Life

Ground squirrel cousins summertime friends

ESCANABA- Friend or foe, cute or crazy, ground squirrels are a part of summertime in the north woods.

Upper Michigan is home to two separate species of these fury little friends.

Everybody is familiar with the eastern chipmunk. This busy little body thrives in the wilderness, in parks, campgrounds, and in backyards all over the U.P.

If you feed the birds, you know the striped chipmunk who invites himself over for a free meal.

Chipmunks are born in May in a tunnel well below ground. They are naked, blind and not much bigger than a bumble bee at birth. They grow fast on their mother's rich milk and poke their heads out above ground at about six weeks. Then the scurrying begins!

The mother chipmunk usually produces two litters of young per summer.

The lush green world is a well-stocked grocery store for the chipmunk family. They fatten up on seeds, berries, acorns, hazelnuts, snails, slugs and apples.

The children's book "How the Chipmunk Got His Stripes" tells the native American legend about a sassy chipmunk teasing a black bear about the rising sun. The chipmunk gets swatted by the bruin and that's why he has stripes on his back!

By late summer our energized chipmunk is busy filling the big pouches in his checks with food and stashing it away for winter. Chippy is seldom seen after Halloween.

The gopher is the other ground squirrel native to Michigan. His correct name is the" thirteen -lined ground squirrel. This cutie is longer and a bit bigger than the chipmunk. Gophers look more spotted than striped. Their ears are smaller and closer to their heads than chipmunks.

Gophers sit up with their elongated bodies and peek out over open grassy lands. It is common to find this critter in farm fields, golf courses, cemeteries and roadsides. People who want perfect lawns often battle with the gophers.

Gophers have one large litter of six to eight little ones per year. When they emerge from their underground homes, gophers consume many caterpillars, grasshoppers, insects, berries and grasses.

Old forgotten homesteads and farm fields are great places to find this ground squirrel. Gophers are only active during the day and after grasshopper hunting, they love to sun themselves on a nice piece of field stone. They give a distinctive shrill chirp when they are alarmed.

As Queen-Anne's Lace and the wild aster flowers are swishing in the wind, enjoy the antics of the ground squirrels. All too soon, they will be covered by several feet of snow!