Attack of the Angry Chipmunk!
So there we were, exploring one of the trails off The Back 40 and we thought… “Hey look! We could go this way!” So go we did! And it was neat… there was a small amount of water (which likely will get higher in monsoon seasons… you don’t have to go for this one if that’s the case, remember: use good judgment kids!) for us to hop over. Good times. As we progressed there were a few trees down that I had to step over; whereas the kid and Irisbramble had to go under or maneuver over. It was fun! Well… I had fun. The stream was nice, it wasn’t humid; there were NO spider webs for me to run into; no ticks, chiggers, mosquitoes… well, I guess there were a couple of those, but still… it was nice out. Until the scream… then the utopian façade disappeared!
Leading the expedition, I had no idea what happened, but my first instinct was: SNAKE. Since hearing from friends that they’ve been a little more prevalent this year, I was intuitively thinking we were getting ready to have a bad time. “WHAT!? WHAT IS IT, WHAT HAPPENED!?” I exclaimed loudly, knowing that the kid was fine, as he was hot on my heels for the trek through the woods. With a visibly shaken face, Irisbramble says to us “DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT CHIPMUNK!? IT WAS COMING RIGHT AT ME!”
Well, after I stopped laughing and flashing back to that episode of South Park where Jimbo would shout a similar line at animals before using an extremely powerful weapon to annihilate them…
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She explained that when the kiddo had jumped down from climbing on a fallen tree, something fell from the side of it when he pushed off… and she thought it was a frog at first… till it ran at her! Ha! Apparently it stopped short of her, ran to the left about 5 feet and then said a lot of things to her, that I’m sure were probably very choice words in chipmunk language, and then ran off. I was like, SERIOUSLY!?
Once we all regained our composure we continued our adventure. Team effort went into picking out this spot; however, much to the kids’ dismay… it’s not an ammo can. “Dad!! This is perfect for an ammo can!”
“Dude, I didn’t bring one on this trip…”
“Oh… well, what do you have?”
“Bison tubes, magnetics, and the ones I’ve made… that’s it.”
“Oh… well, that’ll work for now. We can upgrade it later, right?”
“Dude, this trail system is lonnnnng. I’m sure we’ll find another spot of equal awesomeness.”
On the trip back we didn’t see any wildlife… but if you do, you should snap a pic.