The packrat relocation campaign has entered a new phase. Last night I caught #22 and decided I need to do something different.
Marc has had several helpful ideas. One is to name each one before I take it away, so when I catch another packrat I can ask, “Hey, isn’t your name Joe? Haven’t I seen you here before?”
He next suggested I paint their toenails so I can identify the ones who don’t speak English...and that I start a packrat re-education school. After all, they’re very cute little critters and the only thing wrong with them is they stink and destroy everything. So why not put them in a classroom and teach them not to build nests in my car or invade the house.
I’ve been looking into packrat predators, which include coyotes, fox, owls and snakes. So the little guys do have their place in nature providing food for other animals. For a while I was asking myself exactly why I wasn’t just shooting or drowning them as some have suggested. But the whole process is just too grisly and I don’t want to unbalance nature, do I?
I started wondering just how many packrats there are in the world. Never did find that out, but discovered there are 10,000 trillion ants, one million ants per person.
Or to put it another way, if you put all the ants on one side of a scale and all the humans on the other, they would weight just about the same.
Anyway, back to packrats: I read online that the only way to keep packrats out of your vehicle is to leave the light on at night. Packrats are nocturnal and won’t venture where there is bright light. So I left the lights blazing in the garage and set the trap beside the car to see what would happen. Voila…another packrat in the trap in the morning. So much for that bit of internet advice.
Then a friend told me the way packrats navigate in the dark is by following their own urine trails and the trails of other packrats. Dumb me. I’ve been putting the trap in the same place next to my car for days….thereby giving them a strong trail to follow. So I scrubbed down the garage floor…twice…poured Clorox over the whole thing and moved the trap out to the pole barn. So far no more droppings in the garage.
I’ve been doing research about how far packrats travel, trying to figure out if I’m getting the same animals over and over. Experts say they stay within 300 feet of a nest, but will travel many miles to find a new place to build. One woman noted she put an identifying mark on a packrat and took it a mile away. It was back in a week and a half. She found she had to go five miles before they stayed elsewhere.
Just to be sure they aren’t coming back from where I’m dropping them off, I modified Marc’s painted toenail idea and marked the tail of #22 with rose colored nail polish (the only shade I had). Tomorrow I’m thinking about trying orange spray paint.
I really don’t think the packrats are coming back. When they run out of the trap they have a choice of going in four directions, so there’s only a 25% change they’ll even head my way. And there are hundreds of really nice nesting spots among the rocks below Goat Wall before they get to our house.
But we’ll just have to wait and see.
Last minute update: Caught #23 overnight. Marc has a new idea involving a cell phone. Does anybody know how much weight a packrat can carry? And how small they make cell phones?
More later.
Marc has had several helpful ideas. One is to name each one before I take it away, so when I catch another packrat I can ask, “Hey, isn’t your name Joe? Haven’t I seen you here before?”
He next suggested I paint their toenails so I can identify the ones who don’t speak English...and that I start a packrat re-education school. After all, they’re very cute little critters and the only thing wrong with them is they stink and destroy everything. So why not put them in a classroom and teach them not to build nests in my car or invade the house.
I’ve been looking into packrat predators, which include coyotes, fox, owls and snakes. So the little guys do have their place in nature providing food for other animals. For a while I was asking myself exactly why I wasn’t just shooting or drowning them as some have suggested. But the whole process is just too grisly and I don’t want to unbalance nature, do I?
I started wondering just how many packrats there are in the world. Never did find that out, but discovered there are 10,000 trillion ants, one million ants per person.
Or to put it another way, if you put all the ants on one side of a scale and all the humans on the other, they would weight just about the same.
Anyway, back to packrats: I read online that the only way to keep packrats out of your vehicle is to leave the light on at night. Packrats are nocturnal and won’t venture where there is bright light. So I left the lights blazing in the garage and set the trap beside the car to see what would happen. Voila…another packrat in the trap in the morning. So much for that bit of internet advice.
Then a friend told me the way packrats navigate in the dark is by following their own urine trails and the trails of other packrats. Dumb me. I’ve been putting the trap in the same place next to my car for days….thereby giving them a strong trail to follow. So I scrubbed down the garage floor…twice…poured Clorox over the whole thing and moved the trap out to the pole barn. So far no more droppings in the garage.
I’ve been doing research about how far packrats travel, trying to figure out if I’m getting the same animals over and over. Experts say they stay within 300 feet of a nest, but will travel many miles to find a new place to build. One woman noted she put an identifying mark on a packrat and took it a mile away. It was back in a week and a half. She found she had to go five miles before they stayed elsewhere.
Just to be sure they aren’t coming back from where I’m dropping them off, I modified Marc’s painted toenail idea and marked the tail of #22 with rose colored nail polish (the only shade I had). Tomorrow I’m thinking about trying orange spray paint.
I really don’t think the packrats are coming back. When they run out of the trap they have a choice of going in four directions, so there’s only a 25% change they’ll even head my way. And there are hundreds of really nice nesting spots among the rocks below Goat Wall before they get to our house.
But we’ll just have to wait and see.
Last minute update: Caught #23 overnight. Marc has a new idea involving a cell phone. Does anybody know how much weight a packrat can carry? And how small they make cell phones?
More later.