Every day is a laundry day. Nine people in the house makes for a LOT of clothing. Because the washer is in the basement, her children can just drop their clothes down the laundry shoot. The Laundry shoot makes the pile of laundry look like Mt. St. Helens made of fabric. Ceiling to floor of dirty blankets, pants, shoes, towels, stuffed animals, and just about anything else you can imagine.
Sunday afternoons are a great day to just run the laundry. Load after load she marches baskets up the stairs. After a several loads it was easier to dump the laundry on the floor. She hadn't started folding yet, but her and her husband could work on that after they managed to get kids in bed.
During this time of drowning in laundry a friend popped in to chat. While sitting amongst the laundry hills talking Father looks at the door, "Um...a chipmunk just walked into our room." Mother didn't see it and was skeptical at first. "Yeah, it just ran into our closet."
The friend pipped up, "I just heard something behind me."
How? And WHY?!?! Several boys came bounding down the hallway, "Did you see the chipmunk?!?" Well that explains it. However it got into the house it was only one of 5 reasons. Boys. Mother began frantically taking clothes off the floor and throwing them on the bed. Not caring if they came from the clean piles or dirty piles.
"Where did it go?!" she asked her husband. He began taking his flashlight and shining it in the closet. Nothing behind the toolbox, nothing behind the gun case, nothing behind the small dresser. If it didn't go into the closet, the only other place was......under the bed.
When she made her bed, mother thought she was being so clever. "Oh we don't need a bed frame. We have lots of food storage that needs a place to go. Lets just put the number 10 cans under our bed to raise it up." Plenty to raise it up, but not enough to cover the entire underside of the bed. Plenty for supports with cans spaced several inches apart, but not enough to see if there was a devil rodent hiding underneath it. Oh yes, by all means, be prepared...but however much you think you have prepared, YOU ARE NEVER PREPARED! Who the heck is prepared to chase a chipmunk out of their house?!?!
This calls for a different tactic. Mother finds a broken handle off one of the brooms a little boy had used for a ninja fight. Her friend gets on the other side of the bed with the flashlight. As mother kneels down beside the dresser she knocks it slightly. Something darts out of the corner of her eye and rockets off her leg. After a girlish yelp and jumping into the air several feet she looks down. A stupid, blue, ball point pen had rolled off the dresser and lightly bounced off her lap.
The room erupts into laughter. The friend, and the husband are laughing uncontrollably, and mother is laughing and crying. No one knows if the crying is from laughing so hard, or from being scared so bad by a ball point pen.
"Oh dear," Says her friend through bouts of laughter. "I think that is my queue to head home. If you find the chipmunk let me know. It'll probably be on your face in the middle of the night." She chortles. "I bet you never thought you'd have to find a chipmunk before you could go to bed." snorting as she laugh she waves goodbye and heads home.
"Don't worry dear," Said Father, "While you were looking under the bed I went online. Apparently there is a whole group of people who have had this problem before. They said just leave the doors open, most chipmunks don't want to be inside and will find there way out."
Oh great....most. With my luck we get the one percent of chipmunks that loves the feel of laundry and wants to bring over his friends. Leaving the back door open she winces. She tells herself it's all in her head. She never saw it come in, maybe it wasn't even there. She thinks about sleep, maybe she'll go sleep with the two year old tonight.
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