One of these became the favored roosting spot for a flock of black vultures. I have a neighbor, a retired college professor, whose backyard is shaded by a row of enormous Norway spruces. I must admit, though, that I never took to it. She adored this creature, who was smart and playful and clearly was attached to her. I had a girlfriend once (yes, before I was married) who was also a scientist and who had adopted a retired laboratory rat. That, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. When I posed this question to my wife (a level-headed scientist), she responded that chipmunks are cute and that rats, with their pointy noses and hairless tails, are creepy. Chipmunks, along with squirrels, are demons for looting new plantings of small bulbs such as crocuses, and like rats, chipmunks are burrowers, creating tunnels that may damage the roots of desirable plants. What’s sure is that chipmunks are far more serious than rats as garden pests. If cornered, chipmunks, like rats, will bite. Depending on where you live, they may also host leptospirosis, salmonella, hantavirus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, encephalitis, and, of course, rabies.Ĭhipmunks are less prone to invade our houses, it is true, though they will occasionally gnaw their way into attics. For example, chipmunks are disease vectors: out west they are carriers of plague and here in the east they are among the most dangerous reservoirs of Lyme disease. In fact, most of the charges leveled at rats also apply to chipmunks. Why is it that the chipmunk, also a rodent, passes as cute, while rats are almost universally hated? And the unfairness of the situation struck me. Yet later, as I was pondering this visitation, I spotted a chipmunk sitting in the crotch of the sourwood tree ( Oxydendron arboreum) that tops the tangle of bare-knuckled perennials my wife and I grow in front of our house.
![cute chipmunk cute chipmunk](https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/1421362.jpg)
![cute chipmunk cute chipmunk](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/2a/23/f52a232d4f08d60e4fa0436241dfa765.jpg)
I didn’t hesitate I know that if the rat proliferates, the neighbors rightfully will complain and the chickens will have to go. Indeed, I found the mouth of a burrow in one end of their run, and I took measures to evict the burrower. I could guess what had drawn the creature: we have a henhouse full of geriatric chickens who are not the neatest of creatures. The other day, a visiting friend gasped when he saw a rat run across a corner of the suburban Connecticut yard where I garden during the week.