I don't invoke the word "war" lightly, but I think it fits in this case. Blood has been shed on both sides. There have been casualties. The campaign has been long and brutal. And, as I say, I am losing it.
Granted, the chipmunks were here first. The house was just sitting there, surrounded by trees, completely vacant for several weeks before we bought it, which may not sound like a very long time, but consider the lifespan of a chipmunk. For some of this tribe, the house had been empty for as long as they could remember. There were probably chipmunk legends of times when huge, pink monsters lived in the house, shaking the ground as they lurched this way and that on their two, giant feet, but really, who would believe such a thing?
Then we moved in.
I have wanted a garden for years. Even though I didn't own a house at the time, in a spirit of unbridled optimism, I spent last winter reading through garden catalogues and had my seeds ready to plant the instant I had a yard to plant them in. Within hours of closing on our new house, I was in the backyard with a rented roto-tiller preparing the soil, which must have been a big shock to the chipmunks. On the other hand, there were compensations, in the form of seeds - lots and lots of seeds.
The chipmunks ate all the seeds - every single one. Not just the big, edible-looking seeds for the pumpkins and sunflowers, but all the seeds, even tiny, almost microscopic ones for carrots and poppies. (I have a mental image of the chipmunks getting looped on poppy seeds, then sitting around in a hole somewhere, listening to Pink Floyd.) I prefer to think of my roto-tilling as an unfortunate act of miscommunication, so lets call the chipmunks' attack on my seeds as Aggressive Act No. 1. I decided to retaliate, so I went around my yard with a garden hose and poured large amounts of water down every chipmunk hole I could find, then planted more seeds. Call this Aggressive Act No. 2.
Aggressive Act No.3: The chipmunks ate the new seeds and left a pile of poo on my back deck. I considered this an official declaration of hostilities and counter-attacked by stuffing large, golf ball-sized rocks into the holes and stomping them down with my foot (Aggressive Act No.4). The next day, the rocks were gone and a new hole had been excavated by the front door (Aggressive Act No.5). That’s when things started to get ugly.
A few days later, the chipmunks took my wife out. I don't mean that they planted a car-bomb or anything, but in fact, they did something much more startling and desperate. They sacrificed one of their own tribe (Aggressive Act No.6). We were driving down the road to our house. I was in the passenger seat. Suddenly, a chipmunk ran out into the middle of the road and just sat there. My wife tried to steer around it, but it threw itself under the wheel. We actually felt the tiny, little thump as we drove over it. This has so demoralized my wife and paralyzed her with guilt, that even though she supports my chipmunk campaign in spirit and will go so far as to shout at the chipmunks and even swear at them, she can't bring herself to actually do anything to them anymore. With one brutal act of self-sacrifice, the chipmunks managed to cut my logistic support out from underneath me. From then on, their actions became so incredibly ruthless that I am pretty sure that the chipmunk we ran over was actually named Ruth.
Aggressive Act No.7: I dumped mothballs down their holes and left mothballs by the hole in the fence where I had seen them enter the yard.
Aggressive Act No.8: The chipmunks ate the mothballs.
I mowed the lawn. I can't consider this an aggressive act, but I can see how the chipmunks might. They waited until I went to refill the mower with gasoline, then taunted me with squeaky little taunts so much that I got mad, dropped the dipstick and smeared oil on myself. (Aggressive Act No.9) It was almost half an hour after that that I realized that the reason the engine wouldn't start was that I had poured gasoline into my oil tank. I stomped back to the garden shed and accidentally bumped into the new hornets' nest there.
I can't actually believe that the chipmunks convinced hornets to try to kill me, but it is a possibility that frightens me.
