Penguins and Chipmunks

Q: What do Al Gore's Penguin Posse and Chip N' Dale have in common?

A: They love my children.



Why? Let's start at the beginning. There's a certain thing that parents (particularly the ones who have to pay the utility bill) learn to bark at their children at an early age. "Close the door!" This age-old command has various forms, perhaps depending on the locale of the parents' own childhood. Some of those variations include "Were you raised in a barn?" "Are you trying to cool off the entire neighborhood (or the wintertime variation - 'heat' the entire neighborhood)?" "Well that explains why penguins keep showing up at our house" "We chose to buy a house instead of a tent for a reason!" and the like. My own three boys have heard it more than a thousand times during any given week, and in tones of various levels of love, and, um, strong encouragement.



Today, following a morning track meet for Eli and a trip to see Thomas the Tank Engine at an old-fashioned railway museum an hour away, I had just gone out to the garage to pull out the lawn mower (I closed the door after I went out). I thought I heard Jenny screaming my name from inside the house, but I ignored it and proceeded to start up the lawnmower. Shortly thereafter, a barefoot and frazled Jenny stood on the front porch yelling at me. I turned off the mower to hear "There's a chipmunk in the house! I was sitting [I'm not supposed to disclose that she was in the restroom] and I saw it! A chipmunk!" Crazy woman, I thought. So I donned my shiny armor and told her to move aside that I'd go check it out. And just as I suspected, nothing. No chipmunk. I pulled everything out of every corner and closet in the basement where she "saw" it, and nothing.



Fast-forward three hours: Jenny and I are upstairs talking when Eli came yelling "Guess what, guys? There's a chipmunk downstairs. Isn't that cool?" So downstairs I go, again, armed with a Batman sword that lights up and makes sounds like iron swords clanking together in the height of battle. SURE ENOUGH! THERE IT WAS! The little bugger that lives below the porch that we often see playing in the yard. And here he was, in my basement. [I take back what I said, now, about Jenny being crazy.] By this time Nathan had joined Eli and me, and the three of us engaged in a round-up, of sorts. We cornered him and quickly set up a corral through which we planed to herd him from the family room into the laundry room and finally out the back door. Once the corral walls are together, I took my sword back to the corner where he was hiding under the tv cabinet. He's gone. Just then, screams from upstairs. I took my two squires upstairs where we found Jenny standing on a stool (I'm now convinced that the cartoons have been portraying a real medical/mental condition that exists in women that make them jump when they see rodents).



After a few smartly manouvered steps, we shooed him out the sliding door. Victory was ours. After a brief celebration, and apology to the lady of the house, came another lecture about why we expect the boys to close the doors when they go in and out. Not only have they been doing their part to off-set global warming (subliminal message: Al Gore's a doofus), but they'd literally put out the welcome mat to our backyard pests.