There I was minding my business, when all of a sudden a sense of stress filled the entire top floor of the cafeteria.
I heard screams, worried laughter and feet scrambling away from their tables. And then I heard the terrifying words, “It’s a rat!”
Those words will forever be ingrained in my head.
I tried to get a good look and realized the “rat” wasn’t actually a rat – it was a chipmunk.
I was okay until the chipmunk scurried from the senior section to the junior section, where he promptly crawled onto the booth next to ours. A friend of mine decided to get an up-close and personal look at the chipmunk and startled it, causing the chipmunk to run onto our booth where he crawled onto my friend!
Ines Cernuda, the victim of the chipmunk crawl, recalled the traumatizing experience, “I felt gross and scared.”
I ran like the dickens away from the pest – it was, to say the least, a surreal experience.
People tried to get the chipmunk out of the caf by opening the doors, but he wouldn’t cooperate. Finally, he tried to escape by jumping onto the window, where he nearly met his fate. All of a sudden – bang! The chipmunk fell onto a poor freshman’s table and scurried away.
We thought the beast was gone, but no. About 20 minutes later I heard a shriek from the bottom floor of the caf. The chipmunk was back and thriving. Some sophomore boys chased him, and he finally made a grand exit.
Now that I have returned to the cafeteria, it seems quite dull without him. Perhaps I’ll leave a nut to invite him back for another visit.
