The wood/pack rats are an immense pain. The bush is riddled with them;
endless, infinite waves of rats attack your stuff like furry missiles.
Snap traps, neurotoxin (bromethalin), .22 birdshot-- it's like trying to
empty the ocean with a bucket. Hopefully a passle of barn cats will be
the long-term solution. In the meantime, there are a lot of 3am wake-up
calls: get out of bed, get dressed, go outside with the red LED flashlight
and .22 and deal with the latest assault-in-progress. I gave up on the
pellet gun-- the .22/birdshot is most efficacious: you will hit
it and it will die. Not so with the pellets.
Here they have chewed through an unground vault covering a water valve.
I had noticed they were working on the top, and when I went back to check
it found they had eaten all the way through. Put a big rock over the hole
but they just dug/ate around it. Replaced the box with some 6" ID thin-wall
PVC which should afford no purchase for their teeth (is the thinking),
while still (barely) allowing access to the quarter-turn valve. We shall see.
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| Rat Damage |
Ate Through It! |
Typical Gnawing |
Possible Solution? |
...time passes...
Judging from the new digging, looks like it's a bushy-tailed rat (ground
squirrel) that's been responsible. They're horrible too. So far there's
just been a test bite on the top cap, and after filling back in the test
digs, they seem to have given up. Will have to keep an eye on it.
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