I’ve chosen the Eastern Chipmunk as my representative species – it is a tiny creature that sports various shades of tan, gray, black and white in a diagnostic pattern that is easily recognizable.

So maybe it’s time to delve a bit into the chipmunk’s life. Monarch butterflies here today, gone tomorrow But show someone an opossum, rat or skunk and the reaction is very different.Ī single chipmunk can gather almost 175 acorns in a single dayĪlthough sometimes a nuisance, they are nearly always delightful and tolerable Who doesn’t love a chipmunk? They are adorable, endearing, seemingly trusting and oh so cute! I don’t think anyone ever goes – “Oh, look at that ugly creature” when they see a Chippie. The one squirrel that seems to capture our hearts the most is the chipmunk. As we know, all the squirrels are quite habituated to humans, and some frequently share our space and sometimes even our homes! The marmots and woodchucks are squirrels but look very different from their kin. In Canada, we have several kinds of squirrels – Eastern Gray, Red, Eastern Fox, Douglas’s, Eastern and Northern Flying Squirrels, Least, Yellow Pine, Red-tailed, Townsend’s and Eastern Chipmunks, Franklin’s, Richardson’s, Columbian, Arctic, Thirteen-lined and Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels, Black-tailed Prairie Dog, Yellow-bellied, Vancouver Island and Hoary Marmot, and the Groundhog or Woodchuck. The outlier is the Siberian Chipmunk which can only be found in Asia. Although over 200 kinds of squirrels can be found across the globe, 25 of those are chipmunks and all but one of these species of chipmunk lives in North America.

Siberian chipmunk