My father is on a mission.  A Mission to Eradicate.  Never in my life have I met a man so intent on the removal of various harmless living organisms from his personal space, as if they are inflicting him with personal injury.  At this moment his mission is primarily focused on the elimination of ants, chipmunks, and grass.  The grass is less an attempt to eradicate, and more an attempt to control. The ants are a persistent and hopeless problem. The effort to eradicate them has been adopted by my family, who can frequently be heard yelling "ANT ANT ANT!" with the thunderous sound of squashing soon following.  The chipmunks however, they are a chronically acute problem, reoccurring every spring and summer with small and hopeful respites during the fall and winter.  They clog the pool filter with their unliving bodies after suicide missions into the pool, create homes in the garage among old sports equipment and forgotten belongings from college dorms, and create homes in well-manicured landscaping.

Thus, every spring my father re-launches his Mission to Eradicate, armed with a live trap, pool skimmer, and peanut butter, like some awkward superhero with a discontinued story-line and only three comic book issues to his name. As a result of the chipmunks' equally tenacious mission to infiltrate his garage, my father ritually sets a trap just inside the garage door (through which the 'munks have intelligently chewed a hole), and everyday catches a new soldier of the Mission to Infiltrate.  The fallen soldier is then triumphantly released into a nearby forested area.  Before doing so, though, my father is sure to crack the door to the house, stick just his head inside, and announce with a slightly exasperated and slightly thrilled voice that, indeed, his daily mission has been accomplished, and he will return momentarily after releasing the villain a safe distance from the house.

The poor, trapped, chipmunks fight valiantly to escape their trap, but their effort is for naught.  They do, however, gain their small piece of revenge when they leave a single cracked sunflower seed beside the trap--a symbol of their Mission and a big middle finger to my father who cannot, for his life, locate the origin of the sunflower seed. And so it goes, as it does in Suburbia, day after day with the same missions and the same endings. An eternal struggle for power.

Keep on thinking,

Josie