I have been able to live and garden in harmony with the chipmunks in the rural area we live in Connecticut. But it seems over the last 2 years or so the chipmunks have taken advantage of any prior agreement we had, getting more and more emboldened. This year when they started to tear up planters in a screened-in porch I became alarmed but when they undermined a sidewalk and a retaining wall that was it. The mason performing the repair work uncovered a munk burrow that ran about 10 feet and almost a foot high, cleanly excavated. They are no longer cute, they are vermin over running our property, and not only costing serious money for repairs but they're creating a hazard as well. Like many on this thread I too felt guilty about eliminating chipmunks ... but have become increasingly frustrated and desperate when the population exploded and over ran our property and garden areas. Destructive, brazen and invasive is ALL an understatement when I see what these cute little critters have become. While I feel I need to eliminate them I want to do it as humanely as possible, and since it is illegal to relocate them in the state of CT, the Hav-A-Heart trap presents the dilemma of having to "off them" yourself and watch them die. I think I have solved the problem ... the RAT ZAPPER. An animal control professional I spoke to (off the record) indicated that "electrocution" is the fastest, most humane and cleanest way to do what has to be done. I bought my first "zapper" and eliminated 21 munks in approximately 10 days. Since then I bought 2 more and now there are almost 50 critters that no longer make their home in the area around my foundation, sidewalks and retaining walls. Granted the "pool of death" (the bucket) does work, but this is cleaner, more convenient ... no bucket to maintain/seed to replenish. I place a little pile of sunflower seed at the back of the chamber and flip the switch. And location seems to be important. Under shrubs and near visible, active holes seems to be most effective. Interestingly, an Ohio State University critter/pest management site I visited indicated that 10 chipmunks or more per acre is considered an infestation population. I have caught almost five times that number, so I assume I am dealing with nature being way out of balance, at least as far as the chipmunk population. If you're getting more and desperate, try the Zapper, it works.

I just moved to the central coast of California, and there's a type of bird called a towhee that roots around in tangled bushes in my front yard. I really don't have a problem with that; but these pesky birds seem to take great delight in flipping decorative bark out of the planters and onto my driveway and into the street. I used my blower for the first time to get all the bark pieces back where they belonged, then I was gone for about one hour and returned to find an amazing amount of bark thrown back into the street and onto portions of my driveway. I might have to consider replacing the bark with rock; but is there any chemical repellant and can spray or otherwise distribute on the bushes these birds like to play in, so I can spend more time with yard maintenance other than cleaning up after these dang birds. I've never seen anything like it.

The following statement was made in this thread on April 29, 2009: "It has been demonstrated by natural root grafting at UC Davis, but then only on rootstock plants just a few inches from each other, in the nursery row, and then only on mutiflora." In 2007 Golino et.al. at U.C. Davis published a paper on this subject. The abstract is at: http://www.actahort.org/books/751/751_26.htm In the full paper, the following is stated (page 29-30): "Field Spread in Scion Cultivars To test further for the occurrence of virus spread trials were conducted on over 300 plants each of three scion cultivars, Double Delight, Iceberg, and Queen Elizabeth. Rooted cuttings were planted approximately 30 cm apart in rows in the field, grown for one year and alternate plants were graft-inoculated as described above with one of three virus accessions: 1) ROS98.36, 2) ROS98.27, and 3) ROS70.7, which were 1) a source of PNRSV that caused bright yellow chlorosis in the spring; 2) a source of ApMV, and 3) a source of a naturally-occurring mixed infection of ApMV and PNRSV, respectively. Plants were pruned yearly using shears that were cleaned between each plant by dipping in 10% bleach solution. Bushes were observed for symptoms periodically and ELISA tested for PNRSV and ApMV in the spring for two years. All non-inoculated plants that tested positive were re-sampled and tested to confirm the result." In the conclusion section (page 221) the following was stated: "In scion varieties, transmission rates two years postinoculation ranged from 0 to 25% depending on virus and cultivar. Queen Elizabeth had the lowest percent infection of all the varieties at an average 5% for all three viruses; Iceberg had the highest for a scion cultivar at 13% average for the viruses (Table 4). These differences correlate with the cultivars relative root vigor. It is possible that a larger, more vigorous root system would increase the chance of forming a root graft with an adjacent plant. R. multiflora has a more vigorous root system than all three scion cultivars tested and within the scions, Iceberg is more vigorous than Queen Elizabeth and Double Delight." -------------------------------- I do not understand why someone would make the April 29 statement. Especially since on April 30, 2009 the same writer states: "If one actually looks up Golino's paper in Acta Horticulturae......." ----------------------------------- Please also note that not all types of mechanical transmission were ruled out in the 2007 paper since the observed rate of spread was higher in the unpruned bushes than in the pruned bushes. In another PNRSV infected plant, hops, this is attributed, in part, to the branches of neighboring plants rubbing against each other. Golino et.al. acknowledge this as they state (page 220-221): "The possibility remains that spread occurred by mechanical transmission due to contact between the leaves of the closely spaced plants and experiments are underway to test that putative mechanism of spread."

I reran Malwarebytes (the 3rd run) as instructed. It reported "The scan completed successfully. No malicious items were detected." I have a copy of the happy details which I can post here if you still want to see them. I rescanned with Spybot and this time it gave me the bright green all-okay check mark and made no mention of virtumonde.sci. I retried the TrendMicro Housecall and it made its way through all the C and D files and I think through the grayware/spyware category when it came to a halt and the dreaded box appeared saying "An error occurred while trying to transfer data from the Internet. Do you want Trend Micro Housecall to try resendingÂ". I did retry several times but the box reappeared repeatedly. At the time, the progress tab on the left showed the program was "updating security check information". Trying to learn what I could, I clicked on the results tab and it showed ADWARE_MEMWATCHER (98 infections) but the program and computer were frozen there and I could only close the browser. I did have AdAware installed on my computer but uninstalled it in July 2008. I uninstalled using the Add/Remove feature, I uninstalled because of a thread in this forum related to compatibility issues between Spybot and AdAware. Anyway, I digress, but IÂm relating these events in the order they appeared. I came back to this forum to report and saw additional instructions about disabling TeaTimer, etc. In trying to find out how to do so, I was in Spybot and clicked on the recovery tab. There I found a backup for virtumonde.sci. The system wouldnÂt allow copy and paste of what it was saving in backup so I copied it manually (and hopefully without error). Browser helper object HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\(AAAE832A-5FFF-4661-9C8F-369692D1DCB9) The above was listed 4 times for 1/4/09 9:57:00 AM 1/30/09 10:33:44 PM 1/31/09 5:07:20 PM 1/31/09 7:14:07 PM The following was also listed once: Class ID HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\(AAAE832A-5FFF-4661-9C8F-369692D1DCB9) 1/4/09 9:57:01 AM Should I still run the ATF Cleaner? Thanks so much for your help - June