Just yesterday I was saying that I had to do very uninteresting things. This was NOT that I was not calling out to the universe to send me an erratic bit of craziness into my life. Still, a call got me out of bed early this morning which I found only slightly annoying but which got me out of bed when I sort of hoped to sleep.
When I got up, the dogs and husband also wanted to get up. Might as well get to the morning rituals. So, everyone goes to the bathroom, dogs breakfast prepared and gobbled up fast, kettle on, coffee bodum filled, cups out, granola bars. The kettle was nearly boiling when our closest neighbour came right into the house without so much as knocking. So much for a nice quiet morning! I am not sure that I have ever mentioned that our closest neighbour is a chipmunk named Dictator. There he was right in the middle of the room, my husband, myself and the four dogs noticed him at exactly the same time. So, without much warning, we had a crazy chasing freaking out batch of dogs chasing the poor terrified, fast moving, erratic and seemingly insane creature filling up every space in the Tiny House.
Dictator chipmunk built its home right next to THO, moving in right under the tarp where I keep the miscellaneous extra building supplies. Since this little critter moved in it has trained me to bring it water and nuts. It stands near the cloth porch and yells “tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck” at me when it wants something. I think it is sort of cute and with the horrible lack of rain that we have this year (60% less than normal), I think that bringing in an extra cup of water a week for the Dictator next door is not a hardship. I always comply which his orders since I like his company.
Anyway, when the dogs were away last week, Dictator started breaking into the cloth porch and was even into the house a couple of times through the screen door, but I just told him to get out and even though he makes the orders he complied. It was not a really big issue – sort of cute, you know?
Today was different. It was like the world went crazy for a couple of minutes! Dictator finally hid by squeezing into the space under the in-house sink and then under the toilet so while it was quiet we brought the dogs out to their yard. My husband opened the toilet, scared Dictator out and then the little chap ran to the cloth porch and out the hole between the two cement pads.
I had put some wood in there a few times already but Dictator does not want this hole filled so I guess that it must order one of its minions to remove the wood. Today I filled it with rocks and then put a large rock in the way so that Dictator will not have easy access. I guess this is silly because I am certain that he can come in easily by putting a hole in the cloth porch. Still, I hope that the impact of today is just heavy enough that the cloth porch and the Tiny House seem out of bounds.
After I locked Dictator out, I brought out a fresh bowl of water, some soybeans and almonds. After he sufficiently recovered, I watched him enjoy his Tiny feast.
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Of course it was not possible to take photos of this mornings exciting beginning, but I put in a photo so that readers who are not familiar with chipmunks. They are quite cute! Dictator is about 6 inches long plus his tail is about 4 inches.
Tiny House Ontario 