So Sandy Chipmunk took off his little, short coat,
folded it carefully, and laid it down upon the grass.
Then he pulled off his necktie and unbuttoned his
collar. Just because he was going to dig in the
ground there was no reason why he should get his clothes
dirty.
After that Sandy Chipmunk set to work. And you
should have seen how he made the earth fly. When
night came and he had to stop working there was a
big heap of dirt beneath the beech trees, to show how
busy Sandy had been. There was a big hole in
the pasture, too. But it was nothing at all,
compared with the hole Sandy had dug by the time he
had finished his house.
Every morning Sandy Chipmunk came back to the grove
of beech trees to work upon his new house. And
it was not many days before his burrow was so deep
that when winter came the ground about his chamber
would not freeze. It was what Farmer Green would
have called “below frost-line.”
You must not think it was an easy matter for Sandy
Chipmunk to dig a home. You must remember that
somehow he had to bring the dirt out of his tunnel
to the top of the ground. And he did that by pushing
it ahead of him with his nose.
You may laugh when you hear that. But for Sandy
Chipmunk it was no laughing matter. If he
had laughed, just as likely as not he would have found
his mouth full of dirt. And you can understand
that that wouldn’t have been very pleasant.
As it was, his face was very dirty. But he never
went back to his mother’s house until he had
washed it carefully, just as a cat washes her face.
Sometimes Sandy found stones in his way, down there
beneath the pasture. And those he had to push
up, too. Sometimes a stone was too big to crowd
through the opening into the world outside. And
then Sandy had to make the opening bigger. After
he had done that, and pushed the stone out upon his
dirt-pile, he would make his doorway smaller again
by packing earth firmly into it.
You must not suppose that when Sandy brought the loose
dirt and stones up through his doorway he left them
there. Not at all! He pushed all the litter
some distance away. And whenever he turned, to
scamper down into his burrow again, he would kick
behind him, as hard as he could, to scatter the dirt
still further from his new house.
After Sandy had made himself a chamber where he could
sleep, and where he could store enough food to last
him throughout the winter, any one would naturally
imagine that his house was finished. But Sandy
Chipmunk was not yet satisfied with his new home.
There was still something else that he wanted to do
to it.
MRS. CHIPMUNK IS GLAD
After Sandy Chipmunk had dug his chamber underneath
Farmer Green’s pasture, he liked the inside
of his house quite well. But the looks of the
outside did not please him at all. He wanted
a neat dooryard. And how could he have that,
with that yawning hole through which he had pushed
earth and stones, which still littered the grass a
little distance away?
