Back to Gardening Chapter 6, Dealing With Pests - Part A: Mammals

In this chapter I give my take on dealing with pests, starting with mammals in Part A. In this installment, I discuss squirrels, chipmunks, mice, voles and moles.

***Apologies folks - this installment is almost a week overdue. It was unavoidable due to other competing priorities in my life - but I will stay on track with an article a week. Next article will be out in a day or two***

A garden pest is any animal or microorganism that can negatively affect the health of a plant. Sometimes they eat parts of the plant, and sometimes they simply disrupt the growing environment of the plant. Sometimes one pest can make a plant vulnerable to another pest, and the second pest does the real damage, while the first pest was the initial cause of the damage. Sometimes it can be very difficult to figure out exactly what pest is causing a problem - and sometimes it’s not even obvious that a pest is causing the problem at all. Suffice it to say, there are many types of garden pests, and thus, a chapter on every one of them would be very, very long indeed - so for this chapter - I will limit the scope to a more practical discussion of mammals, birds and insects.

Part A: Mammals

The main problem with most mammalian pests is that they can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. They each pose different challenges depending on size and habit. On the bright side - once the pest has been identified, there are solutions. Let’s start with the small ones and work our way to the big.

Squirrels, chipmunks, mice and voles

Squirrels, chipmunks, mice, voles are all problematic in the same ways: (1) they will eat almost anything given the right conditions; (2) they are small and can easily get through most barriers and fences; and, (3) they can burrow and/or use existing burrows to go under barriers and so they can appear almost anywhere they want. In general, having one or two around is not a problem, but if there is a population explosion (which can happen sometimes for various reasons), then they start getting adventurous with their diets and can do a lot of damage - especially to young seedlings if they develop a taste for them.

Voles look a lot like mice - but they tend to have rounder bodes, and their tails are not hairless. Voles are, generally, more typical than mice in gardens [source]