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chipmunk minefield
Monday, June 10 2002
The chipmunks are out in force at this time of year in the woods of Prospect Park. Sally seems to be nearly as interested in them as she is in their larger cousins, the squirrels. As she runs inquisitively through the woods, they can be periodically heard exploding with piercing high-pitched shrieks of excited escape, "Tseekelelele! Tseekelelele!" They're spread out at a density of one ever fifty feet square, like some sort of chipmunk minefield. Most of the time they dive into tiny holes in logs, trees, or the ground, although sometimes they are forced to retreat up trees. Being ground-based rodents, they're never very comfortable in trees. But they climb well, much better than, say, Norway Rats. Prospect Park has plenty of Norway Rats, but one never sees them more than a few feet from a trash can. They are the only mammals Sally stands a chance of catching.
In the evening Gretchen and I watched a movie called Dick, a teensploitationary comedic historical fiction about a couple of high-school-age girls who, though sheer airheadedness and persistence, bring about the downfall of the Nixon administration. There was something just slightly wrong about the humor in this movie that made it a chore for me to watch. The only dialogue that I found really funny was when a translator was translating Brezhnev's Russian for Henry Kissinger. Brezhnev said, "Nyet, nyet, net!" and the translator dutifully translated, "No, no no!" to which an irritated Kissinger snarled, "I know what 'nyet' means!"
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