One morning I saw a chipmunk catch a flying grasshopper on the wing. Little Striped-Back sat on the wall with stuffed pockets, waiting for something, when along came the big grasshopper in a hesitating, uncertain manner of flight. As it hovered above the chipmunk, the latter by a quick, dexterous movement sprang or reached up and caught it, and in less than one half-minute its fanlike wings were opening out in front of the captor's mouth and its body was being eagerly devoured. This same chipmunk, I think it is, has his den under the barn near me. Often he comes from the stone wall with distended cheek-pouches, and pauses fifteen feet away, close by cover, and looks to see if any danger is impending. To reach his hole he has to cross an open space a rod or more wide, and the thought of it evidently agitates him a little. I am sitting there looking over my desk upon him, and he is skeptical about my being as harmless as I look. "Dare I cross that ten feet of open there in front of him?" he seems to say. He sits up with fore paws pressed so prettily to his white breast. He is so near I can see the rapid throbbing of his chest as he sniffs the air. A moment he sits and looks and sniffs, then in hurried movements crosses the open, his cheek-pockets showing full as he darts by me. He is like a baseball runner trying to steal a base: danger lurks on all sides; he must not leave the cover of one base till he sees the way is clear, and then--off with a rush! Pray don't work yourself up to such a pitch, my little neighbor; you shall make a home-run without the slightest show of opposition from me. One day a gray squirrel came along on the stone wall beside the road. In front of the house he crossed an open barway, and then paused to observe two men at work in full view near the house. The men were a sculptor, pottering with clay, and his model. The squirrel sprang up a near-by butternut-tree, sat down on a limb, and had a good, long look. "Very suspicious," he seemed to think; "maybe they are fixing a trap for me"; and he deliberately came down the tree and returned the way he had come, spinning along the top of the wall, his long, fine tail outlined by a narrow band of silver as he sped off toward the woods. VI WILD LIFE IN WINTER To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others it means what it means to many fortunate human beings--travels in warm climes; to still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms it means death.