As the woodchuck sleeps away the bitterness of cold, so in his narrower
chamber sleeps the chipmunk. Happy little hermit, lover of the sun, mate
of the song sparrow and the butterflies, what a goodly and hopeful token
of the earth's renewed life is he, verifying the promises of his own
chalices, the squirrelcups, set in the warmest corners of the woodside,
with libations of dew and shower drops, of the bluebird's carol, the
sparrow's song of spring.
Now he comes forth from his long night into the fullness of sunlit day,
to proclaim his awakening to his summer comrades, a gay recluse clad all
in the motley, a jester, maybe, yet no fool.
His voice, for all its monotony, is inspiring of gladness and
contentment, whether he utters his thin, sharp chip or full-mouthed
cluck, or laughs a chittering mockery as he scurries in at his narrow
door.
He winds along his crooked pathway of the fence rails and forages for
half-forgotten nuts in the familiar grounds, brown with strewn leaves or
dun with dead grass. Sometimes he ventures to the top rail and climbs to
a giddy ten-foot height on a tree, whence he looks abroad, wondering, on
the wide expanse of an acre.
Music hath charms for him, and you may entrance him with a softly
whistled tune and entice him to frolic with a herds-grass head gently
moved before him.
When the fairies have made the white curd of mallow blossoms into
cheeses for the children and the chipmunk, it is a pretty sight to see
him gathering his share handily and toothily stripping off the green
covers, filling his cheek pouches with the dainty disks and scampering
away to his cellar with his ungrudged portion. Alack the day, when the
sweets of the sprouting corn tempt him to turn rogue, for then he
becomes a banned outlaw, and the sudden thunder of the gun announces
his tragic fate. He keeps well the secret of constructing his cunning
house, without a show of heaped or scattered soil at its entrance.
Bearing himself honestly, and escaping his enemies, the cat, the hawk,
and the boy, he lives a long day of happy inoffensive life. Then when
the filmy curtain of the Indian summer falls upon the year again, he
bids us a long good-night.