THE SAD TALE OF THE STICKY CHIPMUNK

Hi Everyone,

I have come to realize that blogging is a higher priority for me in the dead of winter than it is right now.  The days are shorter, it's colder, it's not Christmas, it's not spring.  It's like weather purgatory.  To be quite honest, now I'm just plain antsy-waiting for summer.  I try to force the summer to begin.  I'll roll my windows down and pretend like I'm not cold.  I'll listen to hip-hop music which I normally don't do until it's hot outside for some reason. And then we get teased by a gorgeous day only to have the next three days be uncomfortably cold.  It's like Mother Nature's saying "ah, ah, ah, New England. Don't even THINK about going to the beach yet."  And God forbid I go golfing.  But come to think of it, even if the weather was consistently nice at this point, I've been way too busy to set aside some time to whack some balls around.

If I'm not at track practice, I'm busy finishing up my Master's degree.  These two things will finish up fairly soon, so then I can dedicate more time to my yard.  Still not a lot of time to golf, though.  I think I need one 80 degree Saturday with a great cookout.  Then I will coronate the Summer of 2011.

But back to my yard-so many chipmunk holes!  They make it hard to have a really nice yard.  It's such a dilemma for me.  Do I exterminate them and leave thousands of dead chipmunks underground?  Heck no!  They are too damn cute.  I can't stay mad at them!  It's like a sick-cycle relationship where your girlfriend is ridiculously hot but keeps pissing you off.  But then she cries and says she's sorry and you forgive her, stay with her, and continue to let her be hot.  I want to kill all the chipmunks, but then I'll have a peaceful moment with one of them where we both just stop in our tracks, smile at each other, put aside our differences "this is so us", realize we both have homes on this plot of land, and move on.

I had my most emotional chipmunk experience last summer when I was cleaning my garage with the door open.  We had a small mouse problem and I had a few of those sticky-tray-mouse-traps in the corners of the garage.  As I was cleaning the garage fridge, I heard a faint shuffling-type sound.  I looked up and saw a chipmunk completely stuck in the sticky tray!  He was desperately trying to escape the tray but he was literally pulling his skin off the bone in the process.  It was so bad that If I yanked the poor thing off of the tray his legs would have ripped off.  He stared at me with a look of clinging-to-life desperation, begging for help.  I didn't know how to save him.  I tried to comfort him with my words, but that was going nowhere.  He continued to yank himself uncontrollably and equally unsuccessfully.  Finally, I transported the tray to the back yard.  I had to "unsticky" the sticky tray.  So, I sprayed my garden hose forcefully on the tray.  The chipmunk understood the plan.  Whenever I sprayed, he pulled.  Now, of course, little Alvin is completely soaked, yet still stuck on the ultra-sticky tray.  I'm telling you, this thing was like Gorilla Glue sticky.  I couldn't get the kid free from the literal death grip of the tray.  His little leg bones were completely exposed at this point.  I had to put him out of his misery.  I placed him in the woods to let the circle of life take its natural course.  I'm like the anti-David Seville.  That guy literally adopted  chipmunks and here I am drowning one on a mouse trap like some sick pre-death ritual!  I struggled with this decision for days but then I realized that my yard is infested with thousands of theses little cuties.  If only one of them perished because of me, that's not such a bad ratio. R.I.P. Alvin.