365 Urban species. #321: Eastern Chipmunk

[urbpan]

Photo by cottonmanifesto.

What makes one rodent cute and another rodent vermin? A furry, rather than scaly tail? Stripes? Cheek pouches? I submit that it is merely context. In the forest, a rodent is an adorable sprite, dashing about gathering nuts. If you are the steward of a collection of captive animals, rodents are filthy thieves, taking food and leaving crap. This sums up my attitude toward chipmunks.

Until fairly recently, I did not consider chipmunks to be urban animals. But once I began to frequent the southern edges of The Emerald Necklace in Boson, my opinion changed. Olmsted Park and Franklin Park are both bristling with chipmunks. They seem to need a fair amount of forest, especially but not exclusively oak forest, and that needs to be messy forest, with rocks and logs for cover. They also need a good stretch of soil (not concrete and asphalt) in which to construct their burrows. Gray squirrels are more common in cities, since they need only the trees as refuge--soil, it seems, is a more rare commodity. Their burrows are where they dart when alarmed, and they are often alarmed. Small mammals survive by being cautious, if not downright twitchy. The burrows are also where they construct their larders of stored acorns and beech nuts. When they aren't eating plant material, they are surprisingly predatory, eating insects, salamanders, and even mice.

Like many rodents, chipmunks are opportunistic, and given access to a food source, they will enter homes and other buildings. As alluded to earlier, one of their favorite haunts is the city zoo.

Here's where I ask you to post your chipmunk pictures in the comments.

Comments

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Hey,

We used to have oodles of Malaysian Palm Squirrels at the Perth Zoo, running free- they bred into the thousands, did their best to eat all the other animals' food and invaded homes around the zoo, so the Zoo exterminated all of them about 5 years ago...

[aemiis-zoo.livejournal.com]

All rodents are cute!!!

[agelena.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I had no idea that chipmunks were tree-climbers.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

They dash up trees when they can't make it to one of their burrows. We spooked this on an urban nature walk, and it was between us and the pond, so up the buckthorn it went.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i think i have more than a few chippy pix either in my smugmug or not uploaded in general... i'll check later.

we have chippies living under our steps - they dug tunnels for such. i don't very much some of these guys even go into the woods. they like the paradise of the apt complex. they LOVE maple seeds. they'll also quite happily forage in the dumpster, on fallen food, peanuts, whatever. it's kinda of cute to watch them zone out in a sunbeam and not move. you can almost poke them with your toe :)

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[droserary.livejournal.com]

No pictures here, but perhaps a short story? As a young and admittedly ignorant child, I was once bitten by a chipmunk. I was clearing out what I thought was an abandoned birdhouse behind my elementary school and upon removing my hand, to my surprise, there was a chipmunk attached. The little rodent would not let go of my finger, but a few alarmed shrieks and a flail of the arm convinced it letting go was the best option. Once free, the little bugger scampered back in my direction up a tree at eye level and just stared at me. It wasn't rabid, just protecting its home. The only real damage was done to my ego. For years after this, I received plenty of "reminder" gifts from friends whenever they found a chipmunk-themed shirt of ornament. Even just last year my loving sister sent me a t-shirt with a chipmunk on it.

I'm much more careful of where I put my hand now. All that silly child needed was a healthy respect for nature. Learned my lesson!

[axolotl-eyes.livejournal.com]

He was depositing his seeds in her mini-pocket to save for the winter.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

The chipmunks around here in the suburbs are easy prey for cats, but there are still lots of them. I did not know they were omnivores.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they were omnivores until I went bird-banding a couple months ago and they mentioned to be careful when checking the nets to make sure we didn't miss seeing any birds at ground level, because if we left them there too long, a chipmunk might get them. It never would have occurred to me to watch out for predatory chipmunks.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

I live at the current bottom of the chipmunk's range--and I mean the EXTREME bottom, to the extent that the north side of the city has 'em, and the south side doesn't. I've only seem the little guys in the yard once or twice, but they're cute little buggers.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

i have a friend whose large garden abuts the fells and she has loads of chipmunks in it.

chipmunks often raid each others' stashes, so chipmunks usually have several back-up ones.

in new england forests, chipmunk density is higher near old stone walls.

[frederic.livejournal.com]

The Victorians were well aware of the squirrel's appetite for any creature they could catch. Apparently, the red squirrels in England are notorious bird eaters. We found this print in an antique shop last year:

We stared at if for a while and realized that those peanuts they were eating had beaks... My research tells me that it's by Sir Edward Henry Landseer (1802-1873) and the site that told me that innocently described the print as, "It depicts two squirrels communing with a song bird." Another site has the title of the print as "A Piper and Pair of Nutcrackers" and a date of 1864.

When we bought it and pointed out to the clerks what the print was, they gave us rather strange looks.

There's also a movie out there on Youtube of a chipmunk eating a mouse and running around with the mouse dangling from the chipmunk's maw. Just found it again here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qSEkFpZJXk).

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Those are wonderful! I love the print--we have watched gray squirrels moving through the house sparrow nests in the Boston ivy on our neighbor's building, eating eggs and nestlings.

I had heard that chipmunks eat the heads of mice like they were acorns, and it's great that there is video evidence of it!