Hall and Oates

After letting my last creature go--the enigmatic and extremely grumpy toad--I struggled with my empty nest. I missed the excitement of rushing home to my unappreciative friend and poking bugs into her cage for her to ignore.

Because of this longing, I found myself in Nanping with Derrick, walking down a row of pet shops seeking a new friend. As we explored, my hopes of finding a new companion sunk lower and lower. The pet shops consisted almost exclusively of cage after cage of dogs and cats, a responsibility way outside my threshold of effort. But as we approached the last of the shops, a small cage rested out front full of adorable little balls of fluff. These guys:

Say hello to Hall and Oates! After failing miserably to name them myself, I pooled my smarter friends on Facebook who offered up an overwhelming number of possible names for them (Natasha and Boris, Sam and Charlie, Pinky and the Brain). I shouldn't have been so stressed because to be honest, more often than not, I end up referring to them as the Chip Chips. And when directly addressing them, I fall back on any number of expletives that strike my fancy at the time. The thing I've learned after my brief venture into chipmunk ownership is quite simply that they should not be pets. 

Yawning!

Typical pose

After bringing home any new pet, we naively decide that the first thing we must do is immediately bond with them. In my case, I pictured a Snow-White-esque relationship of harmony, them sitting on my shoulder as I fed them sunflower seeds, snuggling in bed during rainy days and watching Netflix, maybe they'd ride around in my shirt pocket and bring me nuts as presents.

However, after about two minutes of 'bonding' with my new roommates, I learned two crucial rules of chipmunk ownership: (1) never take both of your chipmunks out of the cage at the same time and (2) chipmunks hate the sound of plastic bags.

I first pulled out Oates, the female of the pair who has an incredibly calm albeit slightly untrusting personality. She sat motionless (either out of inner peace or terror, I'm not sure) on my shoulder while I fished around in the cage to extract her neurotic counterpart, Hall. Not two seconds after Hall is beyond the bars, he bites my finger causing me to drop him onto my dining table. He immediately bolts away from me while I suck on my bloodied finger and struggle to keep poor Oates on my shoulder through my thrashing.

Unfortunately, she decides she's had enough of me too and tries to make a vertical escape down my back while Hall is bolting for the opposite side of the room. I determine that a rodent on the back is worth two in a cage, so I decide to wrangle Oates before dealing with Hall who at this point is under my couch. I manage to get Oates back to my shoulder and figure the best way to catch an animal is with bait. I reach for the bag of peanuts on my desk, thinking to entice Hall back to me. Big mistake. The second Oates hears the rustling of the plastic bag, something inside of her little chipmunk mind snaps.

Oates goes full rogue and sinks her tiny, needle-like teeth INTO MY JUGULAR. I kid you not. She went from docile forest creature to deadly assassin the instant I rustled that bag. Naturally, I screamed like a little girl and clutched at my gaping chipmunk wound, flinging my new frenemy from my vital area and onto my bed. I snatched for her, but she climbed STRAIGHT UP the wall like the freaking exorcist, dancing just out of reach and over my dresser.

Aftermath.

As I'm blundering around trying not to bleed out, she then bolts to the opposite side of the room near where Hall has been shredding things apart under my couch. After about ten minutes of struggling to catch them, my apartment looks like a war zone. Clothes and boxes and peanuts are strewn from one end of my apartment to the other and there are still no captive chipmunks. Finally, I manage to get them out from under the couch and herd them into the bathroom.

Perfect, I think. Now they're in a small contained space with no escape. I make my way to the bathroom and survey the scene from the doorway. They're no where in sight but I can hear them scratching about. For some reason it sounds like......it's coming from inside my washing machine. But wait, there's also a sound coming from inside my sink. Don't even ask how one managed to get in there. I'm not talking about inside the sink bowl; I'm saying it found it's way into the actual hollow porcelain section. After some brainstorming of how to get them out, I think I have a brilliant idea: I should smoke them out.

After extinguishing the flames and rubbing smoke from my eyes, my poor chipmunks are terrified from the resulting inferno and I'm frustrated. I resolve to laying a box trap out on my floor and watching from my desk to see when they decide to venture out for the Cheetos. 

Which was a surprisingly short time! After about two hours of waiting, I had both of them secured back in the cage and I was feeling relieved, guilty, angry, and a little bit embarrassed that two glorified cotton balls had given me so many problems. To their credit, they must have been absolutely terrified to find themselves the victim of some giant's odd behaviour. To make it up to them, I found some delicious snacks: peanuts, Pringles, and dried sweet potato. This was also a mistake because they then refused to eat anything that was actually GOOD for them. But I was feeling guilty and let's be real, isn't that the reason you spoil your kids in the first place? They finally settled into a normal daily routine which consisted of Oates sleeping all day, while Hall neurotically searched the cage for a new way out. Unlike the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, he didn't systematically test the fence, he repeated the same motion over and over again for hours, a clear indication of stress, I'm sure.

So one day, my foreign friends and I decided that it would be a great idea to take a trip. We planned to be gone for just the weekend so I figured that if I put enough food and water in their cage, the chipmunks could hold out long enough for me to do some traveling. To be honest, I didn't think about them more than a few times during the weekend because the park we travelled to, Zhangjiajie, was so beautiful (stay tuned for a post about that).

Upon returning home, however, the first thing I notice is that my apartment is once again, a mess. There is shredded paper everywhere, the trash is scattered all over the floor, peanut shells are EVERYWHERE. Then I notice the cage.

Apparently they had figured out that they could push their food dish out of the cage and squeeze out through the hole in the cage to freedom. They did just that. I'm imagining that next they decided to throw a rager in my apartment to get back at me. They broke into all my food, scattered everything everywhere, and then.....they did the unspeakable. They crapped all over my bed. Tiny little turds of disrespect all over my sheets and pillows. I was FURIOUS and started hunting for them so I could....I don't know, enslave them in their cage again, I guess.

After a long search, it's pretty clear that they are not in my apartment and I begin to worry that they've escaped. There are only three ways out of my apartment: (1) the front door--safe to assume they didn't open that. These are regular rodents, not Stuart-freaking-Little. (2) down the drain of my toilet which again, is unlikely. Leaving number (3) off the balcony.

There's a crack under my kitchen door leading to my balcony that they could easily fit under. I realise that this is the ONLY way they could have escaped. And then it hits me. Oh my God....they killed themselves. I picture them standing on the edge of the balcony, eyes glistening with tears as they look at their final choice, their only way out, the only escape from the horrible giant and their enslavement: death.

Okay so maybe I'm being overdramatic. But come on, where else could they have gone?! It's too painful to hold out for them to return, so I've sort of moved on. However, I've got their cage, all neat and tidy, set up for their return. I have their favourite snacks and toilet paper tubes all ready in case they decide to turn up. Each day I miss them less and less and recently I've thought, FINE. If you don't want to be with me then screw it. I'm getting a snake.

They're cooler and easier to take care of anyway. But deep down inside I really miss them :(