It’s Shit-Shoveling Monday. Three days worth of manure to clean up, plus I finally have the Jeep and the trailer together in the same place and the manure pile is totally out of control, so I expect to be shoveling a lot of manure today. I’m blasting through my firewood and want to cut more. Sunny with temps supposed to be mid-forties and snow and cold forecasted for later in the week, so if it isn’t too windy this needs to be a good work day. I’ve got a lot to do, is what I’m saying. Plus there’s a trip to town in there somewhere, which I can’t miss because I need to go to the feed store and I’m almost out of drinking water. Busy day. No time for bullshit.
Then at eight D called and said they wanted to go to town at nine. That shuffled my schedule around a bit, but wasn’t a big surprise. Got breakfast dealt with, got the boys squared away, loaded up my water bottles, drove to the top of the ridge and hitched up the trailer, headed for D&L’s. The radio was cranking, my head was muffled in a hood, I wasn’t really in condition yellow and should have been because then when I got to the first real turn I’d have known that the Jeep wasn’t going to want to slow down. I hit the brakes and it felt like the engine was fighting them. Looked at the tach: The engine was fighting them! It wasn’t dropping to idle!
Got stopped, put the trans in Park, and the RPM topped 3000. This seems not quite right. Hit the switch, climbed out in the cold. Raised the hood.
For the record, it seems an old sock full of moth balls is not an effective pack rat repellant.
In fact I’d go so far as to say all I did was donate nesting material.
The past several nights have been fairly cold, down in the low teens, and somebody was looking for shelter. And he brought toys.
Including a bunch of small rocks, for reasons surpassing my understanding. One of them found its way under the throttle linkage and stuck the engine at damn near WOT.
Well, I was going to town anyway. I came home with weapons. Either by poison or trap, I don’t care which, that rat has slept its last automotive night. Uncle Joel is going to war.
I wonder, could you dig the bucket mouse trap into the dirt under where you keep the jeep. That way you just park on top of the trap. Maybe a little of the RV antifreeze just to keep the water liquid, but not be poisonous.
Heck, maybe two just to play it safe 😀
And maybe a quick look-see under the hood each time before you fire it up. Condition yellow indeed… sometimes even when inside and all the doors are locked. Not because I’m afraid, at all, but because I want to be ahead of the curve if something to fear comes along.
Damn, what’re the odds? I guess it counts as good luck if it led to you finding it before something expensive got messed with…
Rocks… it just hit me. How in the world did rats or mice carry rocks… and furthermore, as you said, WHY? I’m getting worried about you out there Joel. You have some unnatural animals around there. 🙁 Next they’ll show up with little bags of cement…
. . . and weapons, tiny weapons.
Condition orange!!
Rocks? Weird!
I understand you having to go to d-Con. I know the rats around there think they rule the world — but yikes, not to the point of trying to kill you!
Do keep an eye on the dogs. If they even eat a rat that’s eaten d-Con, could be fatal. Watch for signs of bleeding, internal or external, weakness, red eyes, anemia, hematomas under the skin (like Kirby, remember?), etc. Could take several days to show.
Info: http://www.petmd.com/dog/emergency/digestive/e_multi_anticoagulant_poisoning
Mothballs. The little animals don’t like them and will look elsewhere for a place to stay.
GWTW, you need to look closer at Joel’s pix and their captions. Apparently the giant rats of Joel’s Gulch think mothballs are an invitation to move in.
That is for sure waaaayyyyy too funny. Yess!!!! They finally exceeded your benevolent kind hearted and caring tolerance. Yehaw! So glad they didn’t have to kill you to get you to lay out a serious plan to off them and so glad it happened before you and/or your animals got some exotic incurable disease from them.
Mothballs are supposed to repel cats from garden beds too. Never have seen mothballs repel rodents or cats.
There are directions on the Internet for building an enclosure that you park on that is rodent proof. It’s a gravel pad with a 12 to 14 inch tall metal surround that opens on one end so you can drive in and then close it up. Unless the rodents are really large, and your rats may be, they can’t get a grip on the metal to climb over it and your vehicle is safe. It doesn’t cost much to build. You do have to remember to open the metal before you drive out.
There’s nothing unusual about Joel’s rodents – that debris looks all too familiar – I’m just used to seeing a lot more cactus included. Fwiw – packrats do deliberately use cactus spines and pieces for defense – they’ll even put them alongside the trails they use in case they’re being chased sometime.
Mothballs work ’cause they’re a poison – BUT – the vapors have to be in a high enough concentration. I’ve used them on engine bays and it’s always hit or miss – not enough concentrated vapors – and they have to be replaced pretty regularly. I’ve even seen where a packrat tipped several off the top of an engine block – found ’em on the ground below the next day. Mothballs work really well in the trunk of one vehicle here that I don’t have garage space for. They work by making the trunk uninhabitable – but most engine bays are too well ventilated for them to work well. (the vehicle is slated for a restoration – hence the myriad access points and my not caring about the reek of the mothballs)
I use lights for engine bays – how one rigs ’em is up to themselves. They work for me.
The enclosure idea sounds pretty good – a footing or buried hardware cloth might be needed too. I’ve got rodents that regularly try to dig into my wellhead shelter. They don’t make it – but they put a lot of energy trying to dig thru a foot of mixed pea gravel and rocks. (bless their hearts…)
Seriously Joel – lights. It can be done with solar – plenty of ways – and it doesn’t have to look like a landing beacon either. If I get a really troublesome visitor I’ll still use a live or a not-live trap – just depends on what will work best. So far the lights have worked most reliably – though once a packrat traced a wire back to a non-lit area and chewed through it there. Did some serious damage in the week that it took for me to notice it – doh!
If I was in your shoes I might put 2-6 solar LED spotlights on my wishlist – if they make ’em with a motion sensor that would be even better. Bone up on your solder skills and rig them to your needs. Most solar lights have cheap batteries (NiCad w/ low miliamphours) in them – upgrade them and you’ll get better life out of them – and if you’re modifying them already (so you can put the solar collectors in a good spot) consider beefing up the battery storage so the lamps don’t run out of juice in the wee hours.
Here’s hoping you outsmart them before they kill you!.
Oh – btw – Joel – packrats do leave litter (and excrement) trails and that can help you figure out where to lay your traps – or get inside their widdle heads. I’ve even raked under a vehicle to get a better ‘read’ – an apple fork would do as well as a leaf rake. Like humans – they make/use trails – and they’re always testing the edges of the map.
Cactus is common in pack rat nests here. They chew on them, and also undoubtedly use the spines for defense. Shit is also popular, I can only assume because it masks the rat’s scent, though I’m guessing. Never figured out the rocks, though. Every nest I ever cleared out had lots of rocks.
Sounds like pack rats to me.
To keep mice out of the air cleaner I always use hardware cloth over the air intake (use enough so the air flow is not slowed down). Only thing I got that worked with pack rats is poison, but I have far more trouble with red squirrels now that I am in western Oregon. Nothing works for them, although I kill a lot with an air rifle.
I wonder if some electric fence wire with a fence charger might do the trick. Difficult to rig though.
At least you don’t carry in Condition Butterscotch! (Worth the search on YouTube for folks!)
I guess they’ve heard about what happened with those 3 piggies – masonry trumps straw and stick built every time!
Something I’ve heard from archaeologists and pot hunters but haven’t verified myself: packrat urine combined with rocks and all the other debris eventually form something almost like concrete. Apparently this comes up when they excavate a midden in or near a dig site. Packrats being the collectors they are can have some interesting artifacts in their middens and they often show evidence of many years of use.
That’s a good explanation (scent masking) about why they use the scat as a building material. I’ve assumed it had to do with the nutrients that passed through. Could be a bit of both.
I know this won’t help Joel’s situation but just for general info… I have successfully used the odiferous contents of my cat’s litter box to discourage various critters around my storage building. Especially tunneling critters. Perhaps the unwanted creatures think the stuff is from some big scary bad-mannered cat who is staking out territory, or perhaps it simply grosses them out. As long as they leave, I don’t care.