I was told that the feline member of our family was sent to the basement to dispatch of the pest, but was unable to get it's claws on it the first time out. The second time around, Chester caught the chipmunk, but made a beeline upstairs - all the time the chipmunk was still alive and wriggling in our cat's mouth. Thank god my good wife had the sense to close the door or the cat would have either turned the rodent inside out on our nice carpeting, or worse yet, decided that it was his new toy and turned it loose on the upper level.
After these failures my wife told me about something that her mom used to do. You get a five gallon bucket and a makeshift ramp, baited with sunflower seeds. The chipmunk walks up the ramp and eventually drops into the water and drowns.
Nonsense, an old wives tale I said. Get a trap, I said.
Well, the first try the great beast took the seeds - but the second time around, look what we have - dinner! Not really, it was disposed of properly, as in I tossed it in my woods behind my house.
I was surprised that it didn't float. And I owe an apology to my MIL for doubting that this would work. We are going to try to make a small dent in the chippy population outside with this technique as there are just too many.So how did it get inside the house? We have lived there for nine years and have never experienced a problem such as this. The best we can figure is that he found an old dryer vent that we didn't know existed and eventually pushed his way too far in and plopped down into our basement. Yes, we are sealing that up and looking for any other surprise access places.
5 comments:
Here's a fun way to catch chipmunks in your yard: Fill a gallon milk jug with water. Place the jug upside down on the opening of the burrow hole. The chipmunk will go up to escape the flood and into your gallon jug. Hours of entertainment for the kiddos.
A professional caulk guy (yes, they do exist, not sure about pro duct tapers, though, aka wisconsin aluminizers) found and closed off the access which mice AND chipmunks were entering our house. You may need to inspect closely, as others WILL find the path that has been exploited. Two piles of chipmunk dung found in the basement rafters was enough to make me put a halt to it. Now, I just plink them off in the backyard with a technique Gerry might just enlighten LITGM to. Good luck!
Basement sealing starts today. We are going to try it ourselves to start and see what happens.
My Baikal air pistol will be getting a workout in the meantime.
Me and the neighbor together have popped dozens of munks and grey squirrels this summer with .177 pellet rifles. Place three small piles of cheap birdseed mix on the ground about two feet apart. Wait a while. You may attract as many as three rodents to your piles. If you shoot one the others don't seem to notice because they are so busy gorging on the seed. If you're good and reload quickly you can pop all three. Dispose of the kills and start over. I shoot down from my upstairs office to avoid stray pellet ricochet.
No matter how many we pop they just...keep...coming.
I would like to see a photo of the way you connect the ramp to the bucket. Do the seeds simply float in the water as shown here?
The milk jug sounds fun but I want mine DEAD!
Yep, the bait and shoot thing has been working for me too, but like you said there seems to be an endless supply. We might get some industrial poison and nuke the whole population but that is still up in the air and might be illegal.
As far as the ramp goes, I will take a photo next time the wife hooks it up. Frankly I don't know how she did it.
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