The Dirt on Groundhogs

We recently discovered that we had a groundhog living under the corner of our garage. At least, that's where the hole we found was.  A hydrangea bush covers that particular area so we may never have noticed it until fall if my neighbour had not happened to see a groundhog in our back yard.  Once he was spotted, we all watched it for a couple of days. I even saw it chasing a baby rabbit out of the clover patch at one point.  As cute as he was, we really didn't want him tunneling under things on our property so we went out and purchased a live trap.  The very idea of that must have let him know he wasn't welcome as we had not seen him for over a week after that.

My hubby decided it was time to fill in the hole, figuring if the groundhog was still around he would try to dig it out again. Well, hey, that's what the nuisance chipmunk did a few years ago.  Upon exploring the hole it was discovered that it not only went under the garage but under the patio stones as well.  One patio stone was removed and I guess he discovered that wasn't going to be a good way to go for an escape route as it didn't go very far in that direction. It was found that he went from digging horizontally to vertically.  After a little probing, we found the hole went down quite a distance.  Checking on line I learned that the average burrow depth is five feet!  I guess this was the pipe down to that and the patio stone was just a protective roof. 

When the chipmunk dug its hole under the garage it made this big pile of dirt. The groundhog made no such pile.  I was curious as to where he put all that dirt so I looked online for the answer. Apparently, there are a lot of smart asses on the internet.   I asked the simple question,  "Where does the dirt from a groundhog hole go?" What I got from answers.com was "Traditionally the answer to this question is that since the object in question is a hole, there is no dirt in it." 

And the next answer I got was from Joan Morris of the Bay Area News Group when she answered the same question from someone else. She said, "This isn't widely known, but gophers finance their lavish underground lifestyle by selling all that excavated soil to garden centers, which then sell it to us to use in our gardens." 

Well, to be fair, she later explained that the ground beneath our feet here is not as solid as we think and that it is actually filled with air pockets due to all our digging and tilling in our gardens and lawns. The groundhogs collapse and compact these air pockets while building their tunnels. They use the excess dirt to fill in abandoned tunnels and some of it might even make it to be mounded around the entrance. We certainly saw no evidence of that, which is why I went searching for an answer.

The hole did not fill entirely with the dirt available and I still have no idea where the rest went.  I will have to dig some out of the garden to fill the hole the rest of the way.  But not yet, I guess, as the little devil is back and he's trying to reestablish the hole under the garage.  The trap will now be bated with cantaloupe as I have been assured by a couple of people, and the internet that they just love that stuff.  Wish us luck before the garage disappears into a sinkhole.

Smaller Is Not Necessarily Better

When I first moved into this house, 38 years ago, there was no wildlife to be seen in this neighbourhood at all. The only evidence of life, other than humans and plants, was the the early morning sound of a rooster crowing about a block away.

Things have changed.

Keep in mind, I do live in a village, and creatures have to cross roads to get to me. They often have to pass houses with dogs too. Heck, I had one myself for 16 years, but that didn't seem to have any effect.

First we got the deer. They ate my tulips, and later much of my vegetable garden, until I finally gave up trying to grow many of the things they seemed particularly fond of. Then the squirrels came along, and not long after that we had a skunk who walked beneath our bedroom window every night about 11PM. One year there was a groundhog in my neighbour's yard, but he never came over here. I did see a family of ducks walk across my front lawn and through my flower garden once, and I found evidence that a bear had come to visit my apple tree, in the back yard, one other time. A beaver came out of the drain pipe at the end of the street, and chopped down my purple sand cherry bush, despite the fact that I'm a good six blocks from the water.  The raccoons arrived last year, but so far they are more interested in my neighbour's house than mine. I hope it stays that way. The creature that we've had to deal with this month is a chipmunk. 

Squirrels are fine. They may take their share of my apples, but that's okay as I always have more than enough of those. Chipmunks, on the other hand, are nervy little devils. They have been known to scoot between my hubby's legs when he's busy welding. That could startle a person at just the wrong moment. They can also do a lot of damage to vehicular wiring, even if you drive that vehicle every day. Their burrowing activity can cause significant structural damage by undermining foundations, concrete patios, steps, and sidewalks. They may also be destructive to gardens when they dig up and eat bulbs and seeds. They are not something I want hanging around here.

Our house has a garage that was built on later, and this year a chipmunk discovered that there was a narrow crack between the two buildings. It then took on the job of excavating a new home underneath garage floor.  The little critter has dug out a great deal of dirt, which is how we knew what was going on.

First we shoved the dirt back into the hole, but that was a waste of time. Then we stuffed the hole with rocks and even steel wool, which works well for mice, but apparently not for chipmunks. Mice use their teeth, of course, while chipmunks use their front feet.  No matter what we put in the hole, it just dug it back out.

We put out a mouse trap, right in front of where he kept making a hole, and he threw a rock at it to disable it. 

Then we tried filling the hole with cement.  The chipmunk dug under that.

That did it.  It was time to get a live trap.  But just for good measure we filled the hole in one more time.  Then, after spending close to $40 on the trap, there was no sign of the darn critter for several days. My hubby thought perhaps he'd trapped it inside the hole the last time he filled it in, but I figure, if the chipmunk can dig inwards, it can dig itself out too.  It certainly had made a big enough cavity by then, if you went by how much dirt had been thrown out of the hole over time.

We had just felt that the chipmunk was finally gone, one way or another, when suddenly there he was, inside the trap.  But not, of course, until he had dug out a lot more dirt. He has been moved to a new neighbourhood, in the countryside, where he will have to work hard to not only build a new home, but also gather a whole new store of food for the winter.

I do hope this is the end of this story.