This morning I woke up to a beautiful, warm, sunny day. After almost a month of cold rain, it was a pure delight to take my coffee and my notebook outside to read on the patio.
It wasn’t long before I got restless and started wandering around in the woods. My husband found some morel mushrooms in the woods yesterday and I thought I’d take a stroll through the trees in search of some more.
What I found instead was a tiny new friend, in a ridiculously dramatic fashion.
Nico was doing her all-too-familiar excited jumping and pawing at something on the ground. I’ve learned over the years to recognize that this particular behavior means she’s found something living, that she’s attempting to play to death.
I quickly called her off and carefully approached the creature, expecting to find the usual toad or snake, but instead I saw a fuzzy tail sticking out from under the leaves, wiggling timidly.
I pushed the leaves aside to find the sweetest little baby chipmunk, all curled up and frightened. For a minute I thought the poor thing was dead, but on closer inspection it was clear that he was perfectly fine, just shaken up.
I picked him up and he instantly burrowed into my hand, desperately seeking safety. I took the little guy inside and cleaned him up a little bit, as he was covered in Nico drool. I showed my husband, who got a little box for him to rest in.
We let the poor little thing take a little nap in the box and recover from the drama, then I snapped a few photos of his cute little face and brought him back out into the woods. I put him down right where I’d found him, and hoped his momma would be back for him soon.
An hour later he was still there. Two hours later… still there. I started to worry that he was orphaned and would die and immediately jumped on google to find all the information I could about orphaned chipmunks.
Lucky for us, and for him, we didn’t need any of that information, because when I went to check on him a third time, he wasn’t there. Either he scampered off on his own or his mom came to find him and took him home. Either way I’m thinking on the bright side and assuming he’s off living his cute little chipmunk life in the woods.