Painting the Woodpile

 In the fall, we saw our human neighbor Jim painting his porch. It took several hours to do. For the kids at the Woodpile, it was a source of live entertainment, better than TV and video games. The entertainment part was Jim seemed to get more paint on himself than on the porch! One of the kids got brave enough to ask why he was painting. He explained the paint helped to preserve the wood. When the painting job wrapped up, the kids went home and I didn’t think about it again.

Well, a couple of weeks later, I heard a loud and persistent knocking at the burrow door. I opened it the find Mom wanting a word with me.  She asked me to accompany her to the Woodpile. This is what we found.

 Mom carefully explained that when you burn wood in the wood stove with paint on it, toxic fumes from the paint are released into the air. This is bad for the environment, (Mom uses wood from the “Woodpile” to heat her above ground wooden burrow. I have tried to convince her that an underground burrow is far more energy efficient. – No luck so far.)

Mom spotted some “evidence” a pile of sunflower seeds. And then we heard laughter and giggling come from within the Woodpile.

The next thing we know a young ’munk pops his head out of the pile. He went from all smiles to that "I'm in trouble” look.

He started edging his way to the right for a quick escape.

Next Chippy Jr poked out from around the bottle of paint. He sheepishly explained that he and his friends wanted to protect the wood from rotting. I jumped into the conversation and told Mom about the porch painting. Mom seemed to understand and made them an offer. She would supply some scrap lumber they could make a play house out of and paint, if they would refrain from painting the Woodpile in the future. The offer was cheerfully accepted.

Speaking about painting - I got an interesting question from one of my fans: “How did the chipmunk get its stripes? Is it genetic?” – I will let you in on a chipmunk secret – the stripes are painted on by a professional fur dyer. The stripes last about six months before having to be applied again.