Chipmunk (CR 1/4)
Fine Animal
Alignment: Always neutral
Initiative: +2 (Dex); Senses: low-light vision, scent, and Listen +9.
AC: 20 (+8 size, +2 Dex, +0 natural), touch 20, flat-footed 18
Hit Dice: 1/4d8 (1 hp)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +1
Speed: 30 ft., burrow 5 ft. climb 20 ft.
Space: 1/2 ft./0 ft.
Base Attack +3; Grapple -21
Attack: Bite +3 melee
Full Attack: Bite +3 melee
Damage: Bite 1d3-4
Special Attacks/Actions: -
Abilities: Str 1, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 3
Special Qualities:
Feats:
Skills: Climb +10, Hide +22, Listen +9., and Move Silently +11
Advancement: -
Climate/Terrain: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary or adult with 1d6 young
Treasure/Possessions: None
Source:
Converted
Chipmunks are small striped squirrels.
Eastern chipmunks mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year. Western chipmunks only breed once a year. The young emerge from the burrow after about six weeks and strike out on their own within the next two weeks.
Chipmunks have an omnivorous diet consisting of grain, nuts, fruit, berries, birds' eggs, small frogs, fungi, worms, insects and on occasions small mammals like young mice. At the beginning of autumn, many species of chipmunk begin to stockpile these goods in their burrows, for winter. Other species make multiple small caches of food. These two kinds of behavior are called larder hoarding and scatter hoarding. Larder hoarders usually live in their nests until spring. Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry multiple food items to their burrows for either storage or consumption.
These small mammals fulfill several important functions in forest ecosystems. Their activities harvesting and hoarding tree seeds play a crucial role in seedling establishment. They consume many different kinds of fungi, including those involved in symbiotic mycorrhizal associations with trees, and are an important vector for dispersal of the spores of subterranean sporocarps (truffles) which have co-evolved with these and other mycophagous mammals and thus lost the ability to disperse their spores through the air.
Chipmunks play an important role as prey for various predatory mammals and birds, but are also opportunistic predators themselves, particularly with regard to bird eggs and nestlings.
Chipmunks construct expansive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m in length with several well-concealed entrances. The sleeping quarters are kept extremely clean as shells and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.