Invasion of the little furry striped things

Remember these guys? The ones that lived under my house and chewed up my phone wires and wrecked havoc?

I managed to close up the rusted-out foundation vents with hardware cloth, and assumed that after they were denied access to the "Chipmunk Hilton", they would go somewhere else to make their little burrows and live their little furry lives.

Au contraire.

They aren't living under my house anymore, but they sure didn't leave and there seem to be more of them than ever! The cat and I have been watching the patio for the last 30 minutes and have seen at least a dozen of them, zipping around, digging in the flower pots, climbing the nandinas, poking around in the mulch border under the azaleas, scavenging the yard for dropped birdseed.

Were there always this many, and they spent most of the time in the crawlspace so they weren't seen? Or have they come outside, blinked, said "This isn't so bad" and proceeded to make new burrows and invite all their friends? Either way, the colony definitely has expanded.

This is all because I like to feed the birds. There's not a critter in critter-dom that's going to turn down a sunflower seed. I have fought these little vermin for years. I had to buy metal cans to store the birdseed and tie the lids on with bungee cords because they raided the stash. I have a two door resin cabinet that sits on the patio next to the chimney. It holds my gardening tools and supplies and was also my storage for birdseed, until they chewed a hole in the door! (Luckily, it's a hollow core door and they only chewed the outside surface. I would hate to have to put Bondo patches on the patio accessories because the little varmints can't keep their teeth to themselves.)

Yesterday I went out to the patio to water the flats of unplanted annuals and heard a "scritch scritch scritch" which seemed to come from the bottom of the cabinet. My first thought was that I had accidentally trapped one inside when I got the watering can. I even opened the doors and poked around inside with a bamboo stake, among the bags of fertilizer and tools, to make sure. Nobody ran out. The cabinet sits on a couple of scraps of 2x4 to keep it off the concrete. I decided they're under there in that little gap. Oh, great, now they're trying to chew out the bottom of the cabinet too.

I wonder if I could rent the little rat dogs next door to scare them off?

Mommy, can I have it?

I was sitting at my desk, reading email and snacking on some Danish Wedding cookies, which are the "crack" of confections, by the way. I seldom buy them because I end up clutching the box to my chest whispering, "My precious, my precious" - a little "Lord of the Rings" humor there. But those darned cookies could inspire a 12 step program.

Anyway, I noticed that the cat was awfully quiet at the sliding door, so I got my camera and crept up to see. Check out what was perched on the planter at the bottom of the stairs:
Sorry, baby, I can't get you the chipmunk.

Cables in danger

No visitors to the live trap in my crawlspace yet, but I know that I have at least one chipmunk still under the house. More wire chewing, although this time I caught it before more than the insulation was damaged. Drastic actions might be called for.

This is all happening because at that one vent, the flap inside it couldn't be closed fully due to wires entering the crawlspace. The poor rodent can see daylight around the edges, prompting him to try to chew his way out. If the live trap is not successful, I might have to resort to more lethal methods.

In the meantime, I made the miserable crawl-and-slither under the house all the way to the far end (and that's about 80 feet) to put electrical tape on the telephone wire, DSL wire and cable coax that had been nibbled, and notched the vent flap so it would close completely around the wires. Then I packed the corners of the vent full of steel wool (chew that, you little varmint!) and taped the dickens out of the wires. If he can't see a possible exit path around the wire he should leave them alone.

I just hope he gets hungry enough to check out the peanut butter and gets caught in the live trap. I really don't want to kill him, just boot him out of the crawlspace. Once they're all out, I think they can't get back inside. Just to head off any habitual behavior, I wrapped the wires outside the vent in steel wool too. What a mess this has been!

Blame the chipmunks again

We lost our DSL connection suddenly yesterday morning. After my husband did all the troubleshooting he could, he spent 1 1/2 hours on the phone with the tech support people to no avail. When they pinged us the signal wasn't getting through. So, this morning AT&T sent a technician to the house. He didn't find anything wrong at the telephone connection box outside the house or the inside connections to the computer, so he went under the house to follow the wire from the jack to the outside box. Well, this is what he found:

Yes, those are teeth marks.

War of the Chipmunks

Let me start off by saying that I like chipmunks. Of all God's little furry rodent creatures, they are the cutest. Having said that disclaimer, for all their cuteness, I don't want them living under my house. They're messy. They pull down the heating duct insulation to make beds. They sit on my water heater and poop. A lot. They tear up anything I try to store in the crawlspace.

So they had to go. Unfortunately, all my crawlspace vents look like this:

They're not the super high-techy ones with the bi-metal springs and self-closing louvers. They're 40 years old and I have to close them myself by pulling on the handle in the center; and, more importantly, all the screen wire has rusted and fallen out. So when these are open in the summer, it's a little chipmunk doorway. And, in the case of the vent where the cable TV and DSL wires enter, it's a doorway all year long because the cables obstruct the closure of the flap inside the vent. Even when the flap can close, it doesn't lock in place or anything so they have been able to push it open.

This is the year when I decided that the chipmunks have to spend their winter vacation somewhere else. They're highly adaptable little creatures who have made good use of the proximity of humans and their houses, but for untold eons they have gotten along just fine without access to the underside of a brick rancher. This year they're going to have to resurrect some of that native chipmunk-smarts and make a burrow or something. I know that they'll be fine. And I'll still have duct insulation.

After a trip to the Ace Hardware, I took my roll of hardware cloth (not cloth at all, but a heavy screen with 1/4" openings - but so apropos for a quilter!) and a roll of wire, and started attaching new screens on the outside of the vents. Especially the one that won't close all the way.

So listen little critters, the Calico Quilter Super-8 motel is closed for business!

My little visitor

Look who came to visit today. He's just a baby. He wasn't even leery of people; I got within three feet of him, crouched down and took this picture. It doesn't convey just how tiny he is. I don't think he was more than 3 1/2" from the ground to the top of his ears. I had to crop out half of the picture taken with full zoom to get this image.

He may have been small but he wasn't stupid: he didn't get more than 6 or 8 feet from his burrow, and when he moved around he stayed hunkered down, as if he was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. I didn't see Mama anywhere but he's probably too small to be on his own. This might be his first foray into the big wide world. Soon, he'll be raiding my bird feeders and living under my heat pump. Oh, they grow up so fast!