how do you protect seedlings?

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I usually pot up my Iris seeds in late autumn and set them on the back
porch to stratify naturally through the winter. They get whatever
snow/rain falls naturally & whatever temps happen naturally. Sometimes
I get good germination in spring, but sometimes I have to wait another
season.

My problem lies in small furry critters (cats, squirrels, chipmunks)
knocking over my containers & digging through them. It doesn't happen
all the time, and it doesn't happen to every container, but with this
year's crop of Spec-X seeds I *really* don't want to lose any of them.
(This year I sowed them early & kept them in the refrigerator all winter
& finally set them outside today... now that the forecast shows spring
is here! So anyway, *now* I'm worried about the critters.)

So I'm curious how do you folks prevent critters from messing with your
seedlings (whether in pots or in raised beds, or whatever you may
have)? I'm thinking of building a small chicken coop structure around
them. So I'll probably stop off at Home Depot or something to see what
materials might do the trick. One small complication is that my porch
is triangular shaped. So whatever I build will have to be irregularly
shaped too.

Dennis in Cincinnati