Here chippy chippy

So a few nights ago, I was sitting in the basement (Kirkwood) and heard a squeak. I thought, oh no, mice. Gross. I let it slide though and fretted a bit. The next night, I heard it again. Still gross. Two nights before moving, Holly and I were chilling in the basement, eating nachos, when we saw something dart across the floor. A freaking chipmunk was living in our basement. So that's what the squeaking was. Problem: neither of us knew what to do. Lily tried to insert herself into the mix, but unlike with previous rodent episodes, she was pretty useless against the likes of a chipmunk. Heck, I tried to get it under a colander. Looked like a loser doing it too. I gave up pretty quickly.

The last night at Kirkwood, we were packing everything up downstairs. Just as I was thinking about how to tell the movers "So when you're moving stuff around down here, be warned that a chipmunk may leap out from anywhere at any time", I moved a coil of leftover carpet in the office and there s/he was! Holly shut the door to the office and there we were: two humans, one chipmunk, one room, no clue what was about to happen. Without its go-to hiding place, chippy ran under the wooden chest in the room. After a few rounds of Holly scaring it out and then me attempting to colander it again (I know, I know, lame), it got wise and just camped under the chest. So I tipped the chest up - now it had no hiding spots left. I think we ran a few laps of the office before it got so freaked out that it scaled some cans of cat food and hurled itself into a Rubbermaid bin. Holly and I stood there, stunned that it went vertical, until Holly shouted "PUT THE LID ON IT!". I did.

After a quick victory lap over at the neighbours' place, I walked four blocks and let chippy out in the local park. Here is the evidence: