Hi Bonnie.

They are fun to watch. Kind of disappointing when I see my carrots and beans mowed off.

We live on a 8 acres with a 5 acre pond as part of our back yard. Sometimes it seems like we are living on a game reserve. The pond is used as part of the irrigation system for the subdivision. Three years ago a family of beavers moved in. They damed up the stream that feeds the pond. The worst though was the decided that the intake to the irrigation put was a leak and started plugging that every night. The water master was not very happy about that so we had to move them out. Sometimes nature and civilization do not mix very well.

>I *love* those cute marmots (or rockchucks, as you call them) ... of course, I'm not trying to grow a garden either. <g>
>
>We're trying to get our backyard planted with mostly native plants ... we *want* to attract wildlife, marmots being some of the wildlife we want. Behind our property is a huge pasture where our neighbor occasionally has goats or sheep grazing. In the middle of this pasture is a pile of rocks that criss-cross most of the pasture (he says that way-back-when, someone who owned the "ranch" before he did, cleared the pasture of all those rocks and piled them there). Anyway, right now, that's where several marmot families live. We'd love it if they'd set up house-keeping in our backyard (we even have rock piles that I'm sure they'd like). So far, they only come over to eat our weeds (which is fine with me too! <g>)
>
>We *do* get lots of different kinds of birds, which is a great start.
>
>~~Bonnie
>
>
>
>>Hi Dragan,
>>
>>I feel your pain. I lost half of my garden to Rockchucks. The good news is they didn't bother the tomatoes.
>>
>>http://www.toynutz.com/nature.html
>>
>>Scroll down a ways.
>>
>>>Our attempts to grow real tomatoes in the patio were largely disappointing for two reasons. One is the neighbor's tree, roots of which suck all the water and nutrients from the soil, and the other is that something was eating whatever grew. In the end it turned out to be rats, but we didn't know that until we bought a squirrel trap. We did see squirrels coming often - they even had a nest in our attic for a while - but never saw any rats until the squirrel trap caught one.
>>>
>>>While we are in a process of getting rid of both the rats and the tomatoes (and cucumbers) altogether, I got a very interesting link about squirrels while trying to learn about them:
>>>
>>>http://www.maniacworld.com/squirrel-obstacle-course.html
>>>
>>>I still think the squirrels are rats de luxe, the only difference being the fuzzy tail and warm and fuzzy tales about them in Disney production (until the most recent one, but that's still about 100 to 1 in favorable coverage).