Chip

Littles

'Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up

the most room in your heart.' - A.A.Milne

There’s just something about anything small that makes me smile...

… and totally relate.

Some people might think it’s silly or random, and I totally get that. But it’s my kind of thing.

So it was on that chilly day when the sun was shining and there was a hint of approaching spring that I saw something that made my heart stop mid-beat.

A most fascinating little.

Chip. Photo, V.E.V., 2020

Only five or six inches long and weighing about three ounces perhaps. That was only two-thirds the weight of one stick of butter.

It had two tan and five blackish longitudinal stripes on its back ending at the reddish rump, and two tan and two brownish stripes on each side of its face.

Umm... Hello, Chip. Nice to meet you.

You guessed right. It was a chipmunk. 

He was scavenging for milo and white millet that had fallen on the deck floor from bird feeders hanging off the adjacent lilac bush. Spotting a cracked corn nestled among the leftover debris, he sat back on his haunch and began to grasp the kernel in his tiny paws. Then he turned it this way and that, and then nibbled on happily.

Second Granddaughter's chipmunk bistro. Photo, V.E.V., 2020

I couldn't tell if he was eating straight away or just saving food for later in his cheeks.

He soon became a fixture, a loyal patron of the chipmunk bistro that Second Granddaughter built just for him. 

It was odd how a tiny rodent could bring such a joyful swell in my heart. 

It felt like forbidden pleasure - guilt laced with exhilaration, like playing truant from school.

Truth.

Chip peruses Nutty Cafe menu

There was nowhere else on the planet I would rather be at that exact moment.

Except maybe in a cozy burrow in an alpine forest where the other chipmunks were, feeling a lift of pleasure at the hungry light of morning, the breath of spring in the air.