Prelude: The Chipmunk Connection - Moravian College

The Chipmunk Connection
By Lois Brunner Bastian ’50
How could the lives of two Moravian College alumni—strangers
who graduated more than fifty years apart—be linked by chipmunks?
It sounds improbable, even impossible. But “uncanny” is a
far better word to describe this story.
It began many years after I graduated from Moravian College
for Women as an English major. In time, I became a freelance
writer/photographer, publishing newspaper and magazine articles
on travel and any other subject that piqued my curiosity.
That’s when chipmunks bounded into my New Jersey backwoods
and became an obsession. Appealing and unapproachable,
they presented a challenge. I wanted to know more about their
secret lives.
When one of them took refuge in a downspout, I saw an opportunity
to get closer. Holding out sunflower seeds in the palm of my
hand, I would wait and wait by the mouth of the spout. One day,
the animal snatched the food and bolted back into the spout. After
that breakthrough, the spout became unnecessary. The chipmunk
would come to me as I sat outside, cautiously climbing my leg, into
my lap or onto my shoulder, wherever the food was.
So began thirty seasons of observing, hand feeding, watching
courtship and mating, as well as photographing a series of mothers
together with their litters. Because the mother trusted me, so did her
young ones, as I sat beside their burrow.
Before the young left to make burrows of their own, I often
spent eight hours a day watching their behavior. They examined
every leaf, blade of grass, and twig nearby. Trying to stand on their
hind legs, they lost their balance at first and toppled over. That
would take practice. They teetered on twigs too slender to support
them. Fluttering leaves and the shadow of a flying
bird sent them fleeing underground.
Books about the life cycle of Tamias
striatus are plentiful, but I’d never found one
describing a mother with her offspring. Hmmm
. . . was there a market for such a book? In
2000, Chipmunk Family, my nonfiction book
for young people, was published.
That seemed to culminate my wildlife
experience. Until eight years later, when I
received a poignant letter. It came from Nancy
Evans, a stranger who lived in Lansdale, Pa.
She explained that she and her husband, Ben,
were the parents of David Evans, who was
killed twenty-three days
before his twenty-third
birthday—and two weeks
before he was to graduate
from Moravian. Dave, a
computer art and graphic
design major, was awarded
his diploma posthumously
in May 2004.
Nancy wrote to tell me
how my story was woven
together with Dave’s story. “He was very enamored of chipmunks,”
she wrote. “When Dave went hiking with his older brothers, he
wished he could catch one for a pet.”
As a bereaved mother, she was trying to “stay connected to her
son in any way and every way” she could. She and her husband
spent time at a local arboretum, hoping chipmunks would appear,
as if they represented a message from their son.
For Christmas 2007, Ben ordered several chipmunk books for
her. “He ran into months-long difficulty trying to purchase your
book,” she wrote. “First they backordered it and he waited. Then he
got notice that it was out of print. He gave up.”
In April 2008, Nancy received a package in the mail. It was her
husband’s Christmas gift to her: my book. “I opened it and read
about you in the Meet the Author section. Well, I stopped in my
tracks when I read, ‘Ms. Bastian was born in Bethlehem, Pa., and
graduated from Moravian College.’”
Dave’s classmates planted a tree on the Church Street campus in
his memory. The Evans family comes to Bethlehem
regularly to place a wreath beneath it. On
one of their visits, we met, after I had moved
back to Bethlehem.
Nancy ended her letter with these words.
“You, your background, and your book are to
me another connection with my dear Dave, and
I find joy in it! Thank you for the delightful
look at these oh-so-charming animals. We are
not strangers, but friends who met through a
young man and a book.”
That alone makes writing the book worth
the effort. W
Photo by Lois Brunner Bastian
A book by Lois Brunner Bastian ’50 (above)
was the basis for a healing friendship with
the family of David Evans ’04 (page 2).
SUMMER 2010 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE 3