Growing up, we had two favorite babysitters: Karen and Jenny. They were so much cooler than the average babysitter, because we had specific games we played with each one. Of course, I can’t remember what they were anymore, but rest assured that they were way cooler than whatever games YOUR babysitter played with you, Internet.
Because of our cool babysitters, we were always way more excited than we should have been whenever Mom and Dad left us for the evening. We would spend the entire day in anticipation, then Mom and Dad would FINALLY leave (bye already!) and we could start having babysitter fun; the kind of fun that is somehow impossible to achieve any other way.
One particular Fall evening when we lived in The Green House, Jenny was babysitting. I was about 10, which would mean Brother was 8, Sister was 6 and The Kid was 4, and we all had boundless energy. We were out riding bikes in the driveway and zooming up and down the street while she watched us. We could do this because we lived on a sleepy sealcoat road that barely anybody drove on except the people who lived on it. (Now that we live in The Red House, which is down the street and around the corner from The Green House, there’s a bit more traffic…but not much.)
The best part about sealcoat roads, is that they seem to attract Wooly Bear caterpillars like crazy. I saw one and skidded my bike to a stop, throwing it in the ditch so it wouldn’t get hit by any cars. “I found a Wooly Bear!” I yelled.
Wooly Bear hunting was always a highlight of Fall, we’d collect as many as we could find and put them in Mom’s old Mason jars with a stick and a bunch of leaves, then we’d poke holes in the top and watch them build cocoons. Nine times out of ten they died before turning into moths, but every so often we’d get lucky and one would hatch.
Once I mentioned that I found Wooly Bears, Sister threw her bike in the ditch also and the hunt was on. We collected three or four very good specimens and put them into two of the Mason jars we kept in the garage. The boys were still careening up and down the street and yelling “check this out” and “I bet you can’t do this” and whatever else it is that boys say to each other. Sister and I gathered up our Mason jars and carried them into the house. That’s when I saw it.
“Woah, is that a chipmunk? Is it dead?” I asked. Right in front of us, by the Maple tree in the middle of the driveway (yes, we had a Maple tree in the middle of our driveway) was a chipmunk. Just laying there.
“I THINK IT IS,” Sister gasped.
We set down our Mason jars and knelt down on the ground, gravel pieces digging into our bare knees. I carefully examined the chipmunk for signs of life. No little breaths coming from his tummy, no little movements from his tiny feet, and definitely no eye twitches.
“Maybe it is sick?” Sister suggested.
I had just read the Louis Pasteur book from the church library, so I knew all about rabies. I checked his mouth and there was definitely no foam. “He doesn’t have rabies,” I said with conviction. “I think it might be dead.”
The boys noticed that we were crowding something, and they rode their bikes over in a hurry.
“WHAT is THAT?” Yelled The Kid. When he was younger, he had two volumes: loud and louder. Actually, not much has changed.
“It’s a chipmunk,” I declared. I was the oldest and obviously knew everything about it and, being kind of Type A, I was totally in charge of this situation. “It’s either dead or very sick, and we need to help it.”
I began giving out orders.
“Sister, go find some cotton from the sewing table, and also some material, to make a bed for him. The Kid, go get a shoebox. Brother, go find some of Dad’s work gloves.”
Within two minutes, everyone had raced to get what they were responsible for and had returned to the Maple tree, slightly out of breath.
The chipmunk had not moved.
Sister puffed out the cotton in the shoebox and made a very nice, soft bed for the chipmunk. We laid the material scrap on top of the cotton and set the box on the ground next to the chipmunk.
“What are we going to do with him?” asked Brother.
“Oh, take him inside. Dad will probably want to take him to the vet,” I decided.
“Hold on,” said Jenny. “You’re taking it inside?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “It’s very sick so it’s not like it will go anywhere. And if it’s dead, Dad will help us bury it.”
“I’m not sure your parents will want you to bring it in the house,” Jenny repeated.
“They won’t care,” I said, confidently. I slipped on the gloves, gingerly picked up the limp chipmunk and placed him on the soft bed Sister and The Kid had constructed.
“Oh, we forgot water!” I exclaimed. The Kid scrambled inside to find one of Mom’s smallest Tupperware, which he filled with water and carefully carried back to the driveway where we were still assembled.
Jenny was still unsure if she should be party to us bringing the chipmunk inside, but I had used my oldest child ways on her and had somehow convinced her that it was:
a.) a good idea
b.) not going to get us or her in any kind of trouble
The sun was starting to set by this point, so once we had the water in with the chipmunk, we put the lid on the box and poked a bunch of holes so it could breathe. Then, Brother picked up the box and carefully carried it inside while we all followed. We decided to put it in the guest room, so he carried it there and set it on the floor in the corner. He removed the lid and we noticed that Mr. Chipmunk was kind of in a different place than we had left him. But then, we HAD just carried him from the driveway, so we didn’t think twice about it. Brother replaced the lid and we left the guest room, shutting the door behind us.
Two hours later, Mom and Dad returned from whatever par-tay they had been attending, and we kids were not yet in bed.
“MOM, DAD!” we yelled when we saw them, “We found a dying chipmunk and we rescued it!”
The response we got from our parents was really not quite what we had been expecting.
“You did what?” They asked in unison.
“Well, we found a chipmunk on the driveway, and it looked dead. But we thought it was sick, so we brought it inside.”
Mom’s eyes grew about three times their normal size, and Dad’s jaw dropped. “Inside?” He repeated.
“Yeah, it’s in the guest room,” I told him.
Mom and Dad barreled down the stairs and burst into the guest room, flipping on the light as they did so. The box we had so carefully left in the corner was still there, however…the lid was off. And it was empty.
We kids looked at each other and our stomachs dropped. Mom and Dad looked at us with a strange combination of frustration bordering on anger, and incredulity that none of us had seen before, or have seen since I might add. What had seemed like a really good idea about two and a half hours earlier was now looking pretty bad. Pretty bad indeed.
“Alright,” Dad said. “Alright.” (Sometimes he repeats himself when he’s really had enough of us.)
Mom just looked at the empty box, and then looked harder at it, like that would somehow make the chipmunk reappear. Then she looked at all us kids with that same look, and all of us kids wanted to disappear. The Kid was the smallest and most mobile, and he snuck out of the guest room and into the playroom undetected. The older three of us? We were stuck. And we were in trouble.
“What if that thing had rabies?” Mom shuddered.
“It didn’t,” I said. “I checked.” Because I had just read that Louis Pasteur book, of course.
Mom did not seem convinced.
Dad was still looking like he could blow his top at us. And then, suddenly, the look on his face changed; it became clear that Dad had an idea. He was going to fix this mess, and he was going to fix it good.
“Alright,” he said again. “Never bring a wild animal in the house again.”
We three children nodded vigorously. (I did break this rule one time, though, the next year when I found a wounded sparrow. But Mom was home that time.)
“Never,” he repeated.
We nodded even more vigorously.
“It’s dangerous.”
We nodded until we got headaches.
“I am going to go get Bunny,” Dad said.
Bunny was our cat, so named because she was born on Easter morning. I’m not sure why we named her Bunny, because we didn’t do the Easter Bunny at our house, but I guess that’s better than naming her Tombstone or Up From The Grave He Arose or Resurrection, although those would have been more theological. Maybe next time.
Dad hated Bunny. He always hates cats, but he especially didn’t like this one…probably because we were always sneaking her in the house when we noticed that we unsupervised. We were not supposed to bring cats in the house, ever, ever, ever. (That was The Rule.)
I couldn’t figure out why Dad thought Bunny would solve this problem, or why he would even suggest such a preposterous thing, but I did notice that this seemed to make Mom feel better. Dad marched out to the garage to get Bunny, and Mom shooed us all out of the guest room, shutting the door tightly behind us. I think she was envisioning the chipmunk’s fangs getting larger every second, primed to pounce on us all and give us RABIES!
While Dad was getting Bunny, Mom explained to us how unsafe wild animals are, and how dangerous it was to touch them.
“But I used gloves,” I said; I had read all about handling wild animals in the Louis Pasteur book.
Mom didn’t seem to be impressed by this.
She also informed us that we were never, ever to use her Tupperware, or any other kitchen item, to feed wildlife. Anything that we ate off we did not feed animals out of. (I wish we could say that we always obeyed this, but I know for a fact that that we did not.)
Dad returned shortly, carrying Bunny like a feed sack on his hip. He opened the guest room door and dumped Bunny inside, then shut the door again.
“You didn’t turn the light on for her,” Sister said.
“Bunny can see in the dark,” Dad said.
“Why did you put her in there?” Brother asked.
“She’s going to hunt down the chipmunk and kill it,” Dad said.
Six brown eyes grew very, very wide, and three jaws dropped.
“Bunny eats chipmunks?” I gasped.
“She’d better,” Dad replied.
None of us kids slept well that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I could just imagine Bunny pouncing on the poor chipmunk and eating him. RIGHT IN MY OWN BASEMENT! We hadn’t really considered the fact that our precious cat Bunny would kill things, especially cute little chipmunks, and it was quite upsetting.
Mom and Dad probably tossed all night worrying that Bunny wouldn’t find the chipmunk, and then where would we be?
Morning came early.
We kids ran down to the basement in our pajamas and arrived just in time to see Dad, with his work gloves on, carrying out a very tiny chipmunk skeleton.
“Ew,” I said.
“Can I see?” asked The Kid.
Brother rushed in to see if he could find any blood on the carpet.
We never brought another chipmunk in the house again.
