Monday, July 03, 2006

Rat Season 2006

It's July officially now, which means the rats are back. I'm not sure what it is about this time of year -- maybe their young are big enough to require more food than they did earlier in the year, but we haven't seen a rat since the beginning of last winter.

On Saturday (July 1) a rat dug under my Clematis, one of the three remaining after the rat/plant carnage of 2005, and snapped off all the vines.

I declared to Hambone that "It's ON."

He put out a trap that evening and by morning we had caught the culprit. Hambone's become quite skilled in this area.

Afterward, I found out that he had been 'baiting' rats and pigeons by pouring seed on the ground because he missed shooting things in the yard. For those of you considering bird feeders in the city, you may want to keep the bird seed in the feeder. You'll also want to keep the seed dry -- when it gets soggy it produces *quite* a stench, which draws some of the undesirables from the neighborhood, if you know what I mean.

Yesterday we bought a new feeder that's a little more water proof. I'm waiting for them to make one "Hambone proof."

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