From a hole in the side of a fallen log the chipmunk peeps warily, comes out quickly, but whisks back again in fancied fright.  Soon he returns and sits on the log awhile, barking his bird-like “chip, chip,” and flirting his tail with each note.  Then he sets about gathering the old oak leaves which were piled near the log by the winds last March and have lain undisturbed through the summer.  Grabbing two or three in his mouth, he pushes them into his pouches with his paws and is gone into his hole like a flash.  The hole in the log is the entrance to the long passageway which goes down perpendicularly for three feet, and then gradually ascends, until at a distance of eight feet it is about a foot below the surface of the ground.  Here the chipmunk will pass the cold days of winter, snugly sleeping in his leafy bed which he is now preparing, with a store of food nearby to use in wakeful spells of warm weather and in the lean days next spring after he has fairly roused himself from lethargy.  For half an hour he comes and goes, carrying two or three, even four leaves at a time.  Then he comes a little farther away from the log, suddenly looks up and sees me sitting.  He stops short, breathes quickly, his little sides tremble; I take out an old envelope and write his description, like this: 

“Size, about half way between a mouse and a rat, five or six inches long, with a tail perhaps five inches more, about as big around as a man’s thumb, bushy, but of even size the whole length, top of head dark gray, yellowish circles about the shining black eyes; short, erect ears; light gray underneath, with whitish legs; a narrow black stripe down the middle of the back, then on either side, a stripe of reddish gray; then a stripe of black, next a stripe of yellow, then black again and after that, reddish fox color down to the whitish under-parts.”

At length the chipmunk makes a dash for the thicket ten feet away and his “chip, chip,” rings out excitedly as he reaches the friendly shelter.

* * * * *

The chipmunk is not the only woods creature preparing for winter during the hottest days of August.  For more than a week the flying squirrel has been making the small mossy cup acorns rain down on the roof of the bungalow.  He begins on them when they are scarcely acorns, merely green cups with a dot at the top.  But he knows.  He bites them in two, and deftly extracts the acorn, which is in the milky state, scarcely as large as a pea.  He does it in the darkness, but with amazing rapidity.  Speeding from twig to twig, from one cluster of acorns to another, he cuts the cups in two and extracts the meat so fast that the pieces rain down on the roof.  When he is working at top speed, he will probably average twenty acorns a minute.  In the morning the roof of the porch is covered with pieces of the husks.