I thought you’d like to hear more about our rat adventures. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks since I cleared out the garden, eliminated cover and hiding spaces, and replanted for winter. Tom has been diligent about keeping the traps set and ready; I’ve been good about keeping an eye on the details. And I think we are winning the battle. Here’s what’s transpired. By the way, if you’re at all squeamish, this is not the post for you.
First of all, what you see above is one of Tom’s tunnel traps. If you’re interested in how he built these, let me know - I’ll have him write a post about them with instructions. Tom now has four of these staged around the garden, in places where we often see rat activity. Inside each are three spring traps, baited with bird seed. The traps are a particular kind. The ones that break bones and kill super fast also cause a lot of (ahem) human injury. So Tom has abandoned those for a still powerful, but not as strong trap. They work, but they may cause some suffering to the rats. This is not ideal. But if I want the trapper to keep trapping, it’s a compromise I’m willing to make. We were told by a pest-control guy a couple years ago that rats would never go in any kind of box or tunnel. We have found the opposite. Tom is catching rats almost every night.
As I said, sometimes the rats don’t die right away. Tom checks the traps every morning, and if there is a rat who is in the last throes, he leaves it there until later. One day, the chickens were making an awful fuss, so I knew there was a predator nearby somewhere. When I went out, I saw this red-shouldered hawk looking down right at the struggling rat. It flew off, but not long after, the chickens made another racket, and I looked out to see the hawk down on the ground by the rat. This gave Tom an idea. Now, when he removes the dead rats from the traps, he leaves them out in our yard in a special place which we now call the RRZ. The Rat Recycle Zone.
And they always disappear within 24 hours. We’re never sure what takes them - raccoon, owl, fox, or hawk - but something always does.
My dad always talked about how he does the exact same thing, and at the time, we thought it was a crazy idea. But, really, what could be more natural? Except that WE are doing the killing of course. Oh yeah and basically feeding the predators. Ok it’s not natural at all. But it satisfies some need in us to be useful.
I think we’re making a dent in the population. It’s still a battle, though. For a while, each morning when I’d go out to let the chickens out, I’d notice that the rats had chewed through the drip lines in the veg beds, which meant Tom was replacing line every day. Finally I just decided to put water out. It’s more worth it to us to provide water than it is to replace those lines every day. I remove the chicken food from the coop every night and replace it in the morning. I put the chicken water out in the run so that whoever wants to can drink from it (and then I clean it each morning). I’m noticing that there is less tunneling into the coop now, so I believe doing those two things has solved that problem.
Just a reminder that these are non-native Norway rats. They are invasive. And they are making an absolute mess of my garden. So that is why we have chosen to kill them. We do not use poison, because that, in turn, poisons the creatures who eat them. Also, we have had problems with both Norway and Roof Rats. Neither are native to California.
IMPORTANT OFF-TOPIC COMMENT: We have had problems with our newsletter sign up, and unfortunately I think that if you have signed up in the past two weeks, your request has not gone through. Squarespace has changed some things regarding their mail service. So, we will remedy all of that this coming weekend. I’m hoping that those of you who signed up and have not gotten notifications will sign up again. I will post when we have the new system set up. Thank you for your patience!