Chipmunk Booty (Sol. 2:15)

 Webster’s 1828 defines booty like this:

1. Spoil taken from an enemy in war; plunder; pillage.
2. That which is seized by violence and robbery.

Now, if you are like others of this century, maybe booty isn’t a familiar term, at least in this envisioning of it. If you are like others, you laughed, thinking, “Where in the world is she going with this?” Well, let me tell you how my morning started, and I think you will better understand.

Earlier in the week, a nearby friend let me know that the sunflowers she and her husband planted near her farm would be blooming soon. After waiting a few days for them to open, knowing I needed to get up early and get going anyway today, I decided a sunrise picture of the flowers facing the sun would be nice (since I hadn’t been able to get away for a sunset picture). I set my alarm for early (way too early, mind you), jumped up, got dressed, grabbed my camera, and took off out the door. 

My eagerness to get in the car and get to the field did not prevent me from noticing something out of place on the corner of my house. This is what I saw:

You can laugh now for real because here is the deal. With my black thumb, I have tried and mostly failed to grow a few vegetables in containers on my back driveway this spring and summer—particularly tomatoes and blueberries and peppers. I was never surprised there were few blueberries out on the new bushes. Surely it takes years to mature to grow berries, right? Mysteriously, the exceedingly few almost-blue berries would disappear before I could harvest them. Birds, I thought, chalking up not getting any blueberries to a first year, small bush thing.

Nope! The terrorizing chipmunk who keeps us awake with his or her keening/clicking sounds for weeks at a time each year has taken it to a whole new level. The chipmunk’s booty taken overnight failed to enter his home because his eyes were bigger than the hole he tried to drag it through. This, too, explains the odd holes on my vegetables that I thought had been pecked by birds on a few of the other small tomatoes. Maybe, just maybe, this also explains the disappearing blueberries. (It might even explain the whole hosta that disappeared overnight from the flowers planted in a bed attached to the house.) This tiny little varmint has contributed greatly to the wrecking of my pretty little garden. 

When the speaker in Solomon 2:15 says, “Catch for us the foxes, / the little foxes / that ruin the vineyards, / our vineyards that are in bloom,” (ESV) maybe he is requesting the death of a very small chipmunk. . .

Really though, the more pictures I take, the more I am learning how little most people truly see. I have had to force myself to look closely, to slow down, to consider thoughtfully what I am seeing when I hold a camera in my hand; otherwise, I will miss the small treasures. That's why the first picture I snapped this morning was the one of the booty the chipmunk abandoned at the entrance to his "house." Now, I need to apply the lens of looking and seeing to my own life, to find the little foxes that would ruin the vineyard in which I live, the things which would displease the true owner of all things.

People say not to sweat the small stuff, but small things matter. Like this tiny chipmunk that has coveted the things grown in my garden, things we covet could bring us down. This is why we as Christians must examine ourselves for sin daily, confess what we find before it destroys us completely, and find forgiveness. There are truly no small sins in our lives, which is much of the issue in today’s world that sees no sin at all or classifies sins differently. We cannot look at the world around us the way the world around us looks at it. All sin is sin. Sin destroys. God hates sin. Jesus died for sin. I need Jesus. We all do. Don't be Satan's booty when this life is over.

Now. All of that and the sunflowers weren't quite ready, but I slipped behind them and since I was out early anyway, caught them facing the rising sun, worshiping their Creator. There's a lesson there, too, y'all.