So he sat on top of his old home stump and tried to think where he could find something to put in his granary bins.
Jeremiah Yellowbird sat in a bush near by, and when he saw Mister Chipmunk keeping so still, he said to him:
“What makes you so quiet to-day, Mister Chipmunk?”
“I am worried about what I will have to eat next winter, Mister Yellowbird! There are no beechnuts, this year, the wild-pea crop is a failure, the farmer has no fields of grain near my woods, and I have not seen a groundnut for six seasons!”
“Can’t you find something to take the place of those things?” asked Mister Yellowbird.
“If the country was what it used to be, I would not worry a bit. But every year it gets worse and worse! Why, last winter, Mrs. Chipmunk and I had a miserable time living through the winter on wild buckwheat! My grandfather would have starved rather than eat wild buckwheat! And he would have starved, all right, if he had boarded at our house last winter, for wild buckwheat was all that we had! Imagine me, the monarch of all the woods, living on wild buckwheat!”
“Are you the monarch of the woods, Mister Chipmunk?” asked Jeremiah Yellowbird.
“I would like to know who has a better right to be called the ‘monarch of the woods,’” said Gabriel Chipmunk. “When I sit on my old home stump and say ‘Chip! Chip! Chip!’ everyone knows that I am taking care of the woods, and if I did not keep a sharp lookout when men, and dogs, and cats come around, there would be many lives lost! A monarch is supposed to take care of his realm, and then I have plenty of time to be monarch, and I like the work, so that makes me the ‘monarch of the woods.’”
Something fell from the big basswood tree. It was a cherry pit which one of the baby robins had “popped.”
“Was that a nut which fell from the big basswood?” asked Gabriel Chipmunk. But Jeremiah Yellowbird did not know, so Mister Chipmunk hurried over to see, and when Gabriel Chipmunk saw all the nice cherry pits scattered on the ground under the big basswood, he was very much pleased, for Gabriel Chipmunk and all his folks liked cherry pits.