Page:Natural History of the Ground Squirrels of California.djvu/37

Rh bulge in the middle portion of its body. This proved to mark the location of a full-grown ground squirrel, which had been swallowed entire, head first.

Near the mouth of Tejon Creek, Kern County, on July 16, 1914, C. L. Camp (MS) watched a rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus) about three feet and a half long, swallow a ground squirrel. He describes the incident essentially as follows: The snake had just bitten the squirrel on the side of the face below the eye. The squirrel flopped about for five or ten minutes and then dropped over a bank and died, out of sight of the snake. The snake then slowly crawled down over the bank after its prey, found it, touched it all over with the end of its tongue, and then seized the animal by the nose. The squirrel moved slightly. The snake drew back and waited motionless for some time. The snake then got a fresh hold on the squirrel's nose, pulled the body out straight, and started to work its jaws over the squirrel's head. Things went rapidly as far as the squirrel's ears, then operations proceeded more slowly. The snake writhed about and gradually worked its jaws over the shoulders of the squirrel, first moving the upper jaw forward with slight jerks and then pulling up on the lower jaw. Finally, after the rodent had been half swallowed, we approached closer to take a picture and the snake disgorged the squirrel as the result of a violent effort lasting a minute or so. We went away and in a little while the snake returned to its food and had swallowed it almost completely within 15 or 20 minutes more.

On Pine Flats, in the San Gabriel Mountains, a large, lazy rattler was secured which showed a bulge about halfway along its body. Dis- section disclosed a full-grown California Ground Squirrel which had been swallowed. (Grinnell, J. and H. W., 1907, p. 53.)

On San Emigdio Creek, Kern County, on the morning of April 23, 1918, the attention of J. Dixon (MS) was attracted by the nervous barking and peculiar actions of a large male ground squirrel. With the aid of the binoculars, the actions of the squirrel, which was less than 75 yards distant, were easily followed. The squirrel was obviously much wrought up and his sharp, nervous notes were quite different in pitch and intensity from the ordinary metallic alarm note. The animal's attention was continually focused upon an opening just beneath a certain small white rock at the edge of a stone pile. While his attention thus remained fixed, the squirrel kept running back and forth in a semicircle about thirty inches distant from the object concerned. During this time the squirrel's tail, which was held arched over his back, was twitched violently sideways every time he barked. The alarm notes were uttered during a momentary pause at the end of each advance in the arc-shaped path of the squirrel. The squirrel's whole demeanor reminded the observer of that of a pup that has cornered some old pussy cat and still hesitates to make an attack. Having witnessed three similar performances by ground squirrels, in San Diego County, the observer proceeded to investigate and found, as in the three previous instances, that a coiled rattlesnake was the cause of the excitement. In the present case there were two, a male and female, tightly coiled together at the mouth of a squirrel burrow, and they were dispatched. An hour later this same squirrel, which was easily identified by a peculiarity in its pelage due to wear, was observed digging a new