In the winter or spring seasons, you can often find chipmunks in the house and garden. It’s natural to feel awing them due to their cute looks. But they have dark sides too.
So, are chipmunks destructive? Yep, they cause structural harm to indoor and outdoor areas. The chipmunks in fact ruin the farm, bite humans, and carry infectious bacteria, which make them destructive. Not to mention that they also destroy crops.
To know the truth in detail, keep on reading this guide as I’ll explain different stuff related to this topic!
Reason Chipmunks Are Destructive to Home & Garden!
To understand whether can chipmunks be destructive or not, you might need to know the effect they make to ruin in your house and garden. I’ll list down their damages in two parts so that you can know better.
Chipmunks Are Destructive to Homes
Chipmunks is a destructive animal to the home apartments. They enter inside your home in the time of winter to find shelter. Look at the reasons why they are baleful:
They Cause Structural Damage
In no time, they will start to make burrows under your house if they find any safe zone. That can cause structural damage which can be risky for you and your family members to walk.
They aim to make their house on the undermining foundation, concrete patios, steps, sideways, and similar zones. As these places contain busy foot traffic, there is a good chance of accidents during rush.
Bites A Lot When Feel Unsafe
Sometimes the chipmunks give birth to babies. Before you can guess how many chipmunks live together, they’ll invade your home. By seeing these, if you take any action which threatens them personally, they will bite you awfully.
The chipmunks can be aggressive! If they get triggered poorly, all of them will come to you to scratch and bite. This kind of behavior is risky if you have little kids.
They Carry Illness Which Is Spreadable
All chipmunks can get ill, and their body carries bacteria that are not safe for humans. In case, you don’t know what kind of diseases they carry, here are the lists:
- Plague.
- Salmonella.
- Hantavirus.
- Leptospirosis.
- Encephalitis.
The chipmunks spread bacteria to the human body (adults, older, and kids) of any age. This is another reason they are called harmful at home.
Chipmunks Are Destructive to Gardens
It is a common fact that they will ruin the garden if living for more than 10 days. They are hungry all the time and eats most kind of grains as well as veggies if they locate.
You see, they are talented to dig underneath the farm to ruin crops and able to climb trees to destroy food above too. Here are a few lists of food that they eat from the garden:
- Roots
- Seeds
- Acorns
- Mushrooms
- Cucumbers
- Hazelnuts
- Pecans
- Strawberry
- Grapes
- Green Grasses
- Apples
- Dry Raisings
- Oats
- Tomatoes
- Fungi
- Carrots
- Oranges
- Pears
- Sweet Potatoes
- Beans
Other than food damage, they can cause ornamental harm to your garden. If the chipmunks can’t go inside your house, burrows will be under a beautiful flower garden as they will dig underneath them and ruin the plants. This can cause severe damage to the farm.
Chipmunks Destructive to Property
The cute and tiny chipmunks can be dangerous or safe to the property based on their behavior. There are some kinds that tend to ruin the land by making big dents live there with 8 – 10 chipmunks.
While other kinds don’t really harm the property even if they make a burrow. Yes, if you include the plants as property, then all kinds of chipmunks will harm them severely.
Destructive Types of Chipmunks!
Chipmunks, the family of squirrels, come in 3 types that can be defined by looking at their color, pattern, and size. These Includes:
Eastern Chipmunk
Also known as Tamias Striatus, they are mahogany in color with black stripes. These kinds of chipmunks live in wooden and urban parks (near North America and South Canada).
They are pretty much destructive to live in the home, garden, and property due to their harsh burrowing act.
Siberian Chipmunk
They are mixed in a color that includes brown, white, and yellow with deep brown stripes. You can also call them Eutamias Sibiricus which mostly live in North Asia, Russia, China, Korea, and Hokkaidō!
They can switch from cute to aggressive mode quickly which makes them bad for home areas. However, most of them won’t harm property (excluding farms).
Least Chipmunk
The least chipmunks (Neotamias Minimus) are tiny in size that contains a slightly orange shade body with deep brown stripes. They are common in North America. Most of them are not destructive to humans, food, property, and home.
Chipmunks Destroy Things
All chipmunks have sharp 22 teeth (at max) that can bite and leave a big mark. They can verily destroy the stuff if chewing one time.
Plus, the chipmunks have a habit of biting anything that has soft skin to thorn away. Here are the 7 things that most of them damage inside and outside the home:
- Clothes
- Electric wire
- Wood surface
- Plastic
- Insulation
- Plants and herbs
- Sheetrock
Get Rid of Chipmunks Naturally by Trying This
You never know how long do chipmunks live and continue to harass by destroying homes to outside things! So, take care of them ASAP by doing this:
- Before trying any of the given steps, you might need to locate where do chipmunks live to get rid of them permanently.
- Then, make a natural paste using 2 cayenne papers, 1 garlic, 3 cloves, and 2 drops of lemon essential oil in the mixture machine. Add 1 cup of water to the mixture and keep it inside a spray bottle.
- Spray the mixture on the basement, exterior door, garden areas (especially on the farm border), and other places where they appear frequently.
- Do it daily in the morning and evening.
Wrap Up
As you know how are chipmunks destructive to both home and outdoor, get rid of them by using a natural solution.
It’s vital to know the destructive level of these kinds of annoying creatures as there’s a law to not hurt animals that are not harmful.
Whatever you do, be sure the techniques are not inhuman!
