His real name is Tamias striatus, but we call him Hoover.

He’s an Eastern chipmunk who works the stonewall on the east side of our house, vacuuming up the seeds dropped there by the continuous scuffle of birds at the nearby feeders. He’s twitchy, lightning fast, and thorough. These days he’s a very busy guy.

Hoover has an established network of passageways in the wall, and from what I have read about chipmunks, he also has a well-appointed chamber for his repose and a separate pantry.

Judging from his frantic work schedule in these last weeks before winter, he must have several pantries. Working quickly and methodically among the ground-feeding mourning doves, cardinals, and juncos, Hoover packs dozens of sunflower seeds at a time into his Dizzy Gillespie cheeks, races to the wall, and dives headlong into a hole. Moments later, his head pops out for a cautious look around, then he emerges for another sweep of the area. I suppose if I were to sit in my front row seat at the kitchen table all day long with a calculator counting cheek loads and trips to the wall, I could come up with an accurate estimate of the size of his winter larder. Just guessing, I’d say he’s got 15 or 20 pounds of seeds in there by now.

It’s time to move.

That is the thought of hapless commuters stopped dead in traffic and also the unarticulated impulse that drives birds south at this time of year. Everything needs to move.

Motion is the sign of life itself — the beating heart, the fluttering eyelid, the heaving chest. When we come upon a scene where nothing moves, we declare, “This place is dead.”

But what of the plant world, rooted as it is in one spot? Beyond a bit of bending and swaying in the wind and pushing upwards in growth, individual plants don’t move around from one place to another. Could it be that evolution forgot to give them marching orders? (“Don’t just do something, stand there!”)