Lacking diligence, it is not possible to keep chickens in the city without also having rats.
The rats here are large and brazen. They like chicken feed, perhaps more than the chickens do. They’ve dug tunnels, gnawed holes in the neighbor’s fence and the coup, and taken over the wood-pile. It’s obvious that while I’ve been gone, the chickens have been nothing but a mere invitation to chaos.
I forgot the anticipatory struggle with the staple to free the mechanism for the trap, the nerves on edge setting the damn things lest I break a finger, the shifty sneaking around the chicken coup, plotting the perfect location. I always keep awake too late listening for the whack of death sprung down on the greedy, dirty rat! Ah! Waa haa haa! I am against rats.
The Count of Success!
Sunday: Rat killed, 1 with Austrian + bucket (drowned the rat)
Monday: Rats killed, 2 with cheese in traps
Tuesday: Rats killed, 2 with peanut butter in traps
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Wednesday Rats Killed 0: Are they getting smarter?
Thursday Rats Killed 0: What the hell? WASPS
Friday Rats Killed 2, plus a wounded escapee (please please don’t crawl under my house to die), trap + peanut butter.
Saturday: 2 Rats Killed, traps with peanut butter (moved to under the chicken coup). Another rats escapes!
And again, no rats caught at night. And that is very very odd. Daytime only rats? What the hell?
Sunday: Rats killed 2.
How long will this go on? It seems that finally, that we are winning the war against the rats.
Today, I actually did not see a rat until late in the evening, when both rats were trapped. That is a recent first. Ah the days when you could walk up to the hen house and NOT SEE A RAT. I loved those days.
Now we just can’t let our gaurd down.
I had a war with small mice this winter
they killed themselves off as fast as I could kill them myself
had to “follow my nose”
which lead me to the remains of a dead mouse
tried a live trap…
it never worked
poison and the classic trap did the trick
that in conjunction with warm weather
they will be back with the winter
not the same ones
but
some mice