Varmints

I Googled varmints and found this definition: “A troublesome wild animal.” That definition is broader than I expected. 

I always thought of varmints as mice in my garage, squirrels eating all of the food in the bird feeder, or that one time, years ago in Nebraska when I took the garbage out (after dark no less) and there was a possum in the trash can. Did he scare me? Well, after that I carried a brightly lit flashlight to take the trash out. That was a varmint.

On a recent RMNPhotographer Tour, a chipmunk scurried across the road in front of us as we moved up Old Fall River Road. A guest asked, “What was that?” I replied, “A varmint.” “What’s a varmint?” they asked.

With the question, I flashed back to my early years as an English teacher. I shared an old, drafty house with another teacher we’ll call Scott. Scott was on one couch, I was on the other, and we were grading our students’ papers. As we did, a varmint went scooting across the living room floor. Simultaneously, we both yelled, “What was that?” When we did, we realized we had both jumped and were standing on our couches. Real men, athletic coaches, strong bodies standing on a couch terrified of a mouse.

Such was a varmint experience. Now I see varmints every day. There is the least chipmunk, least because it’s the smallest member of the chipmunk family. Least chipmunks are the varmints along Trail Ridge Road that dare tourists to feed them. They jump on the rock wall, scoot up before a teenager from Iowa, sit up all cute like, and rub their hands together as if they can’t wait for the next Cheeto. 

My favorite varmint is the golden-mantled ground squirrel. For years, I thought the golden-mantled ground squirrel was a chipmunk. Why? Because they look just like Alvin the Chipmunks. Alvin and his brothers, definitely varmints but adorable ones, don’t have stripes on their faces anymore. Somewhere along the animated history of Alvin and the Chipmunks, they lost their stripes. So are Alvin and the Chipmunks really golden-mantled ground squirrels? A serious question for varmint lovers to ponder.

The rodent ground squirrels, stripless and larger, are definitely varmints. While cute when they rise up on their hind legs and stand erect scanning the area for predators, they can turn hillsides to dust. Digging their burrows, they churn up the ground leaving the soft earth scattered with holes. Those are the holes that my dogs, dogs not much bigger than varmints, want to stick their snouts in. So each time we pass a varmint hole, my dog’s noses become dirty, their paws covered in dust. Though I pull them away, they continue to want to play in the varmint's dirt.

We all know about marmots, the whistle pigs of the tundra. High in the mountain elevations, they sun themselves on rocks as they scan the horizon. Then, when a Tesla quietly sneaks up on them, and they are surprised by the silent car, they let out a high-pitched chirp warning all the other marmots. A potential electrical threat is approaching like a trojan horse full of tourists ready to leap from the car, cellphone cameras in hand.