So earlier this week a big and very obnoxious packrat set up housekeeping in the powershed. Her first action was to pack a bunch of fiberglass insulation (wonder where that came from? [/sarc]) under a shelf and chew up my last piece of pipe insulation. Die, rat, die.
Clearly a previously-unhunted immigrant, she lasted a single night.
No, I didn’t feed her to the chickens. But on my way down the path to where I’ve been dumping them, I came upon a very unwelcome pile of scat…
One thing I didn’t expect, when I moved out here, was that I would have to become a connoisseur of shit. Coyote shit, for example: It varies widely depending on what the varmint has been eating. Well-fed, its scat is smallish but solid and drys into chunks that are commonly held together with fur. Dogs tend to have larger, more oval droppings without the fur.
But what’s important about this particular shit is that it’s less than fifty yards from the Lair. That’s the closest I’ve seen since the chickens were a new thing (and marked the time I lost Zoe and shot my one-and-only coyote, virtually in the front yard) and it is completely unacceptable. Not sure what I’m going to do about it, though. The boys mostly consider themselves off duty when they’re inside at night, but I’d like a shot at this impertinent fellow.
Short term, I need to change what I do with the dead rats. Again.
How did you identify the rat’s sex?
Oh, it’s evident. Male rats have prominent genitalia. Pregnant or nursing female rats have prominent teats. Lack of both, it’s female.
Got it, thanks. Learn something new every day:-).
Split the rat open and bury in the compost pile. The worms will do the rest!
Chopping them up a bit speeds up the composting. If you the the yotes will go after it pee on the compost heap. The smell will put them off and it’s good forthe compost anyway.
Actually when I come upon coyote sign around the edges of my yard, the first thing I always do is pee on it. I figure it works for the dogs, so…