With Kelli Giddish back as a series regular for “Law & Order: SVU” Season 27, and with Sgt. Amanda Rollins’ recent return to the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, it’s time to address the taxidermied elephant in the room: Where the heck is Rollins’ chipmunk, and when will it come back to work with her?
If you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s a brief history of the varmint. At some point during Giddish’s original run, a stuffed chipmunk showed up on the then-detective’s desk. The creature was mounted on a pedestal and displayed under a glass dome; though it stayed there for years, it was seldom, if ever, referenced by the characters.
Then Giddish guest-starred in the Season 25 episode “Prima Nocta,” in which Rollins temporarily returned to SVU to help out with a case. (Read a full recap here.) At the end of the hour, Capt. Olivia Benson stopped Rollins’ and Carisi’s apartment and brought her the chipmunk with her. “I have something that belonged to you,” Liv said, placing the furry pal on the counter between them. “I think Bruno was getting a little creeped out by it.” Benson joked that Rollins had left the chipmunk behind so she would have a reason to come back to the precinct.
And now that she is back at the precinct? What of her furry little pal?
“Thank you!” Giddish cries, laughing, when I raise the question. She says she asked the same thing upon her return to the series’ New York City set, and got a slightly disheartening answer. “It got smashed. And I go, ‘Well, we need to find it.'” She quickly corrects herself. “The glass got smashed, not the chipmunk.”
Please know that while the at-home audience might not have noticed Rollins’ mascot much, the show’s camera department used to give it a lot of off-screenattention. “It probably never showed up on screen, but they used to dress it up for holidays,” Giddish says, chuckling. “Like, for St. Patty’s, it was wearing a leprechaun outfit. God, it was so good!”
The lack of chipmunk is especially poignant given Rollins (and Giddish’s) recent loss of another companion animal: Frannie, the dog.
She sighs. “I miss my chipmunk.” I ask his name. “DC,” she says, starting to laugh again. “Just Dead Chipmunk.”
