the chipmunks feeding on
the ears. They kept nibbling at the wheat until it was harvested and
then gleaned in the stubble, keeping up a careful watch for their
enemies,--dogs, hawks, and shrikes. They are as widely distributed
over the continent as the squirrels, various species inhabiting
different regions on the mountains and lowlands, but all the different
kinds have the same general characteristics of light, airy
cheerfulness and good nature.

Before the arrival of farmers in the Wisconsin woods the small ground
squirrels, called "gophers," lived chiefly on the seeds of wild
grasses and weeds, but after the country was cleared and ploughed no
feasting animal fell to more heartily on the farmer's wheat and corn.
Increasing rapidly in numbers and knowledge, they became very
destructive, especially in the spring when the corn was planted, for
they learned to trace the rows and dig up and eat the three or four
seeds in each hill about as fast as the poor farmers could cover them.
And unless great pains were taken to diminish the numbers of the
cunning little robbers, the fields had to be planted two or three
times over, and even then large gaps in the rows would be found. The
loss of the grain they consumed after it was ripe, together with the
winter stores laid up in their burrows, amounted to little as compared
with the loss of the seed on which the whole crop depended.

One evening about sundown, when my father sent me out with the shotgun
to hunt them in a stubble field, I learned something