Chipmunks on a wire

'Nature always wins,' the writer's daughter remarked on hearing how they'd been outsmarted by a chipmunk

The battle was on: the little six-inch chipmunk on one side and me with “more degrees than a thermometer,” as my son once put it, on the other. The battlefield itself was an innocuous hanging birdfeeder, and that should be a clue to the incongruity of this whole situation.

When I first moved into my new condo, the patio with four lawn chairs and a pole with a hook for a hanging flower pot was a big draw; I decided to hang a birdfeeder instead. I have always loved birds.

I started out like any other beginner by buying a plastic birdfeeder and a bag of birdfeed at the local hardware store. Up went the birdfeeder, and birds arrived without fail. Chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers, orioles, and quite a few strangers I didn’t recognise at first. They would peck and eat wildly, spilling a good amount on the ground. Noticing the generous spills, the squirrels and the chipmunks arrived to briskly chomp on that. Everything went fine, and I was happy to fill the feeder every evening for the next few days.

More squirrels came; not being content with the spills, they began eyeing the feeder. They would scale the wall, walk the rod, and empty the feeder. One day I found they had chewed off the bottom of the feeder. A squirrel-proof bird feeder was my next search. I found a clever gadget that had windows to let out the feed, and next to these windows were shutters. As soon as the squirrel landed on the feeder, its weight would pull down the shutters, and no feed would come out. The squirrels kept trying, but in vain. Problem solved, I told myself, and I sat back.

But wait, now the chipmunks stepped into action! When I sat down on the patio with my morning coffee, I noticed the birdfeeder was almost empty. And sure enough, the chipmunk was getting ready for its next feed. And I was fascinated by its strategy.

It gauged the distance, made a leap to the closest spot, and landed perfectly at the bottom of the feeder. The ball was in my court, and I had run out of tricks. Since the chipmunk weighed much less than the squirrel, the shutters didn’t close down with its weight. In a way, it was qualified to eat from the feeder, though I only wanted the birds to eat out of it.

I thought I would give it one last try by lengthening the hanging chain of the feeder. The chipmunk scrambled across the bar, slid deftly down the chain, and resumed its routine. Nothing had worked.

When I narrated the story to my daughter, she looked at me patiently and asked, “Why are you surprised that the chipmunk outwitted you? Just look at the invisible virus that brought the world to a halt.” She paused for a second and declared, “Nature always wins.”