I take the water out every fall, drain the lines for the winter, and then do the reverse in the spring. This spring, when I turned the pump on and it started to push water up through the line, the water started to flood back down the hill. Upon inspection of the old pipe, I found the problem (see below). It seems some rodent chewed it. Could it have been a chipmunk? The dog often chases them.—Keith Bagg, Redstone Lake, Ont.
“I suspect a squirrel,” says David Hackett, a small mammals specialist at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ont. “They’re the real chewers, and they have a bigger gape—how far they can open their mouths—than chipmunks,” he says. “Imagine trying to use your relatively tiny gape against something the size of a watermelon or a pumpkin. Your teeth couldn’t get much purchase on the outside of that massive thing, compared to something that’s the size of an apple.”
Of course, other rodents will chew on pipes. “Those teeth marks, to me, look like they’re from rats,” says Vancouver Island wildlife expert Mike Webb. “They’ll chew along like they’re eating a cob of corn: chomp, chomp, chomp.” In his experience, rabbits also chew waterlines. “I’ve even seen where raccoons have done it—although usually they just bite the pipe in half. It’s like they’re being vindictive,” he says. To avoid waterline destruction, regardless of who’s to blame, Webb suggests burying the pipe, or wrapping it in a “tunnel” of screening, such as hardware cloth. Or surround it with a larger pipe.
“I was once hired by Alberta Utilities to find out what was chewing their underground gas pipes, which could potentially cause dangerous explosions, and stop the creatures,” says Hackett. “They were pocket gophers, and the solution was to increase the diameter of the plastic pipes.” It’s official. Size does matter.
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This article was originally published in the Early Spring 2026 issue of Cottage Life.
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