Hey...Is That Alvin?
By Pastor Ken Burisek Kritter Kountry Ministries Medford, Wisconsin

The other day I was cleaning up around the outside of our church, when I saw the end of a tail of a kritter slip under the cover of an old wooden pallet. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I just froze for a moment to see if it would show itself again. In a few moments the little feller’s curiosity got the better of him and he peeked out…and then pretty soon he came out and sat on top of the pallet.

To my delight, it was a cute little chipmunk who had decided to make his home near our church. As I watched him I talked softly to him and said… “don’t be afraid little feller…I won’t hurt you.” And to my surprise, instead of running away, he calmly stayed right there quite near to me. He was also watching me, as if he were saying to me… “Don’t be afraid…I won’t hurt you.” It was the beginning of a friendship.

My hope is that the little feller will stay with us for a while. Chipmunks are lively little kritters and are smaller members of the squirrel family. Their fat pudgy cheeks, big glossy eyes, stripes and bushy tails have made favorites with cartoonists as we’ve seen in Disney Classics and the recent Chipmunk movies.

There is only one species of Chipmunk overseas. We can find them scurrying through the underbrush of everything from pine forests to scrubby deserts. Some make their homes in burrows with elaborate tunnels and chambers and others make their homes in fallen trees and logs. Chipmunks are even smaller than Wisconsin’s red (pine) squirrels. In the wild they have a relatively short life of 2 to 3 years.

Chipmunks gather their food on the ground where they have cover and protection from predators such as hawks, foxes, coyotes, weasels, and snakes. Chipmunks feed on a variety of things such as insects, nuts, berries, seeds, fruit and grain. They stuff and pack the food into their cheek pouches and carry to their burrow or nest where they save it for the future.

Chipmunks hibernate during the cold winter months, but instead of storing fat as do most hibernating kritters, Chipmunks feed on their store of nuts and seeds throughout the winter. They make a chirpping sound that can be quite melodious and very birdlike.

For the most part, Chipmunks go it alone except during the spring mating season. Female Chipmunks generally have from 2 to 8 young in a litter and they stay with their parents for about two months before they start gathering their own food supply for the winter ahead.

Just as Chipmunks gather a store of food, we as Christians are to gather our tithes and offerings and bring them to God’s house. Malachi 3:10 tells us, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”