“Humble and inoffensive bird” he has been called by one of our leading ornithologies—because he comes to my pig-pen! “Inoffensive”? this bird with the cabbage butterfly in his beak? The faint and damning praise! And “humble”? There is not a humble feather on his body. Humble to those who see the pen and not the bird. But to me—why, the bird has made a palace of my pig-pen. The very pig seems less a pig because of this exquisite association; and the lowly work of feeding the creature has been turned by phœbe into an æsthetic course in bird study. [Illustration] XIII An Account with Nature THERE were chipmunks everywhere. The stone walls squeaked with them. At every turn, from early spring to early autumn, a chipmunk was scurrying away from you. Chipmunks were common. They did no particular harm, no particular good; they did nothing in particular, being only chipmunks and common, until one morning (it was June-bug time) I stopped and watched a chipmunk that sat atop the stone wall down in the orchard. He was eating, and the shells of his meal lay in a little pile upon the big flat stone which served as his table. They were acorn shells, I thought, yet June seemed rather early in the season for acorns, and looking closer I discovered that the pile was entirely composed of June-bug shells,—wings and hollow bodies of the pestiferous beetles! Well, well! I had never seen this before, never even heard of it. Chipmunk, a _useful_ member of society! actually eating bugs in this bug-ridden world of mine! This was interesting and important. Why, I had really never known chipmunk, after all! So I hadn’t. He had always been too common. Flying squirrels were more worth while, because there were none on the farm. Now, however, I determined to cultivate the acquaintance of chipmunk, for there might be other discoveries awaiting me. And there were. A narrow strip of grass separated the orchard and my garden patch. It was on my way to the garden that I most often stopped to watch this chipmunk, or rather the pair of them, in the orchard wall. June advanced, the beetles disappeared, and my garden grew apace. For the first time in four years there were prospects of good strawberries. Most of my small patch was given over to a new berry, one that I had originated, and I was waiting with an eagerness which was almost anxiety for the earliest berries. The two chipmunks in the wall were now seven, the young ones quite as large as their parents, and both young and old on the best of terms with me. I had put a little stick beside each of the three big berries that were reddening first (though I could have walked from the house blindfolded and picked them). I might have had the biggest of the three on June 7th, but for the sake of the flavor I thought it best to wait another day. On the 8th I went down with a box to get it. The big berry was gone, and so was one of the others, while only half of the third was left on the vine!