hunter

I went out into my shed the other day and heard some rustling going on. I wasn't sure what it was, but knew I wasn't alone. I decided to catch the critter and went out and got a live catch trap. I figured it was either a ground squirrel or a rat. A couple days ago, I went out to check on the trap and saw four juvenile rats laughing at me from the shelves. Good thing all of the things in the shed are in plastic buckets with lids!

But, I need to get in the shed to make room for more things. The door has been left open for about a month and I'm sure these guys have found that it is much warmer and nice and dry in the shed instead of out in the field.

Well, this morning, I found mama rat in the trap. She was pretty cute, covered in peanut butter and kept looking at me, wondering why she couldn't get out.

I took her about 1/2 mile away from my house, in a field and let her go. If she finds her way back, I'm afraid she will have to meet a different fate. When we first moved into our house, I either caught 50 different mice in a live catch trap, or the same 3 mice over and over again. I drove them about 2 miles away into a field and let them go. Finally, I got tired of driving them away and bought about 20 snap traps. When I finally figured out how they were getting into the house and plugged up the hole that the stove pipe came in, they stopped getting in the house and I stopped having to trap them.

I love living right next to an open field, but one of the bad things is all of the critters that we deal with. They are cute when they stay outside where they belong, but when they come in my house, we have to have a little chat about boundaries. Too bad they don't speak English or I don't speak Rodent :)