In article LKtvc.750$%F2.264@attbi_s04, "Felice Friese"
wrote:

"Cereus-validus" wrote in message
om...
You have chipmonks?

Are they that religious order devoted to making tollhouse cookies? Or are
they that cult that only makes potato chips?

Chipmunks don't make tunnels. snip

Like hell they don't! Mine not only make their own tunnels but they use an
underground drain to get from the back of the house to the front. Maybe they
make their cookies in there.

Felice
on Cape Cod

Chipmunks build tunnels to get from one chamber to the next, & over years,
this system of underground housing can become elaborate, especially with
females, though generally there is only two or three chambers & merely
enough tunnels to get from one to the next chamber, & to provide emergency
escape locations. Often their entrances are difficult to find, they are so
unobtrusive, intentionally so lest they invite digging predators.

Usually only one chipmunk lives in a burrow because they're not a communal
species (unless they're actually lined ground squirrels, which are
communal), but during estrus temporary couples may live together, &
females' larger burrows will have kits & adolescents for a while, though
when they reach adolescence they're usually leave.

Very rarely males have been observed helping raise young, but usually he
lives somewhere else entirely; almost never the mother tolerates her young
when they are adults, but often instead of shooing them out, the mother
will move to new territory to get away from her offspring, & a dominant
female offspring will take over the old burrow & shoo away her siblings.
The population is usually controlled by their own reluctance to live in
any ongoing way in close proximity.

The tunnels are not like mole tunnels. Chipmunks make them deeper, & they
exist to get from chamber to chamber, not to hunt for food near the
surface like a mole. Tunnels are usually well below bulbs & not harmful to
plants. An excavating chimpmunk will even circumvent thick root systems of
shrubs just to keep the digging labors minimal; they are tunnelers of
least resistance, so might really enjoy tunnelling through a newly-turned
area if ground was loosened to over a foot depth. It could happen, but is
rare, that their tunnels pose any problem to plants; they're are strongly
in harmony with their environment & do much more good than harm.

Chipmunks are stupider than squirrels, & don't often thrive where domestic
cats are living. Though excellent climbers they are not particularly
arboreal (so as not to be in conflict with squirrels) & this makes them
more vulnerable to cats & dogs.

If a female & her transient family members did get established in a
garden, they would probably do minimal damage, & be great fun to observe
since they're strongly diurnal & out & about a lot & very playful. They
will of course harvest from a vegetable garden which can be annoying, but
they are not usually harmful to an ornamental garden, & they're generally
easily kept away from veggies if they're given a feeding station with nuts
& corn. Since they eat things like tomatoes more for the water than for
food, a water feature in the garden that they can reach to drink from also
helps keep them out of a veggy garden (unless you grow corn, nothing will
bait keep them away from that). As a rule, they do less harm in a garden
than sundry songbirds, or one's pet dog, & before deciding they're pests,
really think strongly about their activity & if you're overreacting, &
assess whether they can't actually be accomodated & loved.

If someone really has an exception-chipmunk that is an honest-to-shit
destructive little pest, check with Fish & Game, & Animal Control, in case
it is a protected species, & someone may even come out with a trap to
catch them live for you, or at least loan you free a suitable trap &
inform you what to do with captives (release elsewhere may be illegal).

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com