Rosco Missed the Bus!

Rosco, the smallest and shrewdest of the adolescent chipmunk "punks", showed up only after I had relocated both parents and three siblings. As you can see here, Rosco narrowly escaped the first encounter with my "peanut-butter gangplank", but after a few minor adjustments, fell into the trash can and took a special ride to the forest on Basalt Mountain, to join the family. Bye bye, Rosco!

BUSTED PUNKS!

I built a simple gangplank hanging over a tall trash can, and held the back of the gangplank down with pushpins, so the punks would learn to trust it, and venture out to eat the peanut butter I'd placed on the end.

My thinking was that I could catch all three of them this way, and release them altogether. I set my rig up and got them quite used to it in the first 24 hours. I figured I'd give them two full days of the illusion, and pull the pins on the third day. However, on day two, I came back from a morning meeting, and one of them was already in the bucket. It must have fallen in when all three of them were crowding the end of the gangplank to get some PB. Oh well, I thought, I guess I'll have to pull the pins today, and so I did.

Within an hour, there were skid marks in the peanut butter, and all three chipmunk punks were in the bucket. Looks like day three is relocation day!

Chipmunk Punks

Happy Fathers Day!
I awoke early for a bike ride up Basalt Mountain to release the second chipmunk where I left the first one a couple days before, thinking I'm finally rid of them eating my garden. I returned the have-a-heart trap to Jerome, who asked, "So, did you catch them all?"
"I don't know about all", I replied, "but I got the two I knew about".
Sure enough, when I got back home, I saw first one, then two, and later all three adolescent chipmunks. Frickin' adorable! They have come out of hiding, and are investigating the places where they smell either their parents' scent, or the smell of the plants their parents were feeding them. They romp around, jumping and landing clumsily, rolling in the dirt pile in our alley project, and of course, standing in the lettuce patch and eating their fill of our salad crop.
For Fathers Day, I broke up a chipmunk family, and now must temporarily adopt their babies. I guess I'll have to build a safe trap in which I can catch all three, and take them away together, to the forest where I left their parents. Either that, or I must share my garden with them.