Just the chip of the iceberg.

In the last 13 days, I've captured sixteen chipmunks. Sixteen.

I knew I saw a lot of them running around this year, and my wife has been losing some plants lately, but I had no idea that I was running some sort of chipmunk refugee camp. Because of this problem, I've been reading up on them, and it turns out that they only have a home range of about a 1/2 acre. I'm not sure how many I may have in a 1/2 acre, but I do know I'm not done yet, and the little bastards are wearing me out.

I've been transporting them to a field about a mile away from my house, and letting them go. It's become so ridiculous that I'm running low on almonds and peanut butter. I still have plenty of wheat thins though. A wheat thin with a dab of peanut butter and a whole almond on top, put on a small plastic plate. Yes, that's what they seem to like the best, and yes, I realize I'm making hors d'oeuvres for chipmunks.

When I first started catching them, I didn't know what to expect. They wanted out in the worst way, and I was afraid to get my hands too close because I didn't want rabies or whatever other funky diseases these things might carry. They also tended to piss when you lifted the trap up, and I had no desire to go to work smelling like I got a golden shower from a filthy ground squirrel.

I was pretty careful at first, and I started out by putting the cage on the ground and opening the trap, but after about the 8th or 9th chipmunk, I got tired of squatting down in the brush and taking the risk that a tick might climb up my pant leg and attach itself to my man parts again. Yes, I said "again," but that is a story for another time. Anyway, somewhere along the line I decided to see what what happen if I just opened the trap at chest level. The chipmunks didn't care -- they shot out of there like a cannon. In fact, I started pretending I was Duke Nukem firing my RPG:*

Of course, they didn't actually explode when they hit, but...well, in my mind they did. They're nothing but filthy little forest rats. Very cute filthy little forest rats, but rats nonetheless.

The only one that wasn't so cute had to be the local stud around these parts. He's probably the one responsible for the crazy population explosion. First, he was twice the size of the others and had balls like a fruit bat and he looked kind of greasy, like he just rolled off some chipmunk bimbo and was now making himself a snack in her kitchen. Second, he wasn't scared of me at all. The other chipmunks went completely apeshit when I picked up the trap and carried it to the car -- he just sat there and stared at me through the bars, eating his peanut-butter covered almond as fast as he possibly could. He had a look in his eyes like he was thinking, "As God is my witness, I am finishing this fucking almond before I leave this place."

Right before I took him out of the car, he glanced up at me and then jammed the last of the almond into his cheek. Then he just sat there, waiting for me to open the cage, like he'd done this a dozen times before. When I opened the door, he made a graceful leap to the ground and chattered at me before running into the woods. I'm pretty sure he flipped me off, but I can't be 100% sure.

By now he's probably met up with a bunch of his old crew and he's starting a new colony about a mile from my house -- and you know what? I wish the big-balled bastard luck. He had style. Hopefully he'll take some time out to grab a shower, though, because he smelled like dirty feet and chipmunk cock, and nobody wants to smell that. I'm assuming that includes chipmunk sluts too, but what do I know? Maybe that's his version of Dolce & Gabanna Light Blue.

Only, you know, for chipmunks.

*Yes, I realize that I'm old.