It’s chipmunk season here in the mountains of North Carolina, which means our cat, Sammy, is in touch with his primal instincts, much like the story of Quentin and the Cave Boy where Quentin meets his cave boy self. For Quentin, the cave boy comes out of a dream and ends up sitting on his bed wearing animal skins and with bugs crawling out of his hair. For Sammy, he brings LIVE chipmunks through the cat door and then we have to figure out how to get them out of the house again.

I am convinced that if a tiny chipmunk post office exists in our neighborhood, Sammy’s picture is there as one of their 10 MOST WANTED. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to need to kill them. Just hunt them and re-gift them, still alive.

I live in a very creative household. My partner in life, who is also my business manager, and a respected, international business coach, devised a way to get the displaced chipmunks out of the house alive with as little trauma as possible. It involves making quite a mess of setting up tunnels to the nearest door outside, but so far it always works. Spontaneously, a couple of days ago, I made a short 1 minute video of one chipmunk’s journey to freedom. Take a look here. Rest assured, no chipmunks were hurt in the filming of this video.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/GT4C0W4BeUM[/youtube]

Writers often use experiences from their own lives in their work. Sometimes they are carefully hidden away in a fictional situation or in fictional characters, but they are there. So don’t be surprised if a chipmunk escape shows up in my next book!

P.S. Quentin and the Cave Boy (a humorous novel for ages 8 to 88) is available this coming Friday as a Kindle countdown book and will be available at a savings of 81% off the original cost. Each day after that, there is a slight increase in cost until it is back to its original price. You can check out the Kindle countdown here.