Three years ago, I discovered leaving them a source of water resulted in no further digging or plant damage - since they're digging and eating looking for hydration. And once they quickly learn they have a reliable water source, they'll leave plants alone. These last few years of drought have been doubly hard on gardens as well as the garden "pests".

I just use a clear plastic baked goods type container(s) and place it/them somewhere along the chipmonks' usual runs; and that doesn't necessarily have to be in the gardens themselves - put them where you see chipmonk activity. For me, the results were instantaneous and infinitely more effective than any chemical repellant.

Leaving water doesn't seem to draw other creatures - well, birds will find it and use it as a birdbath.

rat traps baited with peanut butter worked great for me ...

find an exit tunnel .... set and place trap ... invert a large black plastic pot over it all.. check every day or so ...

two years ago i thought i had enormous problems ... it ended up that removal of less than 6 ... reduced the problem significantly ...

like all rodent [yes... its a rodent .. demon rodent] ...problems ... populations ebb and flow .... but if the problem continues .... you have to be proactive ...

IMO ... live trapping .. and moving your problem to someone else's property is not appropriate ...

a rat trap is just a bigger version of a mouse trap ...

good luck

ken

Thanks for the advise. I was thinking of live trapping and moving to a large wooded area far away from houses. Is your issue with live trapping that I could be giving someone else a headache or is there some other reason not to do it?

Hmmm, I have chipmunks all over the place and haven't noticed any plant damage. Are you *sure* the chippies are the criminals?

I can't imagine what else it could be. The worst damage has been done to a raised bed up against the house. They seem to like lilies. Over the summer I found the several Lily plants cut off at the base. They don't eat the plant just chew it off and leave it there. I found a few holes and saw a chipmunk enter it. I haven't seen anything else in the garden so thats what I am assuming it to be. Do you think that I may be mistaken? What ever it is I need to take care of it before my whole garden is gone.

Ken, I would be very careful about trapping (and killing) chipmunks - they act very much like rodents, to be sure (I hate them because there are so many of them, their chirping makes me crazy, and they flattened a part of my perennial garden two years ago because it was in the path they used to get from the wood pile on the side of the house where they liked to hang out, across the patio where I like to hang out, to the bird feeder in the middle of the yard where they like to scavenge for dropped seed. When I went to the hardware store to find something to use to get rid of them, they warned me that it's against the law to kill chipmunks.

And, I've read that they have amazing "homing" abilities, and you can catch them live and move them, but unless you move them 10 miles away or further, they will find their way home (not sure how anybody knows that).

I finally "managed" my problem simply by moving the feeder, so the path between it and the wood pile didn't go through the perennials or across the patio.

Never really thought they were eating any of the plants, but really tramping down the mulch and the soil to the point where it became as hard as concrete, and the flowers there were not doing well!

Good luck with them - not particularly harmful, I don't think, but not a great thing to have around when there are as many of them as I had in my yard!

Still don't think they're the culprit. See link...

Here is a link that might be useful: chipmunk info

linked article says no federal laws ... some states have restrictions ....

i googled using 'killing chipmonks in MI' .. some great stories about plagues and the damage done ... note the county lines article ... 6th one down

in my garden .. pure yellow sand.. hot as heck in summer .. and dry ... they burrow straight down the irrigation lines ... its the only soft sand in late summer.. small and mini hosta tend to sink into the hole the following spring.. lost dozens.. if not 100 ...

that not being bad enough .. the ones to lazy to tunnel.. just shred the irrigation lines for water ...

they have cost me a lot of money ...

i still like them around... its just a numbers game on the size of the population ...

i understand that a lot of you could not or would not ever consider such .... and i wont lecture you on that..

the poster asked for options.. i have provided such ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Not discounting your experience Ken....just that I interpreted the original post as meaning the chipmunks ate/chewed off the plants, which is what I'm questioning/doubting.

Believe it or not the chipmunk did chew off the plants. However they did not eat the plants just chewed them up a bit. Originally I thought maybe rabbits but then I noticed a hole that a chipmunk kept going into. I flooded that hole and everytime a new one would turn up elsewhere. So far this year I haven't noticed any chipmunks around yet but I think that shortly I may set a few traps just in case.