Cool. I like the slinky. I will be doing that.
One person’s cute little animal is another person’s pest.
You got another effective way to relocate them? If so, I’ll happily use it. Believe me, I tried plenty, and would prefer not having to dip out and dispose of dead carcasses regularly.
Or should I just let these cute little animals undermine my home?
We have a lot of chipmunks around here. When I was a kid we always had one or two that would get really tame and take food out of your hand. They would get a bit bold sometimes and come right in your lap looking for a handout. They were always named Chippy. We must have at least 5 of them running around the yard now, especially this time of year. They’re stockpiling food for the winter. There’s always a couple in the birdfeeder. But we love watching them. The dogs will stare at them for hours (the bird feeders are about 3 feet away on the other side of their fence). I don’t know why everyone gets so worked up if a chipmunk eats from the birdfeeder. They have to eat too, just like the birds. Do you shoot birds if they’re not the right kind? We had about 20 grackles eating at the feeders yesterday. They’re big, noisy and eat like there’s no tomorrow. We call them the Gangster Birds. But we let them eat.
They come and go around our house. Sometimes they take up residence near one of our porches for a couple years and then I don’t see up for a while. Right now in a chimpmunkless state.
Squirrels, on the other hand … grrrrrrr.
Our old, arthritic cat Midnight desperately wanted to catch a chipmunk. To our astonishment, she actually did. She had it in her mouth and brought it up to the door, wanting to come in. She wanted to brag to the other cats about what she had. I have no doubt about this. Years earlier, she’d caught a giant cecropia moth, and brought it in, walking back and forth in front of the other cats, effectively saying “I have a moth! And you don’t!” before eating it with much crunching.
The chipmunk was definitely alive and well. We could see it moving. It’s not like she “caught” a dead or sick chipmunk. I still don’t know how she managed it.
But we weren’t going to let her in with it. A cecropia moth with damaged wings wasn’t going anywhere, but if she let that chipmunk drop, it would be off under the furniture in a flash. And we didn’t need a house full of cats chasing after one rodent.
As a society, we are socialized to kill, our empathy atrophied under the weight of countless advertisements and the peer pressure of others who “do not want to be judged.”
I’m only up to nine. I don’t see them burrowing near the foundation, so I put away the seeds and the bucket. Now I can enjoy their cuteness and antics. But if I start seeing fresh holes near the foundation, I’m going back into horrible nuisance mode.
(There, now I’ve placated both sides of the thread.)
They are DAPPER little things, huh?
I’ve got some living in a hole in my lawn (that they dug) in front of my front steps. I open the door for the dogs every morning and let them watch the chipmunk action through the storm door. About once or twice a day the dogs get fed up with the action and go nuts. I think the chipmunks taunt them.
Near this chipmunk hole near my front door is my foundation, and a large slab of concrete. I am pretty cure the chipmunks did a number on the dirt under the slab, and it tilted some 30 degrees or more towards the house. A couple weeks ago I had someone come out and raise the slab by pumping concrete under it. I’m pretty sure I’ve now got a chipmunk tomb.
Sad, cuz I like the little buggers. Hopefully my house is fortified enough against them now.
I prefer seeing and hearing song birds at my feeders. Chipmunks, Squirrels and Crows scare them away. I use to have a squirrel feeder. It was a gallon jar on its side in a wooden frame. I would put corn in it. Squirrels never went to it. They went straight to the birdfeeders. Hoodlums, I tell ya.
I’ve only seen one chipmunk in all my years in Florida and Alabama. It was presumably dead and being carried in a cat’s mouth in a residential neighborhood.
I see them in the backyard fairly often, scrounging around the bird feeders. It’s really amusing when I suddenly come out the back door, frightening one of them and causing it to flee into the downspout. Then I hear the scrabbling as it tries to climb up and the inevitable thud as it slides back down. Tapping on the spout will get this sequence to repeat a few times. Then I go back into the house, chuckling, to let the little thing flee back to it’s home.