The Hunter and the Hunted

We have a cat, and her name is Ginger.  Ginger is fat.  She is an outdoor cat, but likes to come in.  She knows the window to our bedroom and will meow by our window to be let in.  Early in the morning when she sees the light go on in our Sun Room, she'll meow by that window to be let in.  Tricia opens the door and she'll go sit on her favorite chair and sleep for the better part of a day.  Ginger is lazy.

I am not much of a 'cat person.'  I'm not mean to Ginger, by any means but not a whole lot of warmth between us, either.  My wife keeps reminding me of the good things that Ginger does.  As if to put an exclamation mark on that thought, the other day Ginger proved her worth to me.  Our fat cat came around the corner in brisk pursuit of something.  She pounced into the Louisiana Iris that grows alongside the patio like a tiger chasing an antelope.

She brought out a mouse and paraded in front of me to show off her skills and prowess as a hunter.

She sat down and let the mouse go.  The mouse ran away, but Ginger was quickly on top of the mouse, toying with it with her paws.  She played with it until she got bored and killed it.

Ginger dismembered the mouse and left what she didn't eat by the back door.  We always have to be careful when stepping out so that we don't step on remains of Ginger's prey.  Okay, I'll be honest and admit it, Ginger > mice.

A Mouse in the House

This week Tricia called me to the kitchen.  "Kyle," she called, "Come listen.  Either something in the trash is settling or there is something alive in there."  We keep our trash can and our compost bucket in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.  I walked over and listened, but I'm kind of deaf and couldn't hear anything.  I opened the cabinet door, pulled out the trash can, lifted the trash bag out...  And a mouse promptly jumped out of the bag and onto my leg.

It got a little crazy.  The mouse jumped off of my leg and ran away off into our house.  After careful checking I found that the mouse got into our house from a hole in the cabinet where the water line to the refrigerator comes through the wall.  I made a trip to the store and bought some glue traps.  I put one glue trap baited with a spoonful of peanut butter right under the hole.  The next morning I peered into the cabinet door only to find the peanut butter gone, the glue trap moved, but no mouse!

Of course this means war.  I pulled out the old school mouse traps, baited them with pecans covered with peanut butter, placed them in the same spot and in the morning was rewarded with the following sight:

Oh Happy Day! (not for the mouse)

Experience has shown me that where there's one, there's more, so I rebaited everything and will continue to rebait until I stop catching them.

Reloaded

Once I've stopped catching mice in the traps, I've purchased some steel pot scrubbers and I'll jam them into the holes where the mice have been coming in.

Kryptonite for mouse entry

A mouse-proof house yields a very happy spouse.

Building a Better Rat Trap

We continue to wage our War on Rats in our barn with sporadic and limited success. Benjamin has shot a few off the rafters with rat shot. The elusive vermin somehow are too smart to go into a standard rat trap or a glue trap. I don't want to use poison as I don't want our chickens to eat the poisoned dead rats and end up having poison residue in the eggs that we eat.

At one point we had pretty much wiped them out, but with the onset of colder weather, I can only assume our barn with a hayloft full of hay looked like a sunny beach in South Florida to someone living in the North as rats from the neighboring woods appear to be wintering in the loft.  I saw several rats with Hawaiian shirts, RayBan's, and flip flops unpacking in our barn.  They are not good housekeepers and they are leaving their 'calling cards' everywhere.

Rat poop in the feed room

So I began looking for new and creative rat eradication techniques and I stumbled on the homemade rat trap idea below by searching on YouTube.  All you need is a 5 gallon bucket, an empty broth or tomato sauce can, some heavy wire, or in this case a skewer, some peanut butter and water.  Simply drill a couple of holes on opposite sides of a bucket.  Punch a hole in the center of a can with liquid in it and drain out the contents. Punch another hole in the bottom of the can.  Now run your wire/skewer through one side of the bucket, then through and through the can and then through the other side of the bucket.  The can should spin freely on the skewer.  Bend the wire/skewer to secure it to the backside of the bucket.  Liberally slather the can with peanut butter.  Fill the bucket at least halfway with water and lean a piece of a board against the top of the bucket to make a ramp for the rats/mice.

A better mouse trap?

The idea is that the peanut butter will lure the rats to climb up on the bucket.  When they climb on the lip of the bucket and run across the skewer to get the peanut butter, they'll step on the can to start snacking and the can will spin and dump them into a watery grave.  (C'mon in.  The water's fine.)

A bird's eye view

Hopefully in a few days I'll post some pictures of a rat or two swimming in the bucket.