A chipmunk's near death experience - a garden saga. [View all]

[Vinca]

Last year I planted ground cherries, one of my favorite things, in my totally fenced in garden and something managed to get in and munch the plants into oblivion. This year the same thing happened, but when I noticed the first couple of destroyed plants I threw some netting over the plants to try to save them. All looked okay until yesterday when I noticed the feasting on the plants had begun again. This morning I found the culprit nearly strangled to death in the netting. A very cute, very noisy, very unhappy chipmunk. Somehow I managed to snip him out of the netting with some scissors and he scampered away no worse for wear. The plants are another matter. I'm now trying a brand new experiment. I took the healthiest looking plants and put them in reusable grocery bags with soil and hung them off the darn fence. Let's see if Mr. Chipmunk can overcome that!