My cat likes to hunt the chipmunks around our house. One time I saw him hovering over one in the front yard so I chased her away. The chipmunk was lying on its back and not moving so I reached down to pick it up and toss it in the woods.
As soon as I got within a couple of inches, the critter flipped over and ran off under a bush. It had been playing dead so that my cat wouldn't play with it.
Scared the sh*t out of me when it jumped up!
On a hot August day a few years ago I was sitting upstairs when I glance out into the hall and saw Nipsy and Espy sitting in the hallway looking at something between them and I couldn't tell what it was but it wasn't a bird. The backdoor was open and they were free to come and go so whatever it was had just been carried in. Turns out it was a baby possum - some mother possum had held a graduation and the kids were scattering in the backyards.
I thought it was dead but picked it up with a paper towel and it moved! So I took it downstairs and put it through the chain link fence (so it was still a very small possum) into my neighbor's groundcover.
I'd have jumped too! Goddamn chipmunks are vicious little devils!
If you ever visit Mt Rushmore, the second most impressive thing you'll notice are hundreds of signs, all saying "Don't touch the chipmunks. They bite!"
If you use a 5 iron, they hook.
A couple of decades ago, when my son was about 4, we went camping up in the Thousand Island region between NY and Canada. As we were moving things from the truck into the cabin, we were keeping half an eye on my son.
Well, the next thing I heard was him saying "Look, Daddy, Look!" I turned to see him holding a chipmunk snugly between his 2 little hands. How he managed to catch it, i have no idea.
I told him to him drop it, which he did, but not quite fast enough. He released his hands slowly, giving the chipmunk time to nip him before he had fully let go.
We drove back to the ranger station who told us that the odds of a chipmunk having rabies was extreme minimal and that they thought that he would be fine. They told us how to get to the hospital (an hour away) leaving it up to us whether to go or not. We chose not to and nothing bad came from it.
Coincidentally, we did end up at that hospital many years later when my other son broke his finger while trying to stop a log from rolling into a car in the same camping area.
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