Chip and Dale are not so cute when they are destroying your Home

I am battling with chipmunks.  I have had problems with them for several years. 

About ten years ago we had a horrible stench in our basement.  I called a pest control company and after two hours and a few hundred dollars for his time, he discovered a hole in my concrete foundation wall where the chipmunks had burrowed through.  They, along with a few moles, had entered and died in the insulation.

A few years later, I went to change my furnace filter and wondered what was blocking the removal of the filter.  Turned out that a chipmunk had chewed through the outside vent opening for air, traveled down the vent pipe and landed 'kerplunk' on the floor of the filter cabinet and killed himself.  YUCK!  (Maybe that is slightly better than having a squirrel die in your sanitary vent pipe.)

This year I have holes and tunnels all over my yard.  I couldn't understand why one of my window wells was full of water since we had very little rain.  Turns out that  they had tunneled under the lily of the valley all around the well wall.  So, every time I watered the plants, the water would run into the tunnels and into the well before the plants and ground could soak it up.

I remember several years ago when I was working at town hall we also had a problem with chipmunks.  Our maintenance man was live-trapping and releasing - who knows where.  As he was coming back to our 99-acre complex, there was a resident at the entrance releasing his live traps of chipmunks.  Does not exactly solve the problem.

When my children were little I had one of those kiddie pools on the patio.  Many a morning I found dead chipmunks floating in it.  The lady at the garden center said she uses a five gallon bucket filled half-full of water with sunflower seeds on top.  She's caught over 20 so far this year.  Her son thinks she's cruel.  The last exterminator I hired (to trap a HUGE groundhog) told me he took over 100 chipmunks out of someone's attic.  (It was a very large home.)  EEEWWW!

I have set rat traps around the yard, but they get pretty good at not setting them off.  This morning I was on the internet and found this article on the problem.  Anyone know where you can find a carbon monoxide chamber?