Chipmunks, no; but marmots, delightfully, yes
In her article “Long Way Up” about summiting Wheeler Peak, Isabel Bearman Butcher writes of little Golden Manteled Chipmunks sounding their alarms.
As a biologist, who in the 1950s wrote a college paper about these mountain creatures, I can assure readers that the sounds she heard on her trek to the summit did not from Golden Manteled Chipmunks (there is no such animal) or from Golden Manteled Ground Squirrels, which are virtually silent.
No — she was hearing (and no doubt seeing) Yellow-bellied Marmots, which, larger than the size of a house cat and weighing 6-12 pounds, are hardly little. Nor are they skinny, for they put on layers of fat to last them through their eight-month winter hibernation in rock burrows. Their food consists of grasses, alpine plants and flowers.
These alpine denizens regularly delight hikers who trek to the above-treeline summits of our northern mountains. When alarmed by what they think might be a predator (read: hikers), they sound off with a shrill whistle. Then they typically shuffle back down into their burrows in the rock talus. Who wouldn’t be captivated by the sight and sound of these gifts of nature?
BILL DUNMIRE
Placitas
