D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

I had a dental appointment right after work. After surviving that, I went to the Vitamin Shoppe, one of the few establishments in this town that opens before 10 am; the express bus came first, so I took it and walked back along El Camino, past assorted retail developments, all with landscaping in front. In one case there was a kind of hillock with lilies of the Nile and some sparser vegetation, and I noticed movement: at least 5 chipmunk-sized rodents, but with no stripes, mostly slightly bushy tails but one with an otterlike tail. I stopped dead and watched for several minutes and they were hardly spooked at all. They sat up on their haunches and nibbled on leaves, they whisked around companionably, and when a cyclist passed on the sidewalk the couple who were closest whisked into a burrow, but came out again almost immediately. I didn't notice them puffing out their cheeks. Definitely some sort of ground squirrel, but smaller and too far west to match any of the ones I can find on Wikipedia or else-net; although Wikipedia does confirm that the border between ground squirrel and chipmunk is kind of conventional, it appears to consider both stripes and small size defining of chipmunks. I wondered whether they were juveniles but they were all the same size and the burrow matched that size, plus they weren't goofing off, just as they weren't dashing madly about like all the chipmunks I've previously seen—which also came singly or occasionally in pairs. Maybe someone imported a colony from North Dakota or somewhere.