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The Kitchen Table

Do chipmunks eat garden produce?

13 years ago

My parents' next door neighbour is having her garden ransacked by a chipmunk. I didn't know/think that chippies eat greens. Nuts yes, but I didn't know they ate veggies.

Her kohlrabi is all chewed down and her other greens.

Mom didn't dare tell her that she feeds nuts to the chippy!

Her neighbour lived for years out in the country and never had to fence her garden or had problems with pests, but ever since moving into the city, she's had to have a fence (rabbit) and now the chipmunk doing damage. She's not happy.

How would one get rid of the little guy?

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Comments (10)

maire_cate
13 years ago
We have a Havahart trap. It's hard to tell how many chipmunks you have but one summer I noticed that they had gnawed 2 holes in my mahogany deck. This wood is dearly expensive and I bought the trap to catch the little critters. I was absolutely shocked to catch 26 chipmunks in about 3 months. After the first 5 or so I stopped baiting the trap but I put it alongside the house where I knew they ran.

Chipmunks usually eat nuts, grains and berries. But they also like the tender shoots of plants and some leaves. And apparently my hardwood deck.
sue_va
13 years ago
No idea about how to get rid of them, sorry.

I didn't know they would eat veggies, either.

Just today my DD was telling me about the chipmunks eating her hens&chickens, {{!gwi}}and corn she hangs up for the squirrels. The chipmunks also play in a holly bush outside a window.

Animal lover that she is, she won't do anything to try to get rid of them; if necessary she would buy food for them!

'Course, this is not a vegetable garden they are destroying.

Sue
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heather_on
13 years ago
Chipmunks are soooooo cute. We only have mice, rats, squirrels, skunks, rabbits and raccoons around us.
joan_mn
13 years ago
and if they get under or into your house, they also love to chew on wiring or almost anything. Kind of like squirrels.
bulldinkie
13 years ago
yep they do,I have a kiwi tree on my stone wall .It was full of fruit last year a chip munk ate all of them.My jack russells are lookin for him.
susanjf_gw
13 years ago
oh dear we've had soo much fun watching our chip, squirrels, and now rabbits...we used to get daisey duck and babies but "donald" got killed and we havn't seen her at all...

and we're city bound...in fact, saw a deer 2 weeks ago trying ot cross 8 mile road (remember the movie about detroit?) we're west of that..
nicole__
13 years ago
Yep, they eat about anything! We also have a havahart trap. Got 42 of them one summer.
western_pa_luann
13 years ago
The most I ever got was 51... they are very destructive.

The latest here is that we have to replace a large portion of our concrete sidewalk. Chipmunks undermined an area, causing it to crack off the rest of the slab... and drop a whole inch!

We are only on a 1/3 acre lot, but we have plenty of them... unfortunately.
dilly_dally
13 years ago
Yes, chipmunks will eat vegetation. They are not carnivore predators.

You can't really just "get rid of the little guy". There are probably many. The best thing to do is screen your garden. Put down edging and attach the screen. These critters will burrow under chicken wire that is just set in place.
joyfulguy
13 years ago
western pa luann,

Looks like you'd better advertise to find lighter people to walk on your sidewalk.

Trouble with that effort at "fixing", though ... it's dealing with aftermath ... rather than forestalling the trouble (or trying to) in the first place.

ole joyful

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