Few people would deny that chipmunks are cute. They practically define the meaning of the word. But there’s more to these little powerhouses than a winsome personality. That tiny head houses a powerful intellect. Chipmunks learn by observation and example, they solve complex problems, and they know how many seeds make five. A case in point: Just the other day I observed a chipmunk surveying and building a tunnel complex. My office window opens out over the grassy slope where “Jack” makes his home. He and I are old friends. We’ve known each other for years. I can pick him out at a hundred yards just by the tawny color of his coat and the shape of his head and tail. He’s moved house several times over the years I’ve known him, and he recently constructed an extension not far from his current front door. I was witness to the whole process.

It began one morning not long ago, with a curiously choreographed ritual dance. At least that’s what I thought I was seeing at first. Jack stood tall on his hind legs, gazing fixedly out across the slope. Then he sprinted in the direction he’d been looking, stopped short after running some six to eight feet, and returned to his starting place along the selfsame path. He repeated this exercise three or four times in succession, taking a different route each time, before disappearing down a hole I’d never seen before. Were these curious out-and-back forays nothing more than exuberant calisthenics? I didn’t think so. There was a studied, purposeful air in Jack’s every movement, an air that belied any notion that this was merely exercise. So I continued to watch the slope through my binoculars. Soon dirt flew from the hole, and then I saw Jack backing out, kicking a ball of earth from between his widely spaced rear legs, scattering it far and wide. He repeated the process again and again as I watched. At long last, however, he emerged unburdened, washed himself from head to toe, and repeated his early program of short sprints, retracing his original paths exactly, before vanishing underground once again. Shortly afterward, he reappeared to scatter another load of earth on the slope. And another. And another. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the job was over. Jack had a final wash and reentered his home for a well-earned rest.

I didn’t see him again until the next day, and I puzzled over his purposeful choreography for some time. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Jack’s “ritual dance” was nothing less than a preliminary survey for an extension to his tunnel network. Each exploratory sprint established the extent and orientation of a new subsurface tunnel, while the second set of sprints confirmed and corrected the preliminary excavations. Just how the initial bearings and runs guided Jack when he worked in the perpetual dark of the world beneath the slope, I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet that some form of magnetic sense was involved—perhaps the same sort of perception that guides night-flying migratory birds to their destinations. However he managed it, though, it was an impressive demonstration of dead reckoning in action.

What did I tell you? Chipmunks rule. And who said you can’t be both cute and clever, anyway?

Send a Comment

Unrelenting and cold, the river necks down and drops through a cleft in solid rock, kicking up a mist that softens the view and cools the face of any onlooker who dares the slick banks. What’s round the next bend?

 
Send a Comment

A steady stream of cars passed me, each one driven by someone who was in a terrible hurry to go… Where? Work? The HyperMart in town? Or the post office just half a mile ahead? In any event, they gave me plenty of room as they sped by me, and the bumper stickers on most of the SUVs, extend-cab pickups, and vans proclaimed their owners’ abiding love of the environment and deep personal commitment to the green lifestyle. Perhaps the drivers were communicating the depth of this devotion to friends or coworkers as they hurtled along. At least that’s one explanation for the many hands that I saw cupped tight against ears. The drivers sat in splendid isolation in air-conditioned comfort, watching the landscape unfold at 50 mph, as their lips moved soundlessly, imparting (or receiving) some message too urgent to be postponed, even for the 30 seconds or so it would take to reach the post office parking lot. I could usually pick out the urgent communicators while they were still some distance behind me, a characteristic swerve invariably signaling the moment when they realized something was in their path.

I was that something, cycling along at a little less than racing speed—OK, make that a lot less—on a shoulderless town road that borders a checkerboard of fen and forest land. Ten years ago, this was still a wild place, a back road that linked two other, equally neglected roads, where the few motorists who traveled it regularly all drove slowly, often stopping to chat if they saw that I’d pulled off onto the shoulder to snap a photo or make a note. And I was frequently doing one or the other, because the place was home to wildlife of every description.

Then several canny contractors bought up parcels of undeveloped land adjoining the county forest and started surveying home sites, selling them on to folks who longed to have a place in the country to call their own, even if that meant they had to clearcut an acre or two of white pines or red maples in the process. Of course, most of these latter-day pioneers worked somewhere else, often somewhere far from their new place in the country, requiring that they spend anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours each and every day in their cars. So it isn’t exactly surprising that traffic picked up along the narrow town road.

Meanwhile, I slogged on. Then, up ahead, I saw a small form in the middle of the road. Could it be a turtle? I rose out of the saddle and sprinted, trying desperately to reach it before an oncoming car did. But a bright red SUV won the race with seconds to spare. Whatever I’d seen on the road disappeared from view beneath its bumper. The driver gave a cheery wave as she passed me.

With no time to lose and little hope left, I veered off the road, leaping from my bike while it was still in motion. The inert form on the highway wasn’t a turtle, as I’d first feared. It was a young cedar waxwing. By some miracle he’d escaped being crushed; the tires of the red SUV had missed him completely. Best of all, I could see he was breathing. He lay on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Taking advantage of a brief lull in the traffic, I walked into the middle of the road and scooped the stricken bird into my hands, cradling him in my palm as I returned to the tree-shaded berm where I’d ditched my bike.

I could find no obvious injury, but I guessed that the waxwing had been struck a glancing blow by a car’s windshield. There was little I could do beyond holding him close to my body, hoping against hope that he might extract some comfort from the warmth. I turned my back to the road and its traffic. A thicket of alders pressed close against the berm here. The waxwing flexed his wings and kicked his feet. Perhaps he’d been reared in a nest somewhere in the alders. I began to think he might recover from the blow. I’d seen it happen before, when a chickadee fell victim to a window-strike only to come back to life in my hands—and then return regularly to “visit” with me for several weeks afterward.

But almost as soon as I’d allowed myself to feel the first few stirrings of optimism, the tiny form in my hands arched his back in a single convulsive shudder and died. The cars droned ceaseless on.

I tucked his now lifeless body among a cluster of wildflowers at the foot of an alder, covered him with some of the last year’s fallen leaves, and returned to my bike. As I resumed my plodding journey, yet another SUV passed me, the driver deep in earnest conversation with some invisible communicant. The sticker on her car’s rear bumper said, “Green Warrior.”

 
Send a Comment