Bogieblog: Cleaning UP

July 07, 2018

Cleaning UP

The "woods" behind the house have been a catch all for limbs/branches, shrubs and leaves. I haven't contributed for a couple of years (taking such stuff to the dump), but one pile in particular was growing with out my help. In May I saw a rat come out from under it to eat bird seed, which I immediately stopped supplying. Then there were a bunch of chipmunks taking residence in the woods. Sure, they are cuter, but can be destructive in their own way. So over a couple of weekends I started cleaning out all the old, dead stuff - including breaking up the den which was about 3 feet high and had a diameter of about 4 feet. The rat wasn't in residence and hadn't been for some time since I didn't find a midden in the den. From my research, they keep a room for their duty but also move often between several set homes. That room, if used recently is purported to reek to high heaven when opened, so I was glad to find no bad smell.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures before I started. But here is a shot from April 2018, before the den really started to grow. You can see a couple of openings where chipmunks used it for shelter and had tunnels.

Lets just leave it that I made two dump runs on 6/28 - one containing 9 bags of leaves and small stuff. And then took in 3 loads last Saturday morning and 2 more loads that afternoon.

This is where the den used to be. This is before I cleaned up a bit further to the right last Saturday. You should have seen a chipmunk come across where the den used to be. He kept looking around and was obviously thinking, "but I left it right here, I know I did." He even got on top of the small stumps in front and looked around. It was funny to watch, although I felt bad for disturbing his habitat.