Chipmunks are adorable. Don’t laugh, but until this year’s bumper crop arrived, I had no idea they chirp. Constantly. Apparently, their chirping is why they are called chipmunks in the first place. Did I miss something in my early education about chipmunks from Chip and Dale?
It wasn’t until I actually saw one perched on my fence, visibly jerking with every chirp, did I realize that noise did not come from a bird. I love learning/discovering new things. This understanding changed my life. I asked my husband, commonly known as Bradapedia for his limitless knowledge base, if he knew chipmunks chirped. He did not. Score. I am not a total ignoramus. Double score. I could actually teach him something he never knew.
That is a rare event in my life and I was giddy with power. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass quickly. “Brad! Stop! Can you hear that? Do you know what that is? It’s a chipmunk! Doesn’t it sound like a bird? Isn’t it amazing? It’s really loud, isn’t it? Wait.There it goes again!” I was going to hammer this point home like a chipmunk defending its territory. You. Will. Hear. Me.
Then I asked my Master Gardener neighbor if she knew. She had just learned it recently as well, and we chirped on about that amazing factoid. How could we be so stupid? How did we not know? I always thought is was a bird too! We were bonding over little striped rodents as if we had just discovered alien life forms.
Every morning as I let the dogs out, I hear them. Every time I step into the backyard, I hear them. When it’s nice enough to have the windows open, I hear them. They are very per·sis·tent. adj. 1. Refusing to give up or let go; persevering obstinately. 2. Insistently repetitive or continuous. 3. Existing or remaining in the same state for an indefinitely long time; enduring.
Adorable. Yes, as adorable as a car alarm that refuses to be silenced. Adorable like a tiny, high-pitched jackhammer that never fully breaks through. Adorable like Chinese water torture as each drop of water bores a hole into your head until you go insane.
Like the arrow in the FedEx logo, it can’t be unseen. I cannot unhear the little darlings defending the entrance to their burrow. I cannot sit out in my backyard on a beautiful sunny day and peacefully read a book or contemplate the meaning of Wi-Fi as each loud chirp vibrates my tympanic membrane, attempting to shatter the tiny hammer bone against my anvil bone.
I am an animal lover; not in a Floridian, criminal, you-need-to-see-the-prison-psychiatrist kind of way, but I am bordering on being an animal hoarder with three small dogs and a parakeet. At one time, I could have imagined having a chipmunk as a pet.
All that has changed. Add the sinkhole in my brick walkway from their adorable burrows to the mix, and I have become a bitter, edgy, waiting-for-them-to-hibernate woman. I’m actually rooting for my Dachshund to catch one now. Ignorance really was bliss.
