Striped chipmunks are very cute. They're not as destructive as Red Squirrels, they zoom around, stare at us, sometimes sneak up and jump on old Angus while he is asleep and then run away . They are stuffing their little cheeks full of sunflower seeds right now, and I'm always amazed how much they can fit in there. They ALSO dig little tunnels in my herb garden, steal my spinach seeds and sneak the occasional strawberry. They create little stashes of sunflower seeds amongst my veggies that have to be pulled up. Sometimes though, something as beautiful as this shows up out of the blue, and I'm grateful for the rascals. ( even though they wear out their welcome at times ) I walked out to this growing at the base of the hill before the mountain behind our house yesterday
I liked your posting, Mel. Those chipmunks are attractive beasts. What about that lovely lone sunflower. It looks so good. I really like sunflowers.
Those little buggers are getting very plentiful around my yard. While they are cute, they are not my friends. I have had to stop planting sunflowers, they dig holes all over the yard, they heckle the dog and eat the heads off my zinnias. This year they got every single plum off my plum tree!!
Aaaaargggggh ! Netty, that is awful. They must be tough to control. As pretty as they are, I am glad that we don’t have ‘em. I will have to settle for seeing other people’s. What rascals these turn out to be.
Sounds like they have worn out their welcome there. Defnitely not a case of "more is merrier". I think anything in too many numbers can be a pain in the butt for sure. I usually only have two. The most I've had is four. I plant some sunflowers for them away from my gardens ,so they eat the sunflower heads in the late summer/early fall instead of my stuff. Occasionally that works hahaha The natural habitat around here feeds them, but they do mess with some of my gardens. There are a lot of natural preditors, not to mention a very sweet crafty barn cat that helps my population stay low. I haven't seen this guy in over a week now. I enjoy the harmless Garter Snakes we have. They eat, voles, mice, and large bugs. I wouldn't want my yard overpopulated with them though. ( shudder).
Since the covid lockdown period we've had an influx of wildlife interfering with stuff in the gardens. The rabbits have been doing what rabbits do best and the vast families of partridge have pruned most of the plants - sometimes with surprisingly good results (not always though). Stoats and weasels have appeared as well as the hedgehogs and occasional badger. The latest addition is an abundance of farm cats imported by a new neighbour, and you can imagine the results of that!! Zigs caught one of them in his cactus house the other day, and it had done some considerable damage to the plants!! We decided we just have to adjust to this situation and try to adopt a ''live and let live'' attitude which can be difficult at times but not impossible.
