"HE TURNS THAT SOLEMN FACE" (p. 71)
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.
For half an hour after sunset he keeps up this fast speed. Apparently he is getting supper after his long sleep through the day. At the end of half an hour he begins to work more leisurely. The pieces fall on the roof every now and then. Possibly he is taking the sweetmeats to his hole, high up in a tree. Through the night there is the intermittent sound of his labor. Sometimes, towards morning, he drops in for a visit,—literally drops in, by way of the chimney and the open fireplace. He knows no fear. Going to the kitchen, he helps himself to the doughnut left on the table for him. If it is a whole one, he nibbles all around it. If only half a one he carries it away. You may close the kitchen door and catch him with your bare hands. He will neither squeal nor bite. But he makes a poor pet, because he sleeps in the daytime and works in the darkness. He strongly dislikes the light. If put into a box he backs up into the darkest corner, brings his beautiful flat tail between his four legs and up over his nose and his eyes. Rolled up lengthwise in this ball he spends the day; but when evening comes he is active enough. If kept for any length of time he makes a very docile pet and will beg permission to sleep in your pocket. But it is better to give him his freedom, and see him scamper up one tree and "fly" to another. As he springs he spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the accomplishment of an upward curve.
Crickets and katydids droned and fiddled all night, and when the katydids quit at daybreak, other grasshoppers and cicadas were ready to take their places in the screechy orchestra. Night and day they shrill their ceaseless music. It is all masculine love music, as much an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and June. Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the evening of July 29. Then the long-legged conductor waved his baton and the orchestra was off. It started moderato, but quickly increased to an allegro, and sometimes it is almost presto. For the first two weeks in August new fiddlers were constantly being added, and now there are enough to fill every band stand all through the woods. The noise at night is almost ear-splitting. The old preacher was right about it. There are times when the grasshopper is a burden. At the hour of sunset the cicada winds his rattle most joyously, subsiding into silence as darkness comes and making way for the katydid.
The screechy orchestra is a poor substitute for the grand birds' concerts of June and July. For the birds, August is a month of silence. Except for an occasional solo, nearly all the birds are silent, moulting and moping in the thickets. If you steal into the thicket you may find the thrushes and the thrashers feeding on the ground. Once in a while one of them shows himself in the morning or the evening, but not often. Nesting done, the brown thrasher ceased his long and brilliant solos from the treetops after the first week of July. Next week the catbird's song was heard for the last time. Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays, a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night, the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the last week in July, nor since. Still the dickcissel, the lark sparrow and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work, but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the first week in August, but sometimes the red-eye gives a little preachment from his leafy pulpits in the woods. Latest among the singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to shift for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they had when the three eggs lay in the nest, saddled to the burr-oak bough. Still, through the peaceful morning air comes the loud, clear, cheery call of the Bob White—a note that has in it health and vigor for the healing of many a tired heart. As for the cuckoo, well, his mate is guarding those bluish-green eggs in the apology for a nest built in the lower branches of a young black-oak; they will not be hatched until the very last of the month. He does his best to be cheerful and to make a joyful sound. "Kut-Kut-Kut," and "Kow-Kow-Kow"—you may often hear the latter sound in the middle of the night. Does he try to let his lady dear know that he is near her through the darkness, or is he happily singing in his dreams?