The resort owner where we stayed Wednesday night at the Lake of the Ozarks was amazed their cat accepted me so quickly and brought something for me to draw. I made us late for dinner sketching it--I was so enthralled by the subtleties of the coloring. And of course I'd been frustrated earlier because I couldn't get close enough to really SEE the little creatures, which were everywhere--problem solved!
Tamius striatus makes a nuisance of himself in many areas--when I looked online for more information, I found dozens of sites telling how to deal with that! I guess the cat figured out one of them...
You'll find some lovely photos HERE and a Wikipedia entry HERE
...or explore more about chipmunks and far, far more in my old mentor, Charles W. Schwartz's wonderful book, below!
Charles was wonderfully talented, encouraging and helpful--I've loved his work since I was a kid! (Who knew there was a new edition of his book? The original one is one of the treasures of my personal library...)
Great sketch Cathy - never realised they were THAT small! We have two species here in S. Africa, the Ground Squirrel and the Tree Squirrel and they're about 450mm in length, not as tiny as yours?
ReplyDeleteThe Tree Squirrel is 350mm (that's just over 12"), half of which is tail, so that also seems fairly tiny - just 6" without the tail.
ReplyDeleteReally nice sketch! I always like to sketch it when I have a dead creature, like a bird that hits the window or a weasel dropped by an owl, or whatever. I feel like I'm memorializing it in a way.
ReplyDeleteWe've got a couple of species of tree squirrels, then 2 of chipmunks, and ground squirrels. Funny little critters. And I agree, Melissa, that's exactly how I feel.
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