Winter ways

At this time of year, we often find ourselves bemoaning the drag of winter days. We complain of cabin fever, wish the sunlight lasted longer and whine about being weighed down with multiple layers of clothing.

But when it comes to winter, we’ve got it much easier than the wild creatures that share our lives here. When our larders are low, we simply wheel off to the grocery store, load up a cart with whatever we fancy and haul it back home, filling up the fridge and stocking the shelves.

Imagine that we didn’t have such convenience at our disposal, that throughout summer and fall, we had to gather and stash all sorts of stuff in our surrounding neighborhood. Then imagine having to remember where we left it, to locate a loaf of bread under inches of snow and to dig it up before moving off to find the bunker where we cached the butter.

Many rodents survive winter in this way. Chipmunks store food in their dens but also in emergency caches—collections of nuts and seeds buried underground. Emerging occasionally from hibernation, chipmunks access these life-sustaining stores before returning to their lairs.

If you come across “digs” in the snow, with the remains of a single acorn or hickory nut lying nearby, you have likely discovered the work of a gray squirrel, which buries its winter food supply one nut at a time. It is estimated that 15 percent of these “plantings” are never retrieved. Often, they sprout and become seedlings, making the gray squirrel an important agent of forest regeneration.