This can't be a good idea.

We spent two summers vacationing at Samoset Lodge on the shores of Lake Nipissing, Ontario. It was a great place: the fishing was wonderful, the cottage was clean, and we rented a nice little boat to zip around the big lake. A delightful, German couple owned the lodge; they'd speak to my Parents in German.

There was no television, and there was no radio. There was a peculiar source of entertainment at the cottage: a gregarious ground squirrel who visited every day, begged for peanuts, and sat on our laps. The ground squirrel (or its progeny) reappeared each year that we were at the cottage. Our family albums for those two years are filled with photos of the ground squirrels.

We named all of the visitors "Čipūlis," a Lithuanian word that I made up to mean "little chipmunk."

Lake Nipissing, Ontario, Canada, July 1964. Mom knits in front of our cottage, unfazed by Čipūlis.

 Lake Nipissing, Ontario, Canada, July 1964. My instincts are good, and they tell me that this situation requires cautions. This is a rodent.