A chipmunk crouches atop the stone wall. In the strong sunlight I can see how nervous energy ripples through its fur from head to tail.
chipmunks
June 10, 2016
Batting away a hornet hovering next to my legs—the softness of its wings. A chipmunk adds its metronome to the chorus of bird calls.
October 9, 2015
The walnut tree next to the road is stripping in the wind, its leaves flying off in great yellow gusts. The steady ticking of a chipmunk.
September 24, 2015
Another cloudless morning. Chipmunks chase each other through a bar of sunlight on the forest floor. The distant, metallic calls of a raven.
September 15, 2015
Sunrise stains the treetops. The woods are full of anxious-sounding calls: chipmunks, jays, nuthatches, an endlessly scolding squirrel…
September 9, 2015
Overcast and cool. Chipmunks begin ticking, one after the other, all over the hillside. Suddenly it’s raining. Suddenly it isn’t.
August 12, 2015
Cloudy and cool. Cricket trills and ticks are joined by chipmunk tocks. A tulip tree leaf sails in wide circles with its stem for a rudder.
June 21, 2015
The light between showers. A groundhog plows through the stiltgrass in the yard. Later, two chipmunks touch noses at the end of the porch.
June 14, 2015
A chipmunk scurries through the garden with a wad of dried leaves between her teeth and disappears beneath a flowerless clump of peonies.
June 6, 2015
A flash of blue as one indigo bunting chases another out of the yard. From within the rock wall, a chipmunk’s hollow tock.
June 2, 2015
Cloudy and cold. The weeds below the porch tremble where a chipmunk forages for seeds. The dog wanders into the garden to graze on grass.
May 21, 2015
Momentary things: A chipmunk pressing the rain from its fur. The swaying of a branch from which a grackle has just taken flight.
March 12, 2015
A cloudless sky. Chipmunks and squirrels run back and forth across the melting snow. A gurgling chorus from all the springs and ditches.
March 7, 2015
A few degrees above freezing. Just inside the woods’ edge, three chipmunks in full mating frenzy race back and forth across the snow.