Park. It is a little darker in colour than the Red-squirrel of the East,
but I find no other difference. It has the same aggressive, scolding
propensities, the same love of the pinyons and their product, the same
friends and the same foes, with one possible partial exception in the
list of habits, and that is in its method of storing up mushrooms.
[Illustration]
The pinyons, or nuts of the pinyon pine, are perhaps the most delicious
nuts in all the lap of bountiful dame Nature, from fir belt in the
north to equatorial heat and on to far Fuego. All wild creatures revel
in the pinyons. To the Squirrels they are more than the staff of life;
they are meat and potatoes, bread and honey, pork and beans, bread and
cake, sugar and chocolate, the sum of comfort, and the promise of
continuing joy. But the pinyon does not bear every year; there are off
years, as with other trees, and the Squirrels might be in a bad way if
they had no other supply of food to lay up for the winter.
[Illustration: XXV. Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter use
_Sketched from life in the Selkirk Mountains, by E. T. Seton_]
[Illustration: XXVI. Chink stalking the Picket-pin
_Photo by E. T. Seton_]
A season I spent in the Southern Rockies was an off year for pinyons,
and when September came I was shown what the Squirrels do in such an
emergency. All through autumn the slopes of the hills were dotted with
the umbrellas of countless toadstools or mushrooms, representing many
fat and wholesome species. It is well known that while a few of them are
poisonous, a great many are good food. Scientists can find out which is
which only by slow experiment. "Eat them; if you live they are good, if
you die they are poisonous" has been suggested as a certain method. The
Squirrels must have worked this out long ago, for they surely know the
good ones; and all through late summer they are at work gathering them
for winter use in place of the pine-nuts.
[Illustration]
Now if the provident Squirrel stored these up as he does the pinyons, in
holes or underground, they would surely go to mush in a short time and
be lost. He makes no such mistake. He stores them in the forked branches
of trees, where they dry out and remain good until needed; and wisely
puts them high enough up to be out of reach of the Deer and low enough
to avoid being dislodged by the wind.
As you ramble through the Squirrel-frequented woods, you will often come
across a log or stump which is littered over with the scales fresh cut
from a pine cone; sometimes there is a pile of a bushel or more by the
place; you have stumbled on a Squirrel's workshop. Here is where he does
his husking, and the "clear corn" produced is stored away in some
underground granary till It is needed.
The Pine Squirrel loves to nest in a hollow tree, but also builds an
outside nest which at a distance looks like a mass of rubbish. This, on
investigation, turns out to be a convenient warm chamber some six inches
wide and two or three high. It is covered with a waterproof roof of bark
thatch, and entered by a door artfully concealed with layers and fringes
of bark that hide it alike from blood-thirsty foes and piercing winter
blasts.
[Illustration]
CHIPMUNKS AND GROUND-SQUIRRELS
The Red-squirrel is safe and happy only when in the tall trees, but his
kinsmen have sought out any and every different environment. One
enormous group of his great grandfather's second cousins have abandoned
tree life altogether. They have settled down like the Dakota farmers, to
be happy on the prairie, where, never having need to get over anything
higher than their own front doorstep, they have lost the last vestige of
power to climb. These are the Ground-squirrels, that in a variety of
forms are a pest in gardens and on farms in most of the country west of
the Mississippi.
Standing between these and the true Squirrels are the elegant Chipmunks,
the prettiest and most popular of all the family. They frequent the
borderland between woods and prairie; they climb, if anything is to be
gained by it, but they know, like the Ground-squirrels, that Mother
Earth is a safer retreat in time of danger than the tallest tree that
ever grew.
THE GROUND-SQUIRREL THAT PLAYS PICKET-PIN
Conspicuous in its teeming numbers in the Yellowstone Park is the
Picket-Pin Ground-squirrel. On every level, dry prairie along the great
river I found it in swarms.
[Illustration]
It looks much like a common Squirrel, but its coat has become more
mud-coloured, and its tail is reduced by long ages of neglect to a mere
vestige of the ancestral banner. It has developed great powers of
burrowing, but it never climbs anything higher than the little mound
that it makes about the door of its home.
The Picket-pin is an interesting and picturesque creature in some ways,
but it has one habit that I cannot quite condone. In this land of sun
and bright blue air, this world of outdoor charm, it comes forth tardily
in late spring, as late sometimes as the first of May, and promptly
retires in mid-August, when blazing summer is on the face of the earth,
and the land is a land of plenty. Down it goes after three and one half
short months, to sleep for eight and a half long ones; and since during
these three and a half months it is above ground only in broad daylight,
this means that for only two months of the year it is active, and the
other ten, four fifths of its life, it passes in a deathlike sleep.
Of course, the Picket-pin might reply that it has probably as many hours
of active life as any of its kind, only it breaks them up into sections,
with long blanks of rest between. Whether this defense is a good one or
not, we have no facts at present to determine.
[Illustration]
It has a fashion of sitting up straight on the doorway mound when it
wishes to take an observation, and the more it is alarmed by the
approach of an enemy the straighter it sits up, pressing its paws tight
to its ribs, so that at a short distance it looks like a picket-pin of
wood; hence the name.
Oftentimes some tenderfoot going in the evening to stake out his horse
and making toward the selected patch of grassy prairie, exclaims, "Good
Luck! here's a picket-pin already driven in." But on leading up his
horse within ten or twelve feet of the pin, it gives a little "_chirr_"
and dives down out of sight. Then the said tenderfoot realizes why the
creature got the name.
The summer of 1897 I spent in the Park about Yancey's and there had
daily chances of seeing the Picket-pin and learning its ways, for the
species was there in thousands on the little prairie about my cabin. I
think I am safe in saying that there were ten families to the acre of
land on all the level prairie in this valley.
CHINK AND THE PICKET-PINS
As already noted in the Coyote chapter, we had in camp that summer the
little dog called Chink. He was just old enough to think himself a
remarkable dog with a future before him. There was hardly anything that
Chink would not attempt, except perhaps keeping still. He was always
trying to do some absurd and impossible thing, or, if he did attempt the
possible, he usually spoiled his best efforts by his way of going about
it. He once spent a whole morning trying to run up a tall, straight,
pine tree in whose branches was a snickering Pine Squirrel.
The darling ambition of his life for some weeks was to catch one of the
Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that swarmed on the prairie about the camp.
Chink had determined to catch one of these Ground-squirrels the very
first day he came into the valley. Of course, he went about it in his
own original way, doing everything wrong end first, as usual. This, his
master said, was due to a streak of Irish in his makeup. So Chink would
begin a most elaborate stalk a quarter of a mile from the
Ground-squirrel. After crawling on his breast from tussock to tussock
for a hundred yards or so, the nervous strain would become too great,
and Chink, getting too much excited to crawl, would rise on his feet and
walk straight toward the Squirrel, which would now be sitting up by its
hole, fully alive to the situation.
After a minute or two of this very open approach, Chink's excitement
would overpower all caution. He would begin running, and at the last,
just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding
and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of
wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup,
throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into Chink's eager, open
mouth.
Day after day this went on with level sameness, and still Chink did not
give up, although I feel sure he had bushels of sand thrown in his mouth
that summer by the impudent Picket-pins.
[Illustration]
Perseverance, he seemed to believe, must surely win in the end, as
indeed it did. For, one day, he made an unusually elaborate stalk after
an unusually fine big Picket-pin, carried out all his absurd tactics,
finishing with the grand, boisterous charge, and actually caught his
victim; but this time it happened to be a _wooden_ picket-pin. Any one
who doubts that a dog knows when he has made a fool of himself should
have seen 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 personified, wearing all the insignia of a
grain-eater, yet ruthlessly indulging in such a bloody and cannibal
feast.
A FOUR-LEGGED BIRD--THE NORTHERN CHIPMUNK
The early naturalists who first made the acquaintance of the Eastern
Ground-squirrel named it Tamias or "The Steward." Later the Northern
Chipmunk was discovered and it was found to be more of a Chipmunk than
its Eastern cousin. The new one had all the specialties of the old kind,
but in a higher degree. So they named this one _Eutamias_, which means
"good" or "extra good" Chipmunk. And extra good this exquisite little
creature surely is in all that goes to make a charming, graceful, birdy,
pert and vivacious four-foot. In everything but colours it is Eutamias
or Tamias of a more intensified type. Its tail is long in proportion and
carried differently, being commonly held straight up, so that the
general impression one gets is of a huge tail with a tiny striped animal
attached to its lower end.
[Illustration]
Its excessive numbers along the roads in the Park are due to two things:
First, the food, for oats are continually spilled from the freighting
wagons. Second, the protection of piles of pine trees cut and cast aside
in clearing the roadway.
There is one habit of the Eastern Chipmunk that I have not noted in the
mountain species, and that is the habit of song. In the early spring and
late autumn when the days are bright and invigorating, the Eastern
Chipmunk will mount some log, stump or other perch and express his
exuberant joy in a song which is a rapid repetition of a bird-like note
suggested by "Chuck," "Chuck," or "Chock," "Chock." This is kept up two
or three minutes without interruption, and is one of those delightful
woodland songs whose charm comes rather from association than from its
inherent music.
If our Western Chipmunk is as far ahead in matters musical as he is in
form and other habits, I shall expect him to render no less than the
song of a nightingale when he gives himself up to express his wild
exuberance in a chant.
I shall never forget the days I spent with a naturalist friend in an old
mill building in western Manitoba. It was in a pine woods which was
peopled with these little Chipmunks. They had hailed the mill and its
wood piles, and especially the stables, with their squandered oats, as
the very gifts of a beneficient Providence for their use and benefit.
They had concentrated on the mill; they were there in hundreds, almost
thousands, and whenever one looked across the yard in sunny hours one
could see a dozen or more together.
The old mill was infested with them as an old brewery with rats. But in
many respects besides beauty they were an improvement on rats: they did
not smell, they were not vicious, and they did not move by night.
[Illustration]
During the daytime they were everywhere and into everything. Our slender
stock of provisions was badly reduced when, by mischance, the tin box
was left open a few hours, but we loved to see so much beautiful life
about and so forgave them. One of our regular pleasures was to sit back
after a meal and watch these pert-eyed, four-legged birds scramble onto
the table, eat the scraps and lick all the plates and platters clean.
Like all the Chipmunks and Ground-squirrels, this animal has
well-developed cheek-pouches which it uses for carrying home seeds and
roots which serve for food in the winter. Or perhaps we should say in
the early spring, for the Chipmunk, like the Ground-squirrel, goes into
the ground for a long repose as soon as winter comes down hard and
white.
Yet it does not go so early or stay so late as its big cousin. October
still sees it active, even running about in the snow. As late as October
31st at Breckenridge, Col., I saw one sitting up on a log and eating
some grass or seeds during a driving snowstorm. High up in the
Shoshonees, after winter had settled down, on October 8, 1898, I saw one
of these bright creatures bounding through the snow. On a stone he
paused to watch me and I made a hasty sketch of his attitude.
[Illustration]
Then, again, it is out in the spring, early in April, so that it is
above ground for at least seven months of the year. Its nest is in a
chamber at the end of a long tunnel that it digs under ground, usually
among roots that make hard digging for the creatures that would rout
them out. Very little is known as yet, however, about the growth or
development of the young, so here is an opportunity for the young
naturalist who would contribute something to our knowledge of this
interesting creature.
A STRIPED PIGMY--THE LEAST CHIPMUNK
Closely akin to this one and commonly mistaken for its young, is the
Least Chipmunk (_Eutamias minimus_), which is widely diffused in the
great dry central region of the Continent. Although so generally found
and so visible when found, its history is practically unknown. It
probably lives much like its relatives, raising a brood of four to six
young in a warm chamber far underground, and brings them up to eat all
manner of seeds, grains, fruits, herbs, berries, insects, birds, eggs,
and even mice, just as do most of its kinsmen, but no one has proved any
of these things. Any exact observations you may make are sure to be
acceptable contributions to science.
* * * * *
IX
The Rabbits and their Habits
* * * * *
[Illustration: XXVII. The Snowshoe Hare is a cross between a Rabbit and
a Snowdrift
_Captives; photo by E. T. Seton_]
[Illustration: XXVIII. The Cottontail freezing
_Photos after sunset, by E. T. Seton_]
IX
The Rabbits and their Habits
[Illustration]
If the Wolf may be justly proud of his jaws and the Antelope of his
legs, I am sure that the Rabbit should very properly glory in his
matchless fecundity. To perfect this power he has consecrated all the
splendid energies of his vigorous frame, and he has magnified his
specialty into a success that is worth more to his race than could be
any other single gift.
[Illustration]
Rabbits are without weapons of defense, and are simple-minded to the
last degree. Most are incapable of long-distance speed, but all have an
exuberance of multiplication that fills their ranks as fast as foe can
thin the line. If, indeed, they did not have several families, several
times a year, they would have died out several epochs back.
[Illustration]
There are three marked types of Rabbits in the Rockies--the Cottontail,
the Snowshoe, and the Jackrabbit. All of them are represented on the
Yellowstone, besides the little Coney of the rocks which is a remote
second cousin of the family.
MOLLY COTTONTAIL, THE CLEVER FREEZER
[Illustration: Molly Freezing]
I have often had occasion to comment on the "freezing" of animals. When
they are suddenly aware of a near enemy or confronted by unexpected
situations, their habit is to _freeze_--that is, become perfectly rigid,
and remain so until the danger is past or at least comprehended.
Molly Cottontail is one of the best "freezers." Whenever she does not
know what to do, she does nothing, obeying the old Western rule, "Never
rush when you are rattled." Now Molly is a very nervous creature. Any
loud, sharp noise is liable to upset her, and feeling herself unnerved
she is very apt to stop and simply "freeze." Keep this in mind when next
you meet a Cottontail, and get a photograph.
In July, 1902, I tried it myself. I was camped with a lot of Sioux
Indians on the banks of the Cheyenne River in Dakota. They had their
families with them, and about sundown one of the boys ran into the tepee
for a gun, and then fired into the grass. His little brother gave a
war-whoop that their "pa" might well have been proud of, then rushed
forward and held up a fat Cottontail, kicking her last kick. Another, a
smaller Cottontail, was found not far away, and half a dozen young
redskins armed with sticks crawled up, then suddenly let them fly. Bunny
was hit, knocked over, and before he could recover, a dog had him.
[Illustration]
I had been some distance away. On hearing the uproar I came back toward
my own campfire, and as I did so, my Indian guide pointed to a
Cottontail twenty feet away gazing toward the boys. The guide picked up
a stick of firewood.
The boys saw him, and knowing that another Rabbit was there they came
running. Now I thought they had enough game for supper and did not wish
them to kill poor Molly. But I knew I could not stop them by saying
that, so I said: "Hold on till I make a photo." Some of them understood;
at any rate, my guide did, and all held back as I crawled toward the
Rabbit. She took alarm and was bounding away when I gave a shrill
whistle which turned her into a "frozen" statue. Then I came near and
snapped the camera. The Indian boys now closed in and were going to
throw, but I cried out: "Hold on! not yet; I want another." So I chased
Bunny twenty or thirty yards, then gave another shrill whistle, and got
a fourth snap. Again I had to hold the boys back by "wanting another
picture." Five times I did this, taking five pictures, and all the while
steering Molly toward a great pile of drift logs by the river. I had now
used up all my films.
The boys were getting impatient. So I addressed the Cottontail solemnly
and gently: "Bunny, I have done my best for you. I cannot hold these
little savages any longer. You see that pile of logs over there? Well,
Bunny, you have just five seconds to get into that wood-pile. Now git!"
and I shooed and clapped my hands, and all the young Indians yelled and
hurled their clubs, the dogs came bounding and Molly fairly dusted the
earth.
"Go it, Molly!"
"Go it, dogs!"
"Ki-yi, Injuns!"
The clubs flew and rattled around her, but Molly put in ten feet to the
hop and ten hops to the second (almost), and before the chase was well
begun it was over; her cotton tuft disappeared under a log; she was safe
in the pile of wood, where so far as I know she lived happy ever after.
[Illustration]
THE RABBIT THAT WEARS SNOWSHOES
The Snowshoe Rabbit is found in all parts of the Park, though not in
very great numbers. It is called "Snowshoe" on account of the size of
its feet, which, already large, are in snow time made larger by fringes
of stiff bristles that give the creature such a broad area of support
that it can skip on the surface of soft snow while all its kinsmen sink
in helplessness.
[Illustration]
Here is the hind foot of a Snowshoe in winter, contrasted with the hind
foot of a Jackrabbit that was nearly three times its weight.
Rabbits are low in the scale of intelligence, but they are high enough
to have some joy in social life. It always gives one a special thrill of
satisfaction when favoured with a little glimpse into the home ways, the
games, or social life of an animal; and the peep I had into the Rabbit
world one night, though but a small affair, I have always remembered
with pleasure, and hope for a second similar chance.
This took place in the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho, in 1902. My wife
and I were out on a pack-train trip with two New York friends. We had
seen some rough country in Colorado and Wyoming, but we soon agreed that
the Bitterroots were the roughest of all the mountains. It took
twenty-eight horses to carry the stuff, for which eighteen were enough
in the more southern Rockies.
[Illustration]
The trails were so crooked and hidden in thick woods, that sometimes
the man at the rear might ride the whole day, and never see all the
horses until we stopped again for the night.
THE TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN TRAILS
[Illustration]
There were other annoyances, and among them a particularly dangerous
animal. The country was fairly stocked with Moose, Elk, Blacktail,
Sheep, Goats, Badgers, Skunks, Wolverines, Foxes, Coyotes, Mountain
Lions, Lynx, Wolves, Black Bears and Grizzly Bears, but it was none of
these that inspired us with fear. The deadly, dangerous creature, the
worst of all, was the common Yellow-Jacket-Wasp. These Wasps abounded in
the region. Their nests were so plentiful that many were on, or by, the
narrow crooked trails that we must follow. Generally these trails were
along the mountain shoulder with a steep bank on the upside, and a sheer
drop on the other. It was at just such dangerous places that we seemed
most often to find the Yellow-Jackets at home. Roused by the noise and
trampling, they would assail the horses in swarms, and then there would
be a stampede of bucking, squealing, tortured animals. Some would be
forced off the trail, and, as has often happened elsewhere, dashed to
their death below. This was the daily danger.
[Illustration]
One morning late in September we left camp about eight, and set off in
the usual line, the chief guide leading and the rest of us distributed
at intervals among the pack-horses, as a control. Near the rear was the
cook, after him a pack-horse with tins and dishes, and last of all
myself.