“It all started with the birdhouse,” said Amy Hagar, explaining that the chipmunk couldn’t get to the birdseed that she scattered for the birds on the dollhouse porch.

“The bird mansion,” said her husband Tom from his chair on the family’s own front porch.

“I built it to keep my parents entertained,” said their son Nicholas, a trucker and carpenter who built the tiny camp a few weeks ago. “What do you do during quarantine?” Nicholas asked rhetorically.

The camp started with a lean-to, as many Adirondack camps do. Then Nicholas added a fire pit, a picnic table, a hammock, even an outhouse. The tiny canoe was a toy Tom had when he was a kid. There’s a tartan sleeping bag, tiny lanterns, an Adirondack chair (of course), even tiki torches made from pencils, wooden beads, golf tees and birthday candles.

Alvin the chipmunk takes his morning constitutional. Hello, a little privacy, please, if you don’t mind. (Enterprise photo — Amy Scattergood)

“He was pretty friendly,” said Tom of the chipmunk, even before he got his own camp. “My wife was pretty bored, so she made friends with it.”

The birdhouse went up in April, something to do after the state shut down due to COVID-19. The camp came a few months later.

“We were just out here joking around one day,” said Tom, “and it turned into a lean-to.”

The chipmunk has become increasingly tame, unsurprisingly, and now waits for the family to feed him in the mornings.

“He drinks my coffee,” said Nicholas.

The lean-to is central to the chipmunk camp, similar to its human-sized counterparts. (Enterprise photo — Amy Scattergood)

“He sits in my chair,” said Tom, who notes that the chipmunk waits for Tom to get home and take his place on his usual chair on the porch. “Then he jumps in my lap.” (If this is sounding like a fairy tale, be very glad that the Hagars were adopted by a chipmunk and not a bear.)

The family, longtime Saranac Lake residents (“We’re about as local as you can get,” said Tom), says there are no plans for more camps, though they note that Nicholas has already gotten calls about building some for other folks and other chipmunks. But they might add to the camp they already have.

“Set up the ice trays,” said Tom, laughing from the porch as Nicholas feeds the chipmunk more sunflower seeds from his hand. “We’re going to build an ice palace.”

Yes, please.

Alvin’s camp is down the way a piece from the bird mansion, a repurposed doll house. (Enterprise photo — Amy Scattergood)

At the end of a long day in the woods, there’s nothing like kicking back in front of a cozy, crackling, chipmunk campfire, pondering the good life and planning out chipmunk adventures to come. (Nicholas Hagar)