Tom Cat rat traps

Post some cute videos? I bet they love unsalted pistachios. :-)

I had that loosing battle last year. I shot several but you can't shoot them all! I did put some golden malron down the holes. I just hate doing stuff like that but they were winning. I haven't filled in the burrows yet. I want to be sure I won't be digging up the yard again. Now I have rabbits. They dig burrows, too.

Cattyles, they are cute, darn it;)

Sw and Imhappy, I think I will wait a bit before resorting to traps and poison. We have also been dealing with raccoons and mice. I spent a fortune last spring dealing with both of those, and at least they are not getting into the house anymore (crossing fingers). Hares love eating our nice shrubs over the winter, and a family is under our back deck. We have only been in this place for three years. While it is in the city, this street was only developed in the early 2000s and there is a lot of natural parkland in the area.

Cats help a lot. If you have an outdoor cat and feed it just a little, like less than a cup of cat food, they will hunt. Provide water too of course. Another problem with chipmunks and ground squirrels is they attract predators like snakes.

We are in a losing battle. Our front walk has dropped three inches, the garden level has dropped, there are holes in the driveway, and the dogs have destroyed the back yard digging for them. The dogs have dug out huge holes behind stone retaining walks and under the stone steps going to tge lowest part of the yard. I HATE chipmunks. I don't want to use poison because of our dogs, raptors and owls, and traps have not worked. There is a method using a bucket of water, bird seed, and a board extending from a step or low wall. Put seed on the secured board and float more on top of the water in the bucket. They will eat the seed on the board and follow it into the bucket which looks like solid ground with the seed on it. Then, they drown. I caught a mouse like that last year. I suspect Chip and Dale and their many relatives were giggling uproariously in their burrow at my frustration. I expect our entire house to be sucked into a sinkhole one of these days. When you see the story of the poor woman who disappeared into the abyss as her house succumbed to chipmunks on the news, it will be okay to giggle at me yourself.

Oh, Cyn, I feel for you! That sinkhole thing, it gives me nightmares too. I had visions of a vacant blackhole under the garage concrete platform. Last fall the driveway repair people told me of a case where an entire driveway was riddled underneath with Chipmunk burrows. I had no idea until recently of the damage these guys can do!

Prairiemom suggests outdoor cats - maybe that would help? We are allergic to cats, and I don't know if they could survive outdoors in our very cold winters.

Wow, Stratford, you had a huge success rate with population control. Thanks for the photo.

The Chipmunkinator. It's a humane trap that can help you catch several at a time. We "relocated" about 2 dozen chipmunks last year to a local wildlife preserve. I couldn't bear killing them. This thing really worked.

Chipmunkinator

Sas, it is good to have options, thanks. This reminds me of our neighbour's efforts to trap raccoons. Recently he caught a skunk instead and unfortunately it sprayed. His main motivation was that he felt that the pest control service was not relocating the raccoons far enough away and they were returning.

We relocated chipmunks for years, a mile away across the tracks or creek. But for the last couple years, we haven't seen any. Could it be...that our neighbor's cat, who loves to hang out on our front porch and roam the yard, has scared them away? (Our cats are indoor cats, they are scared of chipmunks)

A few summers ago we noticed little round holes in our new mahogany deck. At first I thought it was knots in the wood that had fallen out but DH insisted that we had bought grade 1 without any knots. Then I noticed the little chipmunk heads popping through the holes and new holes appearing. They also tunneled next to our foundation and we were getting damp spots on the concrete blocks in the basement.

I bought a Havaheart trap and captured 24 in one summer. I didn't even use bait. But I drove them 5 miles away to relocate them in a wooded area of an industrial park. Then I happened to speak with a Wildlife Conservation Officer who told me I should have drowned them because relocating them just left them without a home and defenseless.

I think drowning is one of the more humane tactics, but I would never be able to do it. I agree that moving them to a new location is equally cruel.

I figure by locating them, I give the hawks and coyotes a food supply and keep THEM out of my yard, too.

Oh my, lots of troubles and lots of options to try, thank you all.

We have a few and yes they have dug holes in the ground but our resident king snake seems to keep the population under control. We haven't resorted to relocating them yet like we have the raccoons. I hope we don't have to start trapping them too! Dang pesky things!

I'll second the cats suggestion. I actually love the chipmunks in our yard, so I'm sad when our cats get one, but I can tell you that our two indoor/outdoor cats eat plenty of cat food and get at least two chipmunks per week three seasons out of the year. I would imagine that with less food, they would catch more.

Here is my update. The piles of garlic, red pepper, commercial stuff were useless. Within a day the chipmunks dug a hole in the ground beside the new asphalt and started to dig under again. We got some wire and quickset cement and filled it in and an adjoining area of several inches. The next morning, it dug another hole and I put wire in pending getting more cement. At 1:00pm, there was no change. By 2:15, they had dug out two holes in the asphalt, from the top down! Not from the edge!

By this time we had been to the hardware store several times to get the wire, the wirecutter, more cement, rocks, etc etc. We filled in those holes with wire and cement, cemented over a couple of feet over top of the asphalt, and once dry covered the area (cement/asphalt/grass) with a length of wire mesh battened down with rocks and whatever was handy. The chief chipmunk kept surveillance for an opportunity to renew the attack, often from under a car parked in the driveway.

Last night our neighbour came by asking for a favour. He wanted to know if we had any cement left over - there was a hole in the lawn beside his driveway, poor guy.

We always have had chipmunks, but in my area no one seems to have heard of such destructive behaviour. It seems to be a cause for bemusement and even disbelief. While I am sorry that others here have had such problems, it is also nice to have company;). There aren't any outdoor cats on the street, and there are lots of rules about trapping so a live trap seems to be the main option now.

Like many nature events the population of these critters seems to be cyclical. This year I have noticed an abundance of rabbits. I have issues with these ground squirrels/chippies digging in my fairy gardens. I had to use chicken wire buried just under some soil to keep them out. I was told GAIN dryer sheets would keep the away..can't report any success with that. We have several neighborhood cats that "hunt" our yard so that has helped I suppose. Frankly the live trap/relocation effort seems more than they are worth. If they were causing the damage you are reporting it would take me one second to decide it was time for total annihilation!

"The chief chipmunk kept surveillance for an opportunity to renew the attack, often from under a car parked in the driveway."

This. This made me howl with laughter! lol

I am sorry they are giving you so much trouble, though.

Humour does help to mitigate a very frustrating situation, especially for those like my husband and me who are seriously deficient on the handiness scale. Yes, annihilation has floated to the top of the list regardless that this would means - sigh - "outlaw" status. We would have to plead self-defence, and preservation of peace, order and good government (we are Canadian). Even chipmunks can only get away with so much disruption;)

Old discussion. Wondering if anyone's found a humane way to get rid of chipmunks? I wanted to relocate them, but now know that's a death sentence. Maybe I could dig small burrows /tunnels for them, far away from my home. Relocate them to the burrows. Crazy idea? I think we have 6 chipmunks now. They've dug tunnels under retaining walls, walkways, boulder steps, the patio. I've thought about getting a cat, but really don't want one. Ideas really appreciated.

As an animal lover I hate to say, all one can do is humanely kill them. My husband uses boxed rat traps which attract only chipmunks and mice. The drowning method is horribly cruel & horrible to deal with. You can’t relocate them. They did $150 K damage to our neighbors foundation and our driveway is sinking fast. The traps are quick and effective, if you can handle maintaining them. My husband has caught 160 to date around the perimeter of our house.