That is death. When a mole sees his fellow stop work, he knows what has happened.
Upon the return of the hundred captives to their burrows, there was joy mingled with terror!
Whose turn might come next?
But, when the moment arrived to fall into line and set to work, there was consternation!
What! alive, and not able to dig?
Immediately, the wildest panic seizes upon the community. They abandon their homes! With frantic haste, they pierce new burrows in every direction, leaving their ill-fated companions behind them to die a lingering death—literally buried alive. Weeks, months will elapse ere they recover from this wild fear. Then they will be miles away.
And the ground-squirrels, you ask. The ground-squirrel is as conceited, inquisitive, persistent and hard-headed as he is hard-toothed. If he knew that the world was round he would claim that it was simply a huge nut and wish that he were big enough to get at its kernel.
When the marbles first came rolling down his burrow, he was pleased. They were so smooth, so round! He rolled them hither and thither, as content as a child with a new toy. Then he stored them away for another day’s amusement. Pretty soon he began to tire of them. They were dreadfully in his way. They annoyed him greatly. And yet, he couldn’t bear to think of parting with them. Finally the question arose in his mind: What are they, anyway? Surely they must have a kernel! And so he set to work gnawing upon them. They were terribly hard, but he was determined to get at the pit. Day after day, he kept at the thankless task, gnawing, gnawing, until, one fine morning, he awoke to make the awful discovery that his teeth were gone!
Now, a ground-squirrel may be said to consist of four teeth, and nothing else. These gone there is no way to keep the other part alive.
True, he may, after infinite labor struggle through a nutshell, but it is too slow work to keep up his strength. Every nut becomes a harder task.