The Chipmunk

Harriet Bowson would have had the perfect yard if it hadn’t been for the chipmunk.

She had taken great pains in creating a wonderland for nature. Native plants and flowers sprouted throughout her little, fenced-in paradise. Consultants had been brought in when she first purchased the house to advise her on how to construct a sanctuary for both herself and whatever miniature wildlife might grace her with their presence.

As the yard was taking shape, she found herself dreaming of butterflies. Monarchs and swallowtails, luna moths and red admirals all fluttering around her as though she were a princess in a fairy tale. She imagined ants making their way through her garden in tightly formed lines. Perhaps a bunny or two would find its way under the fence and cause a bit of mischief. Harriet wouldn’t fret about it. After all, her garden had its own little fence that was electrified in the event that any hungry critter took an improper idea into its head. Oh, she had no intention of harming them in any great fashion. Her mother had taught her that discipline is the nectar of an orderly life, and so a bit of a shock might be needed to teach nature that same discipline. Other than that, the rabbits and the hedgehogs and any other adorable creatures should find glorious recreation in her carefully curated Heaven.

Like any suitable backyard, a bird feeder was prominently featured. How else would Harriet expect to welcome bluejays and sparrows and robins if not for a state-of-the-art feeding system that she had ordered especially from an Etsy user in Hong Kong? The first one she received was the wrong color--fuschia (can you even imagine?) and so it was sent back and a refund was demanded. A week later, Harriet opened up a large box revealing a feeder in the color she truly wanted. Off-fuschia. It went up in the garden immediately.

That was the finishing touch. She took a seat at her patio table and looked out upon her empire. The table and chairs were manufactured by the actor who played Peter Brady and were prominently featured in Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan. As soon as she saw the chairs, Harriet knew she had to have them--even if she preferred The Partridge Family over The Brady Bunch as a child.

It was on that first day basking in the glow of her manifestation that she witnessed a chipmunk making its way up the pole that led to the bird feeder. Harriest knew that rodents were sometimes drawn to bird seed, and so she picked up the small cattle prod she had ordered from an Etsy user in Moscow and proceeded to make her way over to the pole. A little jolt should send that chipmunk running, she thought, hopefully he’ll let his friends know as well. Everything in its proper place. Birds to bird feeders and chipmunks to wherever it is chipmunks eat.

She stepped lightly towards the pole. Once she was within a few inches of the tiny invader, she swore she could hear him breathing. He was looking up at her state-of-the-art feeder trying to get a sense of what the best way in might be. Truthfully, the feeder was especially designed to keep anything but birds out of it, but Harriest had seen a video online of chipmunks breaking into a bank vault and stealing over five million dollars, so she knew they were capable of anything. A quick tap with the wand, however, and she could see the little chipmunk absorbing the weight of an electric kiss.

There we are, Harriet thought, no more party crashers, hmm? Stick to the trees from now on. Why, when I used to go into my mother’s room without knocking and she was having one of her naps, she would make me carry a bag full of stones up and down the hillside by our home until I was practically begging her to--

(Un?)fortunately, Harriet’s childhood reminiscing was interrupted by the sound of something rather large hitting the ground. She looked down and saw that the chipmunk had not only fallen from the pole, but appeared to have grown to twice its size on the way down. She surmised that the prod had perhaps given off more electricity than it should have and inadvertently terminated the poor little thing. She would write to the Etsy user demanding a refund--and a replacement prod in a different color.

As for the growth, it was possible that chipmunks expanded when electrocuted. Harriet didn’t bother with too much science as she believed it was the religion of snoots and elitists, but she knew enough to know that if you put something in something else, that other thing will go. She had put some voltage into the chipmunk and so the chipmunk had ballooned a bit. She was going to have to have the landscaper come in and dispose of the corpse as soon as possible, but if he thought he was getting overtime pay for it, she would fire him on the spot. Landscapers should be expected to work emergencies free of charge. After all, wasn’t a dead chipmunk part of the landscape? There shouldn’t have been chipmunks at all in the yard. Harriet had explicitly told the landscaper and the gardener and all seven of the yard designers that any and all life forms needed express permission to enter her space. She had never given clearance to a chipmunk.

Harriet felt the shuddering before she heard it. The ground underneath her feet trembled like a small child getting out of a cold pool. It was a minimal sensation, but unpleasant. She thought that, despite what the realtor had assured her, the house might be located on a fault line. She would be calling Danica tomorrow at her office. She would demand a refund. She would be demanding that the house be painted a different color. She’d want more windows placed on the east side of the house and perhaps a small fountain in the foyer. You had to ask for what you want in this life. Nobody was just going to give it to you.

While she was lost in her ire, Harriet failed to notice that the dead chipmunk in front of her was continuing to grow in size. Within a minute, it had grown past the size of a small dog towards the size of a large dog and then to the size of a pony then a horse then a rather large horse then a suspiciously large horse and such was the nature of Harriet getting lost in her own private tirades that she didn’t notice the chipmunk until it was the size of a full-grown elephant standing right in front of her.

My goodness, she thought, that chipmunk doesn’t look dead at all.

Harriet was correct. The chipmunk was not dead. Not at all. Had she bothered to read the instructions on the Moscow prod, she would have seen that it explicitly directed anyone using it not to shock an American chipmunk as, for some reason, it only causes them to expand to the size of an elephant and exhibit hyper-violent behavior. Of course, she couldn’t have read the instructions anyway, because she didn’t read Russian.

While a giant chipmunk using its now-enormous paws to pick up a woman and throw her over five blocks directly into a lake was not exactly what the person who wrote “hyper-violent behavior” had in mind, it would certainly qualify.

As Harriet was flying through the air, she made a mental note to ask for a refund. She wasn’t sure who would be refunding her, but somebody had to be held responsible.

Otherwise, this sort of thing would happen all the time.