Chipmunk Envy

[lydamorehouse]

Image: Hidey chippy. Can you spot the chipmunk? She is fat-cheeked and hiding under the hydrangea blossoms.

Sadly, however, this is NOT MY YARD. I took this picture while out on a brief, lunchtime walk with Shawn. Since the pandemic started, we have taken to hopping in the car and driving to different parts of St. Paul to, as my family might have said while I was growing up, "snoot at" houses. Snooting, in our family parlance, was not really snooping or being snotty, but more being just a little too curious about how other people live. I have always enjoyed snooting, and so we make it part of our day to wander around and comment on cool architectural features and nifty gardens. I have been posting pictures over at Facebook, if you are curious where our walks take us.

Today, we were over in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood, which is west of the Saint Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. It is one of those neighborhoods where all the lawns are expansive and all the houses are funky/cool, but also well-kept up. I guess, rich, in another word. Still, I don't see why rich people should get all the chipmunks.


Image: chipmunk scooting past a pile of compost bags someone has left at the top of their stairs.

So, I currently have a tab open that is entitled "How To Attract Chipmunks To Your Yard."  Someone tell me why this is a bad idea. I feel like this is probably a bad idea, but LOOK AT THE CUTENESS.

Comments

[mtbc]

Coming to the US from England, the first time I saw a chipmunk I had to describe it to somebody to find out what I'd seen!

[lydamorehouse]

WAIT. This is like the whole "lemonade" debacle all over again. DO THEY NOT HAVE CHIPMUNKS IN THE UK???!! Or do they just call them something else?

[mtbc]

No chipmunks here, no. When Disney animated Winnie the Pooh and introduced Gopher, to us it was bizarre given we don't have gophers either! Or groundhogs, etc. We have other things but it was interesting for me to live in the US and see my first opossum and the like - something where I had to ask a fellow witness!

[spiderplanet]

We have rabbits, chipmunks, and squirrels in our neighborhood. *IF* the chipmunk is even destructive, it is definitely the least destructive of the three.

[lydamorehouse]

Wow, I apparently missed this influx of comments somehow.

My reading mostly agrees with you, but they are rodents who burrow, apparently.

[offcntr]

Though squirrel family members are cute AF, I'd rather not have them in the house. Had fox squirrels in the insulation between ceiling and roof of my studio, my first summer here. Stinking up the place and sifting pink fiberglass scraps down onto my work. Finally found a gap in the siding, under the eaves, where they were getting in. Waited till daytime when they were out foraging, and nailed 1/4-inch hardware cloth (steel mesh) over the hole. Found lots of toothmarks around the edge later, but they weren't able to get back in.

They regularly get revenge by burying thousands of acorns in our front lawn.

We had greyjacks--California ground squirrels--for about half of last summer, during which they burrowed under the foundation of the house, into the crawl space, where I was worried they'd tear up all the expensive new insulation. Don't know what happened, though, they disappeared around mid-August. Pretty things, like polka-dotted grey squirrels. Still see them a little north of us, in the filbert orchards along River Road.

[lydamorehouse]

We will not discuss the squirrel currently living in our soffets.

I still say chipmunks are cute. :-)

[silverceri]

I watched too much Chip and Dale as a child and think chipmunks are adorable. My mother's argument against them can be distilled to:

They are pests who eat her gardens bulbs and roots. They are also diggers and burrowers who undermine the property causing it and foundations to sink. Also, if you have stone walls they ruin them, and if that's holding up part of your property, well that's an expensive fix along with where your foundations/land have sunk.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, I read about the digging issue. I mean, we don't have them, so this is just a hypothetical issue anyway.

They are darned cute, though.