Why Does a Chipmunk Chip?

A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.

It isn’t trying to pick a fight.
It owns no sharp rhinoceros tusk.

A chipmunk chips from dawn till dusk,
trying to get the vibration right,
chucking away to guard its musk.

Though a chipmunk’s musk’s a dry husk
of any horde you’d covet, still day and night
it hankers for some kind of tusk

that it might wield in fields of risk,
putting horny foes to flight.
A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.

But a chipmunk’s not just waving its stick.
No, this charming little wight
feels threatened by some gnarly tusk

that someone else is waving—its task
ever to beat its drum of fate—
rhinoceros, boar, or narwhal tusk.
A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.