For those of us who garden and live in the suburbs, which means where small animals live as well, keeping unprotected plants (especially vegetables) from being eaten can be a real challenge.
There are few things more painful from a gardener's point of view than coming outside and seeing a plant that has taken weeks to reach a decent size, chewed down to the ground. If can reduce the most well adjusted plant grower to a sobbing mass.
If you're like me, you may dislike the little destructive critters but you still can't bring yourself to harm them. After all, they're not malicious, just hungry and opportunistic.
So we try to find ways to repel these unwelcome beasts (which is unreliable at best) or we have to trap them. Avail affordable dead animal removal services to get rid of unwanted pests.
In my neck of the woods, it's mostly groundhogs that eat up everything they can reach with their stubby little legs. And boy can they eat fast.
I once watched one of them prepare to attack a foot high broccoli plant from my kitchen window and by the time I got outside it was a skeleton. And once they've staked out your garden as their personal larder, you have only two choices: get rid of it or stop gardening.
For me, the only reliable way to get rid of one without resorting to killing it (which I'm not sure how I could accomplish anyhow without a gun or poison) is to use a live trap.
The ones with a spring loaded door is held open with a catch, and that closes when an animal steps on a trigger inside on the trap's inside. These traps allow you to catch a small animal without harming it so that it can be released.
You put some food items in the trap and on the ground leading up to it in the area the animal frequents, then open, and set the door, and wait. Sooner or later the hungry critter will attempt to take advantage of this easy meal and get it trapped.