Amy in the Garden

Success.

After 4 months of battle, one sleek, villainous chipmunk has been trapped in my garden, and relocated to a pull-off on Baldwin Road. My beans are safer tonight for this rodent’s removal. The striped assassin will have to seek another victim, another worthy gardener, another shepherd of this good Earth. His days of nipping my plastic trellis to bits, of chewing the leaves of the Jacob’s Cattle bush beans, and the Lina Cisco’s Bird Eggs beans, and the Good Mother Stallard pole beans, AND my Fortex green pole beans, are finished.

I feel great.

Because I am worthy, because I am a shepherd, I will be merciful with each subsequent relocation. I will drop off each trapped chipmunk in the same location, so that they may reunite if they choose, with family, if indeed they are. Because, after all, I am not the villain here.

The placement of the tiny Hav-A-Hart was obvious: near the luscious Swiss Chard and right by the entrance to the drain pipe.

My husband is as worthy as I: he discovered and relocated the villain shortly after his capture. The chipmunk did not suffer confinement long.

Don't be fooled: That darling face is a mask. It is Pure Evil.

WORDS FROM OTHERS:

“My friends all know that I am shy,
But the chipmunk is twice and shy and I.
He moves with flickering indecision
Like stripes across the television.
He’s like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud. ”

— Ogden Nash

“That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—”

— William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”