The Twentieth Chipmunk

Last summer I trapped sixteen chipmunks. This summer I had trapped just two more— chipmunks nineteen and twenty, caught in the act of eating together.

I took them across two rivers to release them—as I had seventeen previous chipmunks. (One had died of dehydration and desperation in the August sun.)

These sibling chipmunks waited for their release overnight and through a mild June morning. I went through the usual ritual, placing the cage in a plastic box to protect my trunk from chipmunk pee, driving across Thunder Creek and the Skunk River, pointing the cage toward the tall grass and opening the cage.

Chipmunk nineteen rocketed toward the grass, as had its previous seventeen relatives. But chipmunk twenty wrapped its claws around the cage floor. I turned the trap upside and it clung more tightly to what was now its ceiling. I up-ended it and it remained fixed to the wall. I finally shook its cage, producing level 5 earthquakes in its mini-world. It plunged reluctantly into the grass and crouched there without moving.

In fairness to number twenty, I don’t think he was feeling well. His fur was a bit matted, and he looked a bit thin. Perhaps he had the beginning of dehydration—his sibling must been more hydrated when their foray into the cage began. Or perhaps he had chipmunk flu. Or maybe he had heard horror stories about chipmunks drowning in their bottomland homes in the Iowa floods of ’08.

But, whatever the reason, he chose the familiar cage instead of the freedom of the grass.

Foolish chipmunk.

Foolish me.