Dad's chipmunk story

Yesterday, my dad surprised me with an email that told a story from his childhood. Something you should know about my dad is that he tells a lot of stories, but he very seldom (if ever) writes them down. There have been plenty of times where he has expressed the desire to write a book about himself, saying that he has tons of good material to draw from but lacks the desire to spend the time it takes to jot them down. I'm not sure what caused him to write this one down, but I would be interested in reading more of these.

Subject: A true story from my youth.

My Paw Paw had a hunting/fishing camp that we spent a tremendous amount of time at back when I was a boy. It was nothing more than several poles sticking out of the ground with tin sides and a tin roof and a door. In short, it was a paradise palace for us boys. My little brother and I hunted and fished from daylight to dark for most every species found in Louisiana. We were very successful too. Talk about a game rich environment. Paw Paw's rules were law.  If we didn't obey, well, let's just say that there was no one around for miles to hear the screams.

One of the chores that Paw Paw assigned to us, (other than hunting and fishing for meals) was the extermination of chipmunks that had taken up residence in our little shack. Them little rascals dug tunnels everywhere under our shack and did a significant amount of damage. They gnawed on just about everything. They stole knives , forks, spoons, and all manner of things small enough for them to carry off into their tunnels and dens. But when they got into Paw Paw's mattress on his bed and stole most of the stuffing, he declared a bounty on their heads. He offered us a nickle for every one we could kill with our Benjamin pump air rifles. Needless to say, we had tons of fun earning them nickles. It would have been impossible for us to actually put a dent in their population due to the immense numbers of them and the fact that they didn't sit still too long. 

One particular day, I had about a dozen chipmunks in my pockets and was walking back to the camp to proudly collect my bounty. I had to crawl under a barbed wire fence so I carefully placed my gun on the other side and started to crawl. About half way under the fence, I felt one of the chipmunks in my hip pocket moving around. I came up from there in a hurry and started shucking munks from the pocket in fear of getting bit in a very tender area. When I found the one that wasn't dead, I put the others back in the pocket and instead of finishing him off, I carefully picked him up. I noticed that he was a young one and had been shot through one eye. For some strange reason I decided not to show this one to Paw Paw. When I got back to the camp I wrapped him up in an old flannel shirt and hid it in the truck. We got busy filling up the ice chest with bass and bream and I actually forgot about the chipmunk till I got home and was helping unload the truck. I grabbed up my shirt and carried it around where nobody else could see. I was fully expecting the little chipmunk to be dead and I felt bad that I had forgotten about him. Surprisingly he was still breathing. He wasn't moving much and seemed awfully weak. It was at that point I had to make a decision. It didn't take long to decide that I wanted to try to save him. Now all I had to do was convince the grown-ups. Maybe it was to teach me a lesson, I don't know. But neither my parents nor grandparents, (we lived next door to Maw Maw & Paw Paw), tried to talk me out of it. In fact, my Daddy, (who I thought would offer the most resistance), said,"bring it in the house and let me see what I can do". Daddy took him and put some Merthiolate and Neosporin on the injured eye. He then told me that my patient may not make it if the pellet fractured the skull and or was lodged somewhere inside. A little later, after finding an old shoe box for a temporary chipmunk hospital, I was able to get him to take some warm milk from an eyedropper. The next morning, I heard him moving around in the box a little bit. He eagerly took some more milk but was very weak. I knew that chipmunks of this size needed more than milk so I got some shelled pecans from my Maw Maw and mashed some up into mush and mixed it in with the milk. Chip, (that's his name now), seemed to like this pecan mush milk a lot. As the days went by, he got stronger and stronger. I continued applying the Neosporin to his eye and feeding him regularly. Eventually he was back on his feet and living in a brand new cage that Paw Paw helped me build. And somewhere along the way, Paw Paw stopped hating chipmunks so much. I started feeding him shelled pecans and acorns and such and gave him water from one of those little hamster water bottles that I fastened in the cage. It took quite a while, but he healed up nicely except for being blind in one eye, and could gnaw into the acorns and pecans by himself. I had been handling Chip every day since I brought him home, so he was used to me and didn't seem to mind being held. He actually acted glad to see me and would climb all over me. He never tried to escape and was content to be on my shoulder or in my shirt pocket, peeking out now and then. Even stranger still was that our pit bull,(Reb), was fascinated with Chip. Reb never even once showed any aggression towards Chip. On the contrary, he played with Chip. It was the weirdest animal relationship ever. Chip could ride on Reb's back and those that saw it were amazed. I even snuck my little one eyed chipmunk to school with me a time or two. My friends, (the vast majority of which had never seen a chipmunk), loved him and the teachers that I trusted enough to show him to, didn't mind as long as he stayed in my shirt pocket and didn't cause a disruption.

At home, I didn't have to shut him up in the cage unless we were going somewhere that Momma said he couldn't go. I did however have to clean up after him if he made pellets or puddles outside the cage. Usually he was with me and I was outside.  I also had a small portable cage that I hung on my bike in case I happened to be playing ball or something. It was interesting watching him move around the house because he would get right up against a wall with his blind side and run along the wall till he got where he was going. Rarely would he venture out away from a wall or the couch unless he was riding Reb or me. I really don't remember exactly how long Chip lived, but I was somewhere around 5th or 6th grade and I was in my junior year of high school when I came home one day to find that he had passed away in his cage in my room. Having that little one eyed chipmunk was a lot of fun and a great experience for me. It never changed my love for hunting, but it did help to nurture a certain respect for life that I feel is missing in a lot of hunters. This is but one of countless little memories from my childhood. I hope I did'nt bore you to death with my ramblings.
- Richard

Pav & Shrode Ride Again

There are a few recent developments that I am really excited about. I would tell you what they are right now, but it's getting sort of late, and I have work tomorrow. So I will be writing about those things over the next few days. In the meantime, here is another Pav and Shrode comic. Enjoy!

Pav & Shrode

A while back, I had this idea which I thought was really funny. It was an idea for a comic strip featuring Pavlov's Dog and Shrodinger's Cat. The dog would always be slobbering in obscene amounts while the cat would refuse to come out of its box. They would banter back and forth about various concepts involving physics, biology, philosophy, etc... The kind of humor you see on xkcd, except I'm not nearly as smart as that guy, and I also hate math... So not exactly the same, but similar. Now, I don't claim to have any sort of talent when it comes to drawing cartoons; I tried to get another guy to draw it, but he was too busy. But after a few months on the backburner, I finally decided to give it a shot. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time anywhere, I give you Pav and Shrode:

***BTW: The yellow cat is not Shrode. It is a drawing on the box.***

Pav & Shrode, Comic #1, 12/11/2010

Hint Fiction

I recently came across an article on NPR.org touting a new fiction anthology called Hint Fiction edited by Robert Swartwood. 

As a fiction writer myself, I found the premise of the book extremely interesting: writers tell stories in 25 words or less. It certainly doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance or charictarization, and I probably wouldn't have taken it seriously as an artform had there not been a selection of samples posted below the article. Some of them were really, really good.

So I bought the book, read the entire thing in a single sitting, and loved it. I would have never thought it was possible to condense a story so extremely and it still have the imact, the wrecking-ball moment, where it strikes a chord and lodges itself in your memory. And not every story did that for me, but many of them did. I constantly found myself laughing, groaning, and wincing over their potency.

Hint fiction is all about the power to suggest, the ability to say a thing without having actually said it. The stories are like riddles or "fill in the blank" assignments. The writer says only the necessary, and the reader will assume or puzzle through the rest. It takes talent and precision to choose exactly the right words. It isn't a cheap artform for the attention deficit.

But I said all that to say this: at some point, after my indoctrination into the form, I started to wonder if I was also capable of writing hint fiction. So, for the past week or so, I have been trying it out. My stories don't always fall directly within the 25 word range, but I take that as more of a suggestion than a rule. The main idea is brevity. I would encourage all writers to give this a chance. It's a great brainstorming technique, and sometimes your hints can become the skeleton for a much longer work.

Here are my hints:

Arts and Humanities
With a brush and canvas, she had taught the elephant to be human. Upon realizing this, it thanked her with crushing weight and stabbing tusks.

The Tease
He left without so much as a whisper, for what he thought had been an invitation had really been a too-subtle goodbye.

The Party Clown
When arrested for possessing enough M-80 to level a laundromat, Fizzo wondered how long it would be before they discovered his secret.

The Unlikely Pair
Hurrying to meet his sleeper cell, Amir was again delayed by the goth girl wishing to talk. It wasn't he that fascinated her, but death.

Through the Cracks
I said, "Wait here," but she  did not, and I can't find her. Oh, how I fought for custody.

Unfortunate
Catching his own blood in hands, he pounds on the door. Little girl answers, dirty bare feet. No phone. No car. No sign of parents.

Inheritance
Upon hearing the worst news of his life, 86 year old Maxwell overdrew his accounts, maxed his credit cards, and sent the cash to overseas children's charities, no intention of paying back the debt.

Take Me There
They drove through her childhood hometown, stopping to tour the abandoned house. Opening a certain door, she said, "This is where the recordings were made."

It's That Time Again
The young ladies always weave baskets. Except during lunar eclipses (a time reserved for picking flowers). Also during solar eclipses (a time reserved for murderous rampage... and orgies).

The Hard Lessons of Life
Middle of "the talk" dad collapses, pulmonary embolism. Hospital, beeping machines. Through deathbed whispers, leaves me his officer's badge. Not a good time to ask, but there is still some confusion over where to put it.

Green Initiatives
He decimated the vegetable garden, throwing roots over the neighbor's fence, overturning composts and recycle bins, still wearing the t-shirt she'd given him, the one that said, "Go green, for me."

We're Taking A Shortcut
When he'd told them the quickest route to the hospital and the bickering couple had not taken it, the atlas salesman shrugged.

What All The Fuss Is About
"Oh that's not very good," she said. "No, it isn't," agreed her husband, "At all." They wore their bathrobes, backlit by red and blue lights.

The NPR Article
The Official Site of Hint Fiction