You know, when you grow up spending almost 8 weeks each summer at family camp, a lot of things can happen. You need new and exciting adventures to take place every day, and sometime you need to invent your own. That brings us to chipmunk hunting... yes, you heard correctly... chipmunk hunting. New York State had an abundance of chipmunks and we thought it might be fun to make one a pet while we were there. So now, how do you catch a chipmunk. Well you make a trusty "catch any animal in the world" trap with a square dishpan propped up with a stick. You just put a little bread under the propped up dishpan (we all know that ANYTHING will eat good old white bread and consider it a treat) and hide a little ways away ready on the string.
Well it didn't take long and BAM!! We had a chipmunk!! So we go over and (I don't know why) we lifted the dishpan. What can I say... we must have thought that since we caught him, he would just give up and be there with his little paws raised in the air saying "OK, I give up, you can have me for a few days!" But no. For some reason, this crazy chipmunk tried to escape immediately... right up our legs!!!
Well, for some odd reason, the adults thought it was hilarious to see the "Great Hunters", better known as kids, running around screaming in fear of the big bad chipmunks! Once we realized, they were not ferocious, flesh eating munks, we decided to get even with the "older" population of our group. We once again set the trap, waited an appropriate amount of time and BAM! Look Ma, we caught another one! This time armed with a dishtowel, we managed to get the dishpan right side up with the towel covering it. Of course, the munk was a small rock we had put into the dishpan to make it appear to have something scurrying around!!!
Now the one that laughed the loudest (can you hear me up there Ma?) was our mother. And now... she wasn't laughing as we were running toward her with a supposed munk in a bucket!! She had started to panic and ran for the car to escape her evil children who were about to let the munk climb up HER leg. Little did she know it was just a small rock!
She jumped into the car and was able to get 3 of the 4 doors locked before we reached her... but the 4th... never got locked. Here was our chance!! we pulled open the door and dumped the rockmunk out on her! It was that moment of absolute panic on HER face that gave us the better laugh of the day.
We had many of this kind of adventure while at Lake Welch. It's a wonder we're all still sane... or are we?