One of the more adventurous baby chipmunks tries a little tree climbing.
As it turns out, there are not two but three new chipmunks: Their names are Junior, June, and Scooter. Since they're all so small and indistinguishable from each other, I simply refer to them all as Chippy. One, so far, is willing to sniff a person's toes, but won't jump up into a lap.
Rose is the one to do that. She'll actually try running up my (bare) leg if I don't drop a peanut fast enough for her. She'll also sit in my lap, eat on the table, and turn away any peanut not to her liking. Apparently, before stuffing as many as three peanuts into her cheeks, she chews off the rough edges to make sure that they don't irritate her. If a peanut is cracked--or is open on one end--she quickly drops it and asks for something of better quality.
I said chipmunks were demanding. Now it's clear just how demanding.
Other news: Yesterday, I noticed five different kinds of ground squirrels in the back yard: (1) the chipmunks, (2) a half-grown rabbit, (3) several grey squirrels, (4) the notorious thirteen-lined ground squirrel, and (the most recent guest) (5) the red squirrel. (See picture.) The red squirrel is somewhere between the chipmunk and the grey squirrel in size and is probably the most agile tree climber of any of its ground squirrel cousins. Whether it makes any sounds is yet to be discovered.
Meanwhile Chip-Chip still resides behind the front step and routinely visits the garage for food. One day he stuffed so many peanuts and sunflower seeds into the car's engine that they blew out all over the floor when I turned on the heater. What a mess!
On a related note, a mouse built a nest inside the riding lawn mower, right next to the battery case. After I stopped the mower on the driveway to fill up with gas, I noticed that the mouse came out of the bottom of the mower, no worse for its ride, and it was holding a baby mouse in its mouth. Well, I pushed the mower back, and the mouse kept running underneath it. Finally, it raced for the open garage, with the baby still in tow. Something didn't feel quite right, so I investigated the riding lawn mower and found a nest inside--with two more babies in it. I scooped out the nest, put it in a bucket, and laid the bucket on its side toward the rear of the garage. In just a few minutes, the babies were gone. The mother had fetched them. So they all survived a ride across the lawn on the riding lawn mower, were reunited, and are probably stuffing sunflower seeds somewhere in my car.
Moral: No good deed goes unpunished.
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