Chipmunks

Photo: Gilles Gonthier

They entertained us all summer long, chasing each other around the garden in dizzying circles.  Their high-pitched chatter drove our cat mad, taunting him as they raced back and forth outside the screen porch before diving headfirst into one of their tunnels. They’ve built an extensive network of burrows near the house over the years, including one in the long stone wall along the driveway that in the summer months is as populated and bustling as a Manhattan co-op. They’re good neighbors, though, keeping their living quarters clean and storing their trash in designated refuse tunnels.

In the early fall, we watched them foraging for acorns under the oaks, stuffing their expandable cheek pouches with the nuts that they stockpile in their burrows and live off of all winter.  This harvesting and hoarding apparently fosters seedling development, and their droppings enrich the soil around trees, endowing these playful little characters with an important role in the forest ecosystem. They’ve been such a lighthearted part of our lives for so many months now, it took us a while to realize that they’ve gone. They’ve disappeared into their underground hidey holes for the winter, their absence adding to the growing stillness and silence of the late fall landscape.

For the Chipmunk in  My Yard

by Robert Gibb

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down 
The three steps of the back porch 
And given me a good once over. All afternoon 
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs, 
While all about him the great fields tumble 
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky 
To be where he is, wild with all that happens. 
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows 
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires 
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots, 
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter 
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.