Wild Folk

by Samuel Scoville

In vain Chippy fought for his home, at first desperately and then despairingly. The other chipmunk had the advantage of weight, experience, and position, and Chippy was forced slowly out into the wide world. Squealing and chirping with rage, with his soft fur fluffed up all over his sleek body, he came out into the sunlight. He saw nothing, heard nothing, scented nothing, hostile. Yet, obeying the little alarm-bell that rings in every chipmunk’s brain, he dashed desperately for the shelter of the stone wall. It was well for him that he did. As he crossed the wide stretch of turf like a tawny streak, there was a whirl of wing-beats, the flash of a gray-brown body balanced by a narrow black-barred tail, and the shadow of death fell upon him even as he neared his refuge. With a frightened squeal, Chippy put every atom of the force which pulsed through his little vibrant body into one last spring. Even as he disappeared headlong into a chink between two large stones, a set of keen claws clamped vainly through the long hairs of his vanishing tail, as a sharp-shinned hawk somersaulted with a backward sweep of its wings, to avoid dashing itself against the wall. For a moment it vibrated in the air with cruel, crooked beak half-open, searching the wall with unflinching golden eyes, and then skimmed sullenly away.

In a minute a pointed nose was poked out from the stones and carefully winnowed the air. Satisfied that the coast was clear, Chippy at last scurried up to the top of the wall, where he could see on all sides, with a wide cranny conveniently near; for a chipmunk who desires to live out all his days must never be more than two jumps from a hole. Sitting up on the stone, he produced from one of the pockets which he wore in either cheek a large hickory nut, which had been pouched there all through his fight and flight. Holding it firmly in both his little three-fingered, double-thumbed forepaws, he nibbled an alternate hole in either side, through which he extracted every last fragment of the rich, brown kernel within. While he ate, there was never a second during which his sharp black eyes were not scanning every inch of the circumference of which his stone was the centre. There was not an instant that his sharp ears were not pricked up to catch the slightest sound, and his keen nostrils to sniff the faintest scent, that would indicate the approach of death in any of the many forms in which it comes to chipmunks.

His meal finished, Chippy turned his instantaneous mind to the next most important item of life. On his list of necessities, Home stared at him in capitals just under the item Food. A stone wall makes a good lodging-house but a poor home, for it has too many doors. Wherefore Chippy scampered along the top of the wall, his tail erect like a plume, scanning the hillside as he ran for a good building-site. At last, he came to a dry bank covered with short twisted ringlets of tough grass, which sloped up from the stone wall and ended in a clump of sweet fern. With a flying leap, he struck the middle of the bank, and with another bound was safe in the depths of the sweet fern.

From there he commenced to dig. No one has ever yet found a fleck or flake of loose earth near the entrance to a chipmunk home. This is because he always starts digging at the other end. Working like a little steam-shovel, within a few days Chippy had dug a series of intersecting tunnels, of which the main one ended between two stones at the base of the wall. Far down among the roots of a rotting stump, he made a warm nest of leaves and grass. From this sleeping-room a twisted passage led to a rounded storeroom on the other side of the stump. No less than three emergency entrances and exits were made within a ten-foot circle; and beside the bedroom and storeroom he dug a kitchen midden, where all refuse and garbage could be deposited and covered with earth, in accordance with the custom of all properly brought-up chipmunks. When at last every grain of earth had been carried out through the first hole among the overshadowing ferns, he sealed it up from the outside, and covered the packed earth with leaves. Then he took a day off. Climbing to the top of the wall, he perched himself where a single bound would take him to the main entrance of his new home, and with his little nose pointed skyward told the world, at the rate of one hundred and thirty chirps per minute, what a wonderful home was his. Thereafter began an unending search for food. On the far side of the slope he found a thicket of hazel bushes, which had been overlooked by the rest of the colony. Thence he would return to his burrow, looking as if he had a bad attack of mumps. Really it was only nuts. Twelve hazel-nuts, or four acorns, were Chippy’s tonnage.

By the time the flood-tide of summer had set in, Chippy had reached the high watermark of his youth. Larger, stronger, and swifter than any of the younger members of the colony, he soon began to rival the elders of the community in wisdom. Then suddenly there came to the Little People of the Woods, a wandering demon of blood and carnage. One sunny afternoon, while every chipmunk on that hillside was abroad, playing, feasting, hoarding, singing, there flashed in among them a reddish animal, with a long black-tipped tail, white chin and cheeks, and a fierce pointed head. Sniffing here and there like a trailing hound, it darted down upon the little colony.

It was the long-tailed, or great, weasel, whose movements are so swift as to baffle even the quickest eye. Caught too far from their burrows, the lives of four chipmunks went out like the puff of a candle. Then the high alarm-squeal ran up and down the hillside, and every chipmunk within hearing dived underground where they were all safe; for the great weasel is just one size too large to enter a chipmunk’s burrow. Hither and there the weasel wound its way, like some fierce swift snake. With its flaming eyes, white cheeks dabbled red with blood, and flat triangular head swaying from side to side on a long neck, it looked the very personification of sudden death.

Farthest from home of all the others, Chippy, the swift and wise, faced the death which had overtaken the slow and foolish. For the first time in his life he had climbed to the tiptop of an elm tree. There among the topmost slender sprays he was feasting on elm-seeds, and came hurrying down at the first alarm-note. Just as he had nearly reached the ground, around the foot of the tree trunk was thrust the bloody face of the killer. There is something so devilish and implacable in the appearance of a hunting weasel, that it cows even the bravest of the smaller animals. A gray old rat, ordinarily a grim cynical fighter with no nerves to speak of, will run squealing in terror from before a weasel; while a rabbit, when it sees the red death on his trail, forgets his swiftness and cowers on the ground.

Something of the same spell came over Chippy as, for the first time, he faced the demon of his tribe. Yet he kept his head enough to realize that his only hope was aloft, and instantly whisked back up the great trunk. Unfortunately for him the versatile weasel is at home on, under, and above ground. The chipmunk had hardly reached the topmost branch, when he felt it sway under the quick, darting motions of his pursuer. Up and up he went, until he clung to the tiny swaying twigs at the very spire and summit of the elm, seventy-five feet from the ground.

In a moment, the bloody muzzle of his pursuer was sniffing along his trail. Hunting by scent, like all of its kind, the weasel wound his way up through the twigs, nearer and nearer to the trembling chipmunk. Twelve inches away, the weasel stopped and, thrusting out its long neck, seemed for the first time to see the little animal just above. A green gleam showed in the depths of the malignant eyes.

As it shifted its weight on the swaying twigs preparatory to the lightning-like pounce which would end the chase, the chipmunk, with a little wailing cry, let go his hold and fell like a stone down through the green screen of leaves and twigs that stretched between him and the ground far below. Even as he whirled through space, his little brain was alert to seize upon every chance for life. As he struck twig after twig, he clutched at them with his forepaws but could get no firm hand-hold. Fifty feet down, he managed to hook both of his little arms across a twig about the size of a man’s thumb. A cross-twig kept his hold from slipping off, and swinging back and forth like a pendulum, he at last managed to clamber up into a crotch of this outer branch and crouched there, panting.