kill it =)

Nah, already gone to another location in the deep woods far far away

Sandy.

Sandy, what is it?

I agree. KILL IT! When we visited China, they eat those. Whatever it is, it probably moves fast and I don't want to run into it EVER.

-Babka

I think it's a woodchuck. We had some of those but our Lab, Maki aka 'Bamm Bamm', ate 'em.

It's a groundhog, aka woodchuck, hosta lover, violet conniseur, vegetarian pest. As bad as deer when it comes to eating the garden. He had been living under my brush pile for years, and probably would have continued to do so unmolested if he hadn't suddenly decided hostas were his new favorite food.

It couldn't resist the lure of cantelope rinds, tho. Now it can forage in the deep woods like all the other groundhogs and leave my hosta banquet behind.

This is a no-kill zone, tho, National Wildlife Habitat and all that. It just had to find other quarters.

Sandy

Only one? They are never living alone! There is probably a large family left in that brush pile. Perhaps that woodchuck was bringing hostas home for his/her babies and the other parent will continue? Good luck! What would help is to remove any brush pile where they could live, straighten out the landscape.
Bernd

Find the hole... fix tube to tail pipe of vehicle.. insert tube into hole... start vehicle... run vehicle for 30 minutes...
John

Haha, I-like-to-grow, my old neighbor does that to squirrels he catches. I didn't understand what he meant by "gassing them with the car" but now I do. I had rabbit problems. Hired a guy to come and live catch them. He got 2 but one we just couldn't get. I bought a air pump pellet gun. We have no rabbits now. But Mosswitch, I'm with you. If you can live catch them, turn them loose far away but if you can't, the pellet gun is effective.

The brush pile is at the end of the woods, Bernd. Result of the 2007 ice storm, and habitat for a lot of creatures, possums, lizards, snakes, and last winter I saw weasel tracks in the snow next to it. Lots of birds shelter there in the winter. It also makes a barrier against the unkept, overgrown mess of honeysuckle/poison ivy property behind us and slows the deer down some. Tho we are allowing it to compost down, and next spring we'll plant a row of oak leaf hydrangeas on our side of it.

I have been piling my garden debris in front of it for years and this summer we're going to top it off with a truckload of mushroom compost, and another of leafmulch from the city. It is a work in progress!

We are going to keep a trap out for a while but I think this was an old bachelor ground hog. The female lived under my studio for a long time until she acquired such an extended family that they became a problem. We trapped 10 of them out of there last summer.

Sandy

I am not a great advocate of killing wildlife. The ends are often worse than the goals. My young twin daughters hated spiders. We declared open war on spiders in the house. B4 long we had O spiders, and tons of centipedes. Yuch!

-Have a rabbit problem: Support your local falconry club;
-Don't have money to fence in your yard?: Build a huge brush pile around a mulberry tree trunk you want eliminated and your hunting dog has no reason to leave the yard;
-Are voles a problem?: Instead of killing snakes invite them to live in your yard;
-Neighbor has woodchucks breeding in his woodpile?: Give him or her a package of cantelope seeds; (Did this and between his garden and my Shorthair no woodchuck damage in my gardens.)

Just throwing out some ideas!

Les

I don't mind Groundhogs. Mainly because around here,they only live down in the valleys,and only in grassy fields. We see them standing by the roads all the time. Phil