Charlie the Chipmunk: meet Canada's most famous rodent

The news is full of tragedies these days, and sometimes we just need a distraction to help us enjoy the little things in life. If you feel similarly, then you need to check out the cutest chipmunk on the internet -Charlie!

Photo: TikToK@charliethechip

Charlie the chipmunk has an Instagram (@charliethechip) with over 200k followers and a TikTok account with more than 3 million followers! That is one famous chipmunk. He is nearly as famous as Disney's Chip n' Dale!

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

A little over four years ago, Borjana Anicin (pictured) met Charlie in her parents' backyard in Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto, Ontario. The pair didn't immediately hit it off, despite the close relationship that is seen between the two in the videos that Anicin posts on social media.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

According to an interview Borjana Anicin gave to Blog TO, Charlie was very timid in the beginning, and it took Anicin a week to win his trust by bribing him with nuts. Anicin told Blog TO, "I would say about a week after is when he started to trust me and started eating from my hands."

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Now, the two are best buds. In the videos that Anicin shares, you can see the strong bond the pair have. Charlie allows his favorite human to give him massages and even listens to commands such as "freeze" and "come."

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

From the months of March until November (Charlie then hibernates for the winter), Anicin feeds and interacts with Charlie on a regular basis and shares her experiences on social media; she is particularly active on Tik Tok.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Anicin and Charlie are not your typical social media stars. According to Blog TO, Anicin works full time at a bank and only began posting videos on social media of Charlie out of boredom during the lockdown.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

"If the pandemic never happened, I don't think that people would know anything about Charlie. Only my closest friends," Anicin told Blog TO.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Luckily for us, Anicin was bored enough to share videos of her adorable little friend Charlie - we all need a little chipmunk cuteness in our lives! I mean, look at that face, how can you look at that and be stressed out???

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

The public on social media loved Charlie so much that after posting her very first video of her furry friend, Anicin, who had 0 followers on TikTok gained 150,000 followers in one day.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

According to Blog TO, Anicin had no idea that Charlie would be so popular. She told the news website, "It's crazy, I never expected this to happen."

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Borjana Anicin and Charlie are very good friends. When a second chipmunk which Anicin has named Buddy, shows up occasionally, Charlie even gets jealous when Anicin feeds him.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Even though Borjana no longer lives at home with her parents, she only lives 8 minutes away from them. And thanks to COVID, her job is now remote, so she still has plenty of time to stop over and visit Charlie regularly. Interestingly, Charlie has only befriended Borjana and doesn't interact with her parents.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Although we simply can't get enough of Charlie the cheeky chipmunk, Anicin told Blog TO that at some point, the videos may get too repetitive, and if that happens, then she will stop posting.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

However, in the meantime, she continues to post a couple of new videos per week, keeping all of Charlie's fans happy. And making people happy was the whole point of sharing the videos in the first place.

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip

Anicin told Blog TO, "That's my whole purpose of Charlie's videos, to make people happy, smile.... People need that."

Photo: Instagram@charliethechip