A Chipmunk Hole Among Bluets

On my way back toward home, walking through a more open area, past yards dotted with pecan trees and houses surrounded in shrubbery, set back well from the road, a startled chipmunk suddenly dashed across the road in front of me – a small, striped, reddish-brown chunk of fur with an upturned tail – and disappeared into a sloping green bank along the side of the road.

In the spot where it had disappeared I found a neat, dark little hole set in a miniature lush green landscape. It looked charming, like an illustration in a children’s book. All around the entrance rose ruffled mounds of tiny green rounded leaves –speckled with delicate bluets in bloom. A Red-winged Blackbird sat in a bare-limbed tree above me calling a liquid churk, and an Eastern Bluebird sang.

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