Thread: Unwanted guests in the garden. Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Last night, I found my loaf of wholemeal was supporting a colony of fungal mycelium, so decided it had to go out in the garden. Probably to compost. Possibly for the pigeons, if it passed their quality control. So I sealed up the bag with a knot, and dropped it out of the living room window - one floor up - to await this morning.

Looked out this morning, and couldn't see it, At first. Then I spotted it, empty, partly under a sloping stack of broken flagstones. Investigation revealed that the end of the bag without the knot, and hidden by the flags, had been nibbled to allow the removal of about half a loaf, leaving only a few crumbs. I cleared the stones and a few other things I had moved during works last year, and discovered that the miscreants had come in from next door's garden, leaving quite a worn track, and a thin shred of crust, like Hansel and Gretel. Oddly, next door's terrier has shown no interest in the area in question, under the store of vintage motorbikes.

I'm not entirely surprised, because of the excavations under my raised beds, which I messed up last week, but seriously impressed by the scale of the heist, and the intelligence - hiding what they were up to from the pigeons.

I don't think Robert C O'Brien's laboratory needed to do much to boost the intelligence of those rats.

And I need to make my garden far less attractive, and seal the gaps under the fence gravel board. No bird food at ground level, and the compost caddy well lidded. (Not that they go for old teabags.)

I don't want to have to resort to poison.

[ 31. January 2016, 17:46: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :
 
Rats are tenacious beasties and, as you say, highly intelligent. We don't have a problem on our land partly due to cats and partly due to the local Rat Snakes, which are in turn controlled by the local mongoose population but is not unusual to see rats in the neighbourhood and certainly in more urban areas where they are useful and very adept scavengers.
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
Composting bread is not recommended in much of Canada, nor meat scraps and other non- plant things. Though our animals include bigger creatures. Like bears, and those damnable eastern racoons have been moving west. We saw wolves in the deer tracks across the lake yesterday. Our mice are actually voles says the nonprophet biologist of our crew. They don't seem troublesome to human dwellings.

Tree-rats* are my current bane, as they like to try to get under the cabin, pulling out insulation and making a terrible mess. Mutiple layers of chicken wire and snow until May hopefully does it. Haven't heard them this weekend. They were relentless 3 weeks ago. Such a mild winter that they are very active this year.


*tree-rat : squirrel.
 

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Posted by Athrawes (# 9594) on :
 
I would be perfectly happy to swap all of the above for the brown snake that was hanging around my yard recently. A friend offered the use of a blue tongued lizard to move him on, but I haven't seen him recently.
 

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Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
In the 24 years I've lived here I've seen one dead rat (there's a river nearby) and one dead hedgehog. The creature I'd like to get rid of is a wandering cat who eats my cat's food and has just peed on my backpack.

A shipmate suggested I call him Cloud because he's grey and he leaks.

Huia
 

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Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :
 
The bugbear in my garden is urban foxes (I've moaned about their little tricks on these boards before now). The cubs are particularly troublesome when they reach the adolescent stage in about July-August. They romp. This involves chasing each other round the garden, knocking over and trampling the plants I'm trying to grow, and digging randomly. One year they dug up most of my potatoes, another year they nipped off the strawberries from the plants just as they started to ripen. Last year they left the potatoes and strawberries alone but went for the courgette flowers, so I didn't get any courgettes. I wouldn't mind so much if they actually ate the fruit and veg but they don't - it's pure destructiveness for the fun of it.

We HATES them, precious.

The foxes also burrow under fences and make well-worn tracks across the garden, which actually doesn't bother me as my gardening isn't the super-tidy variety. The one good thing about foxes is that they keep the grey squirrels in check, and probably the rats as well.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I'm waiting for the spring arousing of our own unwanted guest, the giant groundhog (probably "and family"). I know he's still there because the dog sniffs delightedly around his den every time we let her out. Despite chicken wire, planks and all, he's ensconced himself under the patio/deck and enters by way of the window well, basically doing a backflip over the edge to enter. This would matter less if I didn't urgently need a plumber to clear a drain in exactly that window well! Doesn't seem fair not to warn him what might come staring him in the face when he's belly down hanging over the edge...

I asked Granddaddy if he had any Tennessee recipes for groundhog, but the best he could offer me was squirrel stew.
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
My dog lives in my garden, and she's very efficient in keeping the rats out. (If she'd only stop leaving them on my door step. I know I'm supposed to be the alpha but srsly?) She's also very good against another type of unwanted guests: two burglars are in jail because of her.

There is another category of guests in my garden which I actually welcome: a family of tamarin monkeys living in my mango tree. My dog is in an uneasy truce with them.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My compost is plant material, mostly from the garden, but also from the kitchen, with some shredded paper. The other year, the charming rodents decided that the bin which was ready for the garden was a nice place for a home. Then they trawled through the others, and had collected loads of cherry stones to take home with them for a neat little stash.

I flooded them out.

I do owe them a couple of thanks though. In burrowing under a raised bed, they produced a spoil heap of mixed compost and the clay soil from underneath, which I had given up on - too many flints to dig properly. Lovely stuff. And, in turning the compost heap into a pleasant hobbit hole, they emptied a lot of the contents out which made it a lot easier for me to access. The plastic bins are OK for making the stuff, but awful for excavating form the teeny hole at the bottom.

But they also burrowed under the old cold water tank in which I collect rainwater, and tipped it so a lot of the water was lost.

[ 01. February 2016, 21:21: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I asked Granddaddy if he had any Tennessee recipes for groundhog, but the best he could offer me was squirrel stew.

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They are awfully tough. Time past, we could 5¢ per tail of any of these ground critters, gophers more common. If you're going to cook one of these, a pressure cooker is your friend, or as the old suggestion goes, put it in a pot with a boot, and when the boot is tender, throw out the groundhog and eat the boot.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I think I'll just have the boot raw.
 

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Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :
 

quote:

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There is another category of guests in my garden which I actually welcome: a family of tamarin monkeys living in my mango tree.

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Wow - the Milton Keynes 'concrete cows' stories are clearly a cover to dissuade waves of unwanted migrants descending on this new-town utopia via cheap advance fares on the west coast main line
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
It's funny, I've been on and off in Milton Keynes for almost 9 months now, and I've never seen the concrete cows.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
This should help you spot them. Concrete Cows Provided the road naming scheme, intended to aid location, actually does. V means vertical, H horizontal. Of course, the V roads are anything but - they are north/south.

I think there's a stegosaur as well.
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 

quote:

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Penny S: I think there's a stegosaur as well.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I asked Granddaddy if he had any Tennessee recipes for groundhog, but the best he could offer me was squirrel stew.

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They are awfully tough. Time past, we could 5¢ per tail of any of these ground critters, gophers more common. If you're going to cook one of these, a pressure cooker is your friend, or as the old suggestion goes, put it in a pot with a boot, and when the boot is tender, throw out the groundhog and eat the boot.

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The recipe here is for cooking a cockatoo, but instead of a boot, the other ingredient is a stone.

Our unwanted guests are rabbits. Although they are unprotected pests, the things you can actually do to get rid of them are almost non-existent. You'd be hard pressed to get a shooters licence and then permission for a firearm for a start. Using a snare would probably fall foul of the animal welfare legislation, let alone prompting yet another versifier to churn out some more turgid lines. Difficult to get any legal poison in the city. Our best bet would be to get one of our friends to persuade a powerful owl from the other side of the line to call over. Our friend belongs to a group that tracks these owls and says that there's one in bushland just to the west of the highway. Not sure how busy rabbits are at night though.

We're lucky that we don't have brush turkeys, as their nest building can wreak havoc to any garden. The nearest colony of them is a half kilometre away. They used be everywhere, then vanished when a lot of building work was being carried out. In a way, it's good that native fauna is now able to return, it's just that we'd prefer another form of it.

Very welcome guests making a comeback are the blue tongue lizards. Not only do they look beautiful, they are supposed to eat funnel web spiders, a very unwanted guest in this part of Sydney.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I've seen rabbit out in the small hours. Though they are technically crepuscular (of the twilight), they can be out later - though they were where the security lights of Brands Hatch prevent total blackness.
 

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Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
Thanks - they are nocturnal here in the country, hence shooting on moonlit nights and so forth. I once shot one and killed it first off. I have not seen or heard them at night here, probably because there are few daytime enemies in suburbia. A rabbit could avoid or fend off most cats, and there are real restrictions on dogs wandering streets. Very few eagles in city areas here, you have to get to the semi-rural outskirts before you had any chance of seeing one.
 

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Posted by Lothlorien (# 4927) on :
 
For months Gee D, as i walked to Killara Station just after 6:00 am, I would see a plump little rabbit near the Marian Street theatre.

There were hardly any cars in that stree at that time and it would hop along footpath,squeeze under fences etc. It certainly did not seem to be afraid of me as I walked to station.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
The recent flooding here has displaced many mice; field mice I assume. We have had some in our garage. Hopefully, once the countryside dries up they'll return to the fields.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I saw a rabbit see of a stoat (or possibly weasel) once. But it was a very large buck, and outweighed the predator several times. Most of those I see by the roads are much younger, and wouldn't be able to cope with a cat.
My grandmother's cat was capable of bringing rabbit back to the house for dinner.
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
Well-fed ginger and white cat: Miaow, I'm a poor unloved cat who needs comfort and food.

Me: You've already got a home, you're in beautiful condition and you're wearing a collar.

The next time I saw him he was missing his collar ...
 

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Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :
 
Our problem has been squirrels - the neighbors on either side feed them, and they dig in our garden to store the excess food.

A more annoying pest at the moment is a male red-shafted flicker, who pecks on our metal chimney-top because it makes a much louder mating call than pecking on a mere tree branch. (My grandfather's barn had rows of holes in the roof from such birds.)

We just got a pressurized squirt gun that will send a stream of water as high as the top of the chimney: we'll see how successful we are at discouraging him. Might prove useful on the squirrels, too...
 

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