I’ve slacked off on the rat jihad in the past couple of months. At some point a continuing campaign starts to feel like you’re trying to empty the ocean with a spoon. But sometimes a particular individual does bring itself to my attention, and rates special treatment.
Which is what brings me out of my warm lair at omigod thirty on this beautiful chill morning, literally up before the chickens…
…who are literally nestled all snug in their coop. More snugly than usual this fine morning because last night after they roosted, I locked them in.
I did that because of a modification I wanted to make at their feeder, which I didn’t want the hens blundering into. I replaced the usual pellet dispenser with a spring-loaded plastic apparatus and a single dollop of peanut butter. I will spend money on moulting chickens who are too busy growing feathers to lay eggs, but I do not feed rats. Let’s see how he responds to this…
And Bre’er Rat did not disappoint me. First night! This fellow never learned to be cautious. Which means it’s probably time to renew the jihad.
You might want to make a habit of that nightly switcheroo for a while. It’s possible that you’ve been feeding a whole flock of rats.
Joel, tsk. Remember the reproduction rate of rats. The diseases. The property destruction. The expensive repeated damage to the Jeep. The wasted food. Never, never, never give up. Can I send you more traps? Peanut butter?
What Ben said.
As someone who does a lot of population dynamics research it occurs to me that you could get a pretty good idea of how many there are by using live traps for a while and marking them somehow. Dye maybe?
But then you’d have to release them. And it’d take extra work. And, most importantly, maybe you REALLY don’t want to know the answer…