Chipmunks have to be, unquestionably, the most paranoid, anti-social creatures I've ever witnessed this side of a racetrack bar. The other day, just looking out the back door, I spied a chipmunk peering over the outer wall of the porch. As soon as he sensed me merely looking at him, from behind a door, he disappeared quickly (do chipmunks do anything slowly?). Later, while sitting on the porch, the same chipmunk, I guess, started to climb up onto the porch. Once again, on first sensing me, whoosh, gone again to wherever they go (to chill out?). Even finicky rabbits that hop around outside, even the large, bulbous, big-tailed, off-white homunculus thing I see only late at night--these creatures will at least freeze to look at you and size you up a bit (by which time I'm usually scurrying like some most-wanted chipmunk with a banshee complex) before moving on. The only time I've ever seen two or more chipmunks gathered at once has been on some cartoon I never liked, or even got. And yet they're so cute, from what I've been able to see in a flash; I could abide with one as a pet. An anti-social pet, my kind of pet.
And then there are skunks. Is there a more universally despised animal? At least rats can be subjected to all sorts of scientific experiments that someday might benefit me and you. But skunks? Does anyone love them? Even tolerate them? If any animal should be paranoid and anti-social, you'd think it would be skunks, no? Well, maybe it's the knowledge that they possess the ultimate weapon, but I've never seen a skunk running away from anything. They just kind of trundle around like there's nothing to worry about except where their next meal is lurking. You spy one in the middle of the night, and instantly you freak, but they just look at you kind of dumbly, alter their course a bit, and keep on trundling. I deeply respect skunks; if anything had an ax to grind with the world, it would be a skunk. But they just seem to mind their own business, for the most part.
Over several weeks I've watched the goings on at the robin's nest creatively constructed on the remnants of an old spotlight attached to my neighbor's garage. First a robin or two painstakingly built the thing twig by twig. Then for a couple weeks I watched one robin--day and night--do nothing but fly back to the nest with a worm or something dangling from its mouth, hold it out until a few tiny beaks peeked out from inside the nest and took the food, then immediately go scare up some more grub. Worm by worm that robin, just as it built that nest twig by twig, built those young robins until I could finally see their full heads above the walls of the nest. Then, for the last week or so, the nest was empty: no activity. Those little birdies discovered they could fly, I suppose, and looked around and said, 'what the hell are we doing sitting in this scratchy, tiny thing perched precariously on a garage,' and took to flight. Then yesterday, I watched a robin, flight-hindered once again by twigs, flying back and forth to the upper, deeper depths of a big pine tree across the driveway from the garage. In my mind, naturally, I knew it was the same robin, retired now that the kids have grown and flown, building its dream house in a beautiful tree. The tree, by the way, is about ten paces south of the garage. No birdbrain that bird.
Creedence Clearwater Revival-Lookin' Out My Back Door
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