Chipmunk in a bottle experiments

Given the success of some of my mouse videos, it gave me motivation to experiment with chipmunks, which are abundant on the rural property we used to live on. I filmed this video in June, before we decided to move, but with preparing for the move, I didn't have time to edit it until now (Late September).

The farm property is listed for sale at $775,000 (Canadian dollars) if you are interested.

I started my experiments with a plastic juice bottle, which wasn't very clear to look through and had a neck that the chipmunk could just barely make it through. I then got a nice glass milk bottle from an organic food store.

I wanted to set it up so the bottle would tip over once the chipmunk crawled inside to try to trap it, but this took a few tries to get to work.

I had to weigh the neck of the bottle down with a rock to get it to over hang enough that the chipmunk in the bottle would tip it over.

The chipmunk had an impressively cool head to finish eating the bait after the bottle tipped before figuring out how to get out of it. It had a little bit of difficulty getting out, but nothing compared to a mouse jumping out of a 20 liter bucket.

I was filming this just outside the kitchen window, which made it easy to monitor the goings-on.

I made a weatherproof enclosure for the raspberry pi and camera module that I was using to film this out of a plastic food container, with a hole drilled in the bottom for the camera, and using the existing air hole for the camera. I attached it to a wooden stand, on a milk crate, and put some bricks behind and on top of it so that the sun wouldn't warm it up too much.

The most interesting thing I saw was that at some point, while one chipmunk was in the bottle another chipmunk came to visit. It's the picture of cuteness, isn't it?...

...But just a fraction of a second later, they were on top of each other fighting. I guess they are territorial animals!

I figure there is more experiments that could be done, but where we moved to in Fredericton, there are mostly grey squirrels, which aren't nearly as cute. But I may still do more experiments in the future.