I planted like a hundred alpine and musk strawberries.
I noticed the rabbits really seem to enjoy eating the leaves (and the fruit, but more concerning was all the leaves were gone for me initially).
I had to fence it in with a small 12-15" high fence i step over. The small baby rabbits somehow get in the 2" squares, but rarely and Im fine with that. I *think* the crows also occasionally go after the leaves.
After i fenced it in, nothing went after the leaves at least, so i think the squirrels/chipmunks at worst got some 1st year fruit, if any.

I planted one Alpine and one conventional strawberry (Ozark Beauty) in 2010 (yes, a small sample size...). This year, nothing touched the Alpine and it had lots of tiny berries. I got a few medium-sized berries from the OB, then something ate the rest (10+ berries) all in one day, while they were still green. The alpine seems lower maintenance based on the above and that it isn't sending out runners. But, I'm not crazy about the Alpine berries and it takes too many to fill my mouth :)

I took a bunch of the OB runners last fall and transplanted them to the garden where they went wild last summer- I'm too soft about cutting out runners.

btw, space them well. One mistake I made was spacing mine at 12" and I think 24" would be better to walk in between the rows.
At 12", be4 i put the garden fence, I couldn't see the rabbits hiding in there haha, since it looks like mostly groundcover.
Im growing them spaced between those $20 landscape weed barriers you buy at Lowes, with a little mulch on top of that. Pretty nice as no weeds growing between the rows and it lasts 20years.

btw Mike at the thestrawberrystore.com has some interesting alpine seeds/plants and on the About Us page have links to his other alpine websites that have good info. I grew mostly seeds but got a couple quickstarts of unusual varieties from him.

Hi, I've grown Alpines for years. Squirrels go for a more fragrant, larger berry. Alpines are a simply unique berry, that is quite sour, little to no fragrance that is the 'strong scent of strawberry'. Most critters don't even know its there. An occasional bird might take a bite but thats about it. The best part of Alpines is that they do not throw out runners. They do self-seed however, which you can control.

I guess I will plant them out and monitor the fruits if we get any this year. We are fortunate that we don't have rabbits here because there is a healthy population of fox here. But the other critters are breeding like mad and I don't have the heart to kill them. We also have a lot of birds but they are easily thwarted with bird netting.

The one I planted is Fragola di Bosco, an Italian alpine strawberry. I haven't decided if I want to plant all of them in the ground or keep some in containers. The spacing advice is really helpful!

Biggest problem with mine is the dog likes to pee on them.