MISSING COUNTRY SOUNDS

Cheeks

I had to smile when I read about my Canadian friend feeding her resident chipmunk. I do miss the chipmunks we had in when we lived on a few rural acres in upstate New York. Chipmunks are such precious things. Needless to say, we couldn't tell one from another when there was a bunch of them out under the bird feeder, but there was one we always knew - we called him Chop because he'd lost most of his tail. For over twenty years we usually had a Chop in residence. Then we had Chip, Cheeks, and Chuck. If there were any more than four we gave up.

I miss the woodland noises, chipmunk chucks included. Twenty years in relative silence spoiled us. I did have a quiet walk this past Saturday morning, since there was no weekday traffic out on the main road.  It’s over half a mile away, but there is usually some modern age noise, traffic, train whistles, emergency sirens, to interfere with the silence. Every once in a while, if I’m out really early, I’ll hear the hoot of an owl, but here the sounds of nature that were once every-day to us are rare. I miss the hoot of an owl or the scream of a hawk or a bobcat, the mad fluttering escape of a startled grouse (we were both scared!), the chuck and chip of the chipmunks, and the chittering of the squirrels and the songs of the birds, and, on fall days like these, the sound of the katydids. Katy did - Katy didn’t. I’m sure there is some variety of them here in Indian Land, but I’ve yet to hear them.

Katy did. Katy didn't!

If you listened every night, you recognized that the slower the made their calls, the colder the temperatures were getting. They sang of the coming arrival of winter.