July 21, 2017

The Woodchucks Are Back

Marmota monax, aka woodchuck
(among many aliases)
Only slightly less predictable than the yearly return of the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano each March 19 is the mid-July annual pilgrimage of woodchucks to the Medfield Community Garden in Massachusetts.  Unlike the California event, tourists have yet to take notice of the east coast invasion by multiple members of the extended Marmota monax family, so there is still time to get a ringside seat.

While I had not circled the event on my calendar, I was not the least bit surprised to receive an email Thursday morning from one of the plot holders at the community garden that Betty and I manage.  The gardener, Heather, wrote, “When I arrived at the garden this morning there was a chubby woodchuck munching away in my neighbor's (Ed’s) garden. It looked like he went under the fence so it will need some repairs…”

My immediate response was to dash off a memo to each of the 75 gardeners who grows vegetables in the town-owned garden, reprinting Heather’s email, and warning everyone that the woodchucks (there are always more than one) would not be to content to eat just Ed’s vegetables. I warned he or she will follow their nose and seek out other, vulnerable gardens and will likely post reviews on Yelp!   That, in turn, generated a panicked response from Ed, who said he is on vacation, and asked if I could effect some of those emergency repairs.  I said I would do so.

Before I continue with this story, here is what humankind knows about woodchucks.  The first thing is that they have many aliases.  They have fake IDs identifying themselves as groundhogs, whistlepigs, marmots, and half a dozen lesser-known names.  They are endemic in Canada and call home a swath of the United States running roughly from Minnesota south to Arkansas; swooping down into Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina.  They are thick as thieves in New England.  They are, technically speaking, a large ground squirrel.

The Medfield Community Garden is
more or less a woodchuck's idea
of heaven
Woodchucks prefer open country and the edges of woodlands.  They live in underground burrows with multiple entrances.  The Medfield Community Garden occupies a one-acre site in a former farm field (the aforementioned ‘open country’) surrounded, in turn, by woodlands that are protected town conservation land.  And, did I mention that hunting is prohibited in Medfield?  “Location, location, location.”

In my warning memo, I wrote that everyone should make certain the fence around their garden was buried.  I said, Yes, I urged you to do this back in April, and most of you took that advice to heart.  So, the real advice is to make certain your fence is still buried in the ground at least three or four inches.  If it is not, or if you did not bury it because it was too much trouble or you assumed the only hungry wildlife you needed to thwart were sheep or capybaras, take the time to bury it now.”

The gap under this fence at the
community garden is three inches.
Anything can crawl in and out.
A quick survey of the community garden this morning revealed that my estimate was a little optimistic.  Fewer than half of the 75 gardeners had buried their fences; including, of course, Ed.  While Ed’s fence at least sat on the ground, many fences in the garden began a good two or three inches above the soil line.

I further wrote, If your plot is on the perimeter of the community garden, consider driving wood or bamboo stakes through vulnerable points of entry.  Make them four to six inches apart and drive them down at least six inches.  Woodchucks are fundamentally lazy.  They won’t try to figure out why they can’t get into your garden; they’ll just go for easier pickings.  And make certain you gate isn’t the Achilles Heel of your protection plan.  Make certain it is tight at the bottom, has no obvious gaps, and consider those wood or bamboo stakes.”

I repaired Ed's garden as best I could
This is what I did for Ed.  I found the two points of entry where the woodchuck had moseyed in, and added ten or twelve stakes to seal those points.  Of course, since none of Ed’s fence is buried, that woodchuck or his cousin Ralphie has another 96 liner feet of fence to crawl under.

Bobbex-R won't kill
woodchucks, but it will
annoy them mightily
My next piece of advice involved chemical warfare.  “Invest in a spray bottle of Bobbex-R.  Bobbex-R doesn’t kill woodchucks; it just smells awful to them, causing them to avoid your garden for a more palatable one.  Apply it around the perimeter of your garden – not on anything you plan to eat.  A 32-ounce ready-to-spray bottle will cover 1,000 square feet, which means a full-size plot can be sprayed ten times; a half-size plot can be sprayed 14 times.  As an application lasts two to three weeks, one bottle will see you through to the end of the gardening season.”

Will people in the community garden buy a rodent repellent?  The uniform price seems to be $32.47 for that ready-to-spray solution.  Given that each garden has several hundred dollars of produce growing in it, it seems like a bargain.  I sniffed the air this morning for the tell-tale scent of putrefied eggs and garlic.  Nothing so far.

“If you find a place in your fence where an animal has entered, repair the site immediately, which does not mean piling up mulch or stone around the affected area,” I wrote.  “Woodchucks may look dumb, but they’re not.  They have good noses, unerringly return to the same locale, and pawing aside some loose debris helps build up an appetite.”

This morning, I observed several gardens with closely-spaced wooden stakes around what may have been previously unnoticed entry sites.  I also found a depressing number of places where gardeners had piled up mulch.  I have to learn to make my declarative sentences shorter.

My last piece of advice to my troops was this: “If all else fails, be prepared to stand guard around your garden for the rest of the season with two metal trash can lids at the ready.  I do not advocate this approach.”


It isn’t that banging garbage can lids is time-consuming (although it would likely get very old, very quickly).  It is that I can imagine that, rather than driving woodchucks from the vicinity of the garden, it would encourage families of adults and chucklings to gather at the periphery of the site, spreading blankets and bringing picnics, waiting for the rest of the band to arrive.

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