I walked out into the kitchen and our cat, Harriet, was standing on her back legs, with her front paws on the glass of the sliding door. She was staring intently above her head, and as I followed her gaze I saw two fuzzy limbs disappear over the edge of the screen. "Tarantula?" I thought "do we even have those in this state?" remembering when Ma Wilder finds the giant spider out by the woodpile (now you know how I spent my childhood...). I leaned in closer, to discover that it was not a spider, but a chipmunk! It continued to scale up and down the screen door, as cool as a cucumber, while the cat nearly had an epileptic fit.
Eventually the chipmunk, a truly brazen little thing, jumped off the screen and onto the top step. It banged its little clawed foot on the window. Harriet swiped back. Mr. Brazen began to stroll back and forth in front of the door-wall, pausing occasionally to gaze out at the yard, to scratch his right side, to nibble at the step. Harriet, meanwhile, was squeaking and growling and generally sounding like a rusty cement mixer, swiping her claws, and occasionally her head, at the window, lashing her tail into her food dishes and sprinkling herself and my ankles with water. (She's not the brightest, but she is persistent). Mr Chipmunk tired of this direct confrontation and proceeded to lounge about in the potted plants on the lower steps, scamper over to a potted tomato, vogue for about a minute, and generally wander around in the grass. I left the kitchen for a while, and when I returned this was still going on. As I write this, Mr. Brazen is hiding coyly under a large green maple leaf out in the yard, while Harriet nuzzles at my elbow and yowls, as if to say "let me out so I can eat him!"
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