The Adventures of a Grain of Dust Part 14

SUCH NEAT CHAMBERMAIDS!

The prairie-dogs like sandy or gravelly soil for their homes, and in making them they do a lot of ploughing. And besides they supply this same soil with a great deal of humus--the gra.s.s that they use for bedding. They're very particular about changing their beds every day; always clearing out the old bedding and putting in new. They do this along about sundown. You can see them do it right in New York City, for there is a flouris.h.i.+ng colony of them at the zoo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS MUST BE A PLEASANT DAY

In nice weather the Prairie Dog's front door stands wide open like this, but before a rain he stuffs it tight with gra.s.s because, when it _does_ rain in the arid regions where he lives, it comes down in bucketfuls!]

Mr. Prairie-Dog is about a foot long and as fat as b.u.t.ter. The reason he's called a dog isn't because he is a dog or even looks like one, but because he has a sharp little bark like a very much excited puppy. He thinks he sees something suspicious: "Yap! Yap!"

Or he spies a neighbor down the street: "Yap! Yap! h.e.l.lo, neighbor!

Looks like another fine day, doesn't it?"

"Yap! Yap!" says neighbor. (This "yap" pa.s.ses for "yes," no doubt--although it isn't quite the way Mr. Webster would say it, perhaps.)

Then maybe a neighbor from away over on the avenue, that he hasn't seen for some time, comes calling--as they're always doing, these neighborly little chaps. Then it's:

"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Why, how _are_ you? And what have you been doing?

And how are the little folks?"

And so it goes, all day long.

The prairie-dog's native home is on our Western plains, but he has a cousin away off in South America--although he may never have heard of him--called the viscacha.

The viscachas live on the great gra.s.sy plains of the La Plata in colonies of twenty or more, in villages of deep-chambered burrows with large pit-like entrances grouped close together; so close, in fact, that the whole village makes one large irregular mound, thirty to forty feet in diameter and two to three feet high. These villages being on the level prairie, the viscachas are careful to build them high enough so that floods will not reach them. They make a clear s.p.a.ce all around the town. In doing this these little people seem to have two purposes: (1) To make it more difficult for enemies to slip up on them unnoticed, and (2) to furnish a kind of athletic field for the community; for it is in these open s.p.a.ces that they have their foot-races, wrestling matches, and the like.

If you ever happen down their way, the first thing that will strike you is the enormous size of the entrances to the central burrows. You'd think somebody as big as a bear lived in them. The entrance is four to six feet across and deep enough for a tall man to stand in up to the waist.

Like our prairie-dogs, the viscachas are very sociable, and little paths, the result of neighborly calls, lead from one village to another.

They are neighborly indeed; and in the Bible sense. Of course, they like to get together of an evening and talk things over and gossip and all that, but that isn't the end of it. To take an instance: These South American prairie-dogs, like our prairie-dogs up North, are not popular with the cattlemen; and the cattlemen, to get rid of them, bury whole villages with earth. Then neighbors from distant burrows come--just as soon as the cattlemen go away--and dig them out!

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. P. GOPHER AS THE MASTER PLOUGHMAN

Thompson Seton calls the pocket-gopher "the master ploughman of the West," and this is how he ill.u.s.trates the extent of his labors.]

Another ploughman besides the prairie-dog and the viscacha, who isn't popular with farmers--although Thompson Seton calls him "The Master Ploughman of the West"--is the pocket-gopher. He has farmed it from Canada to Texas, all through the fertile Mississippi Valley. The reason he has that queer expression on his face--you couldn't help noticing it--is that each cheek has a big outside pocket in it; and, like the big pockets in a small boy's trousers, they're there for business. On each forefoot he has a set of long claws; and dig, you should see him! He's a regular little steam-shovel. He sinks his burrow below the frost-line and into this, stuffed in his two pockets, he carries food to eat when he wakes up during the following Spring, before earth's harvests are ripe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POCKETS OF THE POCKET-MOUSE]

IV. THE HOME OF THE RED FOX

Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made houses among the rocks of the mountainside.

THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE

The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his cunning--and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox family--is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or Mrs. Fox--depending on which is going marketing--stops and looks about to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and behind this the family bedroom and nursery.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox are among the thriftiest folks I know. They not only provide for to-day, but for to-morrow and the day after. For example, when Mr. Fox visits a poultry-yard, he doesn't simply carry off enough for one meal. He keeps catching and carrying off chickens, ducks, or geese--whatever comes handy--all night; working clear up to daybreak.

And the fresh meat he thus gets for the family table he buries--each fowl in a separate place--not so very far away from the poultry-yard.

Then later he comes and gets this buried treasure and takes it home to be shared with mother and the babies.

Of these babies there are from three to five. Young foxes are very playful and think there's no such sport as chasing each other about in the suns.h.i.+ne, while mother sits in the doorway keeping an eye out for possible danger and watching their antics with a complacent smile, as much as to say: "_Aren't_ they the little dears!"

If just one little fox wants to play while his brothers and sisters want to sleep--and that sometimes happens--he goes off by himself and chases his own tail around, just like a kitten.

Little foxes are very nice and polite that way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KANGAROO RAT AND THE POCKET-MOUSE

The kangaroo rat and the pocket-mouse live in the arid regions of the United States. Both have pockets in their cheeks, but the mouse is named for his pockets and the rat for his long kangaroo hind legs.]

V. WORK AND PLAY IN CHIPMUNKVILLE

It isn't often one gets a chance to see little foxes at play, except occasionally in the big city zoos, for foxes are now so scarce; and, besides, their papas and mammas in the wild state are suspicious of human spectators, but there are certain nimble four-legged babies to be found all over the country that play in much the same way.

If, along in July, you should see a certain little body in a lovely striped suit chasing another little body in a striped suit, exactly like it, along the old rail fence or over the boulder wall or across the meadow, ten to one, it will be two baby chipmunks playing tag. When one bites the other's tail--they're always trying to do that in these tag games--it means he's "it," I think. In fact, I'm quite sure, for always, when one little Mr. Chipmunk bites another little Mr. Chipmunk on the tail, little Mr. Chipmunk No. 2 turns right around and chases little Mr.

Chipmunk No. 1, and tries to bite _his_ tail.

They keep this up on suns.h.i.+ny days all through July and along into early August. Then the serious business of life begins. They sober down, these chipmunk children--they were only born last May--and learn to make homes for themselves. You never would think the way they love the suns.h.i.+ne that the homes of all the chipmunks are under the ground, and as dark as can be. But they are. You notice the chipmunks have rather large feet, considering what dainty little creatures they are. These feet, like the feet of the mole, are for digging. The chipmunk digs deep under the roots of trees and stone walls, if there happens to be either handy by, but, so far as I've seen, he's quite contented to make his burrows in the open meadows. The round nest at the end of the burrow is lined with fine gra.s.s. It has two entrances, one right opposite the other, like front and back doors. Sometimes there are as many as three doors; four, maybe, in case of a chipmunk of a particularly nervous disposition. All chipmunks are easily frightened and dive into their holes, quick as a wink, when there's any danger; and often when there's really nothing to be scared at at all.

WHEN THOSE EXTRA DOORS COME HANDY

But you can't blame them. There are times when it's no fun being a chipmunk, I tell you. The hawks get after you, and the minks and the foxes and the weasels. Those extra doors into the nest are very useful places to dodge into when you're outside and a savage old hawk swoops down on you, or a fox makes a jump at you. And they're just as handy--these extra doors--to run _out_ of when a mink or a weasel follows you in. They'll do that, if you're a chipmunk; chase you right into your own house!

When a pair of grown-up chipmunks start housekeeping for themselves--that is to say when they are about ten weeks old--they first dig a little tunnel, almost straight down for several feet. Then they make a hall that runs along horizontally--like anybody's hall--for a few yards. Then, supposing you're Mr. or Mrs. Chipmunk in your new place, after it's all done--you go up a slant--a flight of stairs, you might say, although, of course, there aren't any stairs--and there you are in the family bedroom, the nest.

Not long after the chipmunks stop their outdoor games in the Fall you might think it was because they had the mumps; they go around with their faces all swelled out in such a funny way. The reason is they have their cheeks full of nuts and seeds that they are storing for the Winter. They don't put these stores in the nest--for then where would they sleep, the nest is so small--but in special cellars that they build near the nest, with connecting pa.s.sages. These cellars, like the nests, are well below frost-line, so that Jack can't get the nuts or nip the noses of the chipmunks while they are asleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PICTURESQUE HOME OF A CONNECTICUT WOODCHUCK

This is the truly artistic residence of a Connecticut woodchuck which I found in a rocky knoll by the wayside during a summer vacation at Kent and reproduced as well as I could with my fountain-pen. Mr. W. as he often does in digging his burrows, had availed himself of the protection of the roots of a tree. Here there were two projecting roots, forming a curious arch over the doorway, which was tastily decorated by a little overhanging vine, on its way up the knoll, along the stones, and up the foot of the tree.]

When Winter finally sets in, the chipmunks get very drowsy and go up to bed. And there they stay until Spring--one great long nap, except that they wake up and stir around occasionally on bright days and if it happens to warm up a little.

"Such sleepyheads!" you say. "And what about all those nuts? I should think they'd be fine for Winter parties."

They would, I dare say. But you know a body doesn't have much of an appet.i.te when he doesn't get any outdoor exercise, and that's why the chipmunks only take a few bites now and then, during the Winter. And, besides, if they ate up everything in the Winter--you know how folks eat at parties--what would they do in the Spring, with no good nuts lying around on the ground, as there are in the Fall; and nothing else to be had that chipmunks care about? So they keep most of the nuts and seeds and things for the great Spring breakfast, and all the other meals, until berries are ripe. The berries they eat until the next nut harvest comes along.

Until then, you see, they haven't much of anything to do but play around and sit in the sun and chat. So why shouldn't they?

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

You will find some most readable things about foxes in Burrough's "Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers"; Comstock's "Pet Book"; Cram's "Little Beasts of Field and Wood"; Wright's "Four-Footed Americans"; Jordan's "Five Tales of Birds and Beasts"; Long's "Ways of Wood Folk"; and Seton's "Wild Animals I Have Known."