Chipmunks, squirrels, robins, ants, etc all love strawberries. I make up a gallon of ant bait per Mike McGraths formula and have ant feeders every three feet. I used to use the black bird netting but the birds just got tangled up in it which made for other problems. Now I use white netting from the fabric stores, Walmarts is the cheapest at .57 per yard. I bought two twelve yard pieces and overlaid them on my bed. The birds see the white netting and don't try to fly into it. If I get ambitious this fall, I am going to stitch the two pieces together. Tonight I set out the small animal trap to see if I can remove the bothersome squirrel.

Ground feed the birds and chipmunks come out of the woodwork. All our birds are afraid of them, even Red Bellied Woodpecker. Squirrels are only ones not afraid of chipmunks and chase them off...only as far as they're willing to chase them. Something already raided a Robin's nest and pecked into one of the eggs. Found shell on ground with hole instead of usual cracking as when baby emerges. Since nest about 6.5 feet up assume was another bird. Suet in double wired "cage within a cage" has been eaten continuously by raccoon which has even come out in broad daylight to get it. No shortage of chipmunks or any other critters this year when food is put out for birds. Chipmunks run right past me into garage where we "play" hide and seek until they chirp and run off under bushes or woods. There's a wandering cat in the neighborhood who saunters up the driveway and just looks at me. I give her directions to the chipmunk, rabbit and groundhog holes but she just ignores me and goes on her way. There's even a red fox that trots through once in a while (gorgeous animal) but don't see any reduction in small critter population. I'm guessing as long as there are seeds/corn on the ground there will be chipmunks around.

Yep, I get a kick out of them despite some of the less savory aspects of having them around. Last year I repaired the porch on our grandaughter's playhouse which had rotted through. It was particle board and came off in big messy chunks. I piled the scrap on top of her sandbox. My mistake. The cover for her sandbox was one of their favorite places to nap and the foot tall pile of nasty wood didn't deter them one bit. I looked out the back door and she was laying on top of the wood. Ah yes, the raccoons. I'm quite familiar with them. We've had one or two families come through every spring for 3 or 4 years now.We have one of those Intex swimming pools for our grandaughter. I built a collapsible octagonal fence to go around it to keep them from getting at the sides, which are soft. Worked great at keeping the sides safe but it didn't stop them from getting on the cover. One night I heard *SPLASH* outside. I get the flashlight and look outside and there are two baby raccoons trying to get out of the pool. They had jumped on the cover, the cover went under, and while they were clawing to get out they shredded the pool cover. Ours sounds just like the second one you mentioned. Ours just has the fountain in it but it doesn't bother the ducks as long as it's not on. Ours sits in a little "well" that I made out of small retaining wall blocks. Underneath also serves as a nest to chipmunks in the winter. They burrow beneath the wall and set up shop in the space between the wall and the liner.

I don't have the time (and to be honest, the inclination) to go into it all in detail but you cannot equate growing in a container to growing in the ground. Two completely separate set of circumstances! Containers are not bathtubs - there is no impediment to free drainage (if with a proper drainhole(s) and a decent media). They do not simulate at all the slow drainage of a clay enclosed planting hole, which can sometimes hold water around the root system of plants for days, which no container should ever do!! If you doubt it, do a side by side test to see: a container filled with a fast draining media and the clay planting hole filled with the same. The water will run freely out of the container but there is nowhere for the water to run freely out of the clay....hence the bathtub. It is just soil physics.