Rats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems a bit early in the year, but the Pack Rats are on the move again. Apparently all this rain is starting to worry them and they are moving to high ground. Actually there is no high water here, but there is a lot of rain, almost every time you turn around its raining again. Now don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, at least not much, it is more of an explanation rather than bitching. After all this is supposed to be a Desert, isn't it?

There are many stories in the West concerning Pack Rats and the pore individuals that have had to deal with them. They are devious to the extreme, Their common name comes of course from their liking for shiny things and their tendency to build large stinking nests of anything that they can find from dog turds to watermelon rinds.

Last year with Curly alive and well, we were able to keep on top of them.

He spent much of his mornings checking the places that they liked and with a water hose, dog and BB gun, they didn't have a chance.

Now don't get me wrong, Josie is a great dog. She is a total crack up, loves every one and every thing. Seriously smart, very sensitive, eager to please, and especially likes me.

She just hasn't gotten this rat stuff down yet. She has more of a tendency to point rather than pounce. Of course that is what all her breeding has prepared her to do, but I could really use Curly here to show her the ropes.

Karen and I were sitting in the hot tub the other evening at dusk, and I saw a Pack Rat run across the back of the pool walk way, and down in the covered area where the pool cover used to be. I jumped out, grabbed my robe, ran to the hanger to get the BB gun. Before I got back the rascal had left there and gotten into some of the rock jacks that form the fence around the garden. Karen and I stood out there in the near dark waiting and watching for him to show again.  ( The picture is there for you if you have the imagination. - Two old farts, wind whipping our robes around, blowing up our bare butts, peering myopically at rock jacks in the dark, trying to pick out a furtive #$%@&*^ Rat.) Finally he darts out and pauses enough for me to think that the dark spot that I see might be him. Damn, missed him by that much! I decide that I can't see him enough with the iron sights, so I run for the 17 Cal. Unfortunately it is sighted in for 100 yards, not to mention that my "shooting eye" has had the center of my vision burned out in a laser operation to stop blood vessel leakage. So at best I am operating at a disadvantage, but the stakes are high, and I do the best I can.             ( Last year they ate every Water melon and Cantaloupe plant that I put out, Not to mention the noise they make running around in the attic.) 

After a bit, never had much in the way of patience, I remember that this spring, one was drawn to the distress call of a Starling whose neck I was wringing, so I had Karen get me a varmint call. Soon he was poking his head out to see who was getting molested, damn! missed him by that much! He was on the run though, and as such was likely to make a mistake. He paused on the end rock Jack, and I blew a rock off the jack with a close shot, probably stinging him with the shrapnel. He paused again for a bit and that time I got him. Well since then, the one in the attic has blundered into a steel trap, at 1230 AM of course. I got another one with a pellet gun in the hanger, unfortunately leaving his partner free run of the hanger.

I am hatching some chicks, in the hanger for replacement of my aging flock. I had ground up some feed for the chicks and left the excess in a Coffee can on my work bench. Yesterday, when I went in to feed them, I found that the rascal had piled a bunch of stuff in the can of feed. It is likely that they do that to protect the food source from others, much as a Mountain lion would cover up a kill. Well I cleaned it all out, and thinking that this was the perfect opportunity to catch him, I put a rat trap baited with Peanut butter right next to the can. I went this morning to claim him for Peg's (Harris Hawk) morning meal and this is what I found.

Now I will grant you, I am not a neat freak, that would be a fairly hard claim to prove, but I can find anything I want, after a small delay of course.

The plastic that you can see stuck in the jaws of the trap is the handle to a battery powered body massager   ( the external type, if you were wondering.) that I was checking for dead battery cells. Now lest you come to the wrong conclusion about their intelligence, I am sticking with the thought that he was trying to put it into the can with all the other stuff and just dropped it on the trigger to the trap accidentally. At least I hope so, because if not then I am in trouble. However, he apparently wasn't all that impressed since he ate all the Peanut butter off the trigger after he sprung it. Could be a bad omen.