Critter Season

 

Gregory - a cute Pack Rat - species of Neotoma 

Hole in Hood insulation

New Balsam Needle sachet for prevention

Peppermint Oil sachet

daily haiku

set the trap each night
pack rat springs it and escapes
swear words on dawn air

 As Bob Dylan sang "The times they are a-changin' ", and that is true as we come to the end of summer and approach fall. It seems like Fall happened two weeks ago when we went into a cooler spell and got rain on and off. We get an occasional day near 90' but for the most part top 70's most days now.  The days are shorter; it is dark when I go to bed and dark when I get up. I really don't mind as I am sleeping longer and better. 

As I walked this morning I espied large fish swimming in Hanging Woman Creek even though it is less than a foot deep. One was somewhere between 12-18 inches long and there were smaller ones too.  I am pretty sure they were catfish and my friend Nan reports plenty of them in the river by her house. So there will be a few full plates for dinner in the next week, at a guess. 

Accordingly, with cooler weather, the critters arrived.  A persistent mouse was eating my bowl of fruit on top of the dishwasher.  I baited the trap several times with no luck; even put pieces of my precious peach beside the trap to lure him, but no luck.  Finally I went back to the old fashioned bait - cheese. Caught him on the first night and after re-baiting the other traps caught three more. 

The night before last, a spider ran across my path as I went to the kitchen and was so large (about 2 1/2 inches) I gasped.  I knew it had to be a Wolf Spider. Fortunately for me it was so shocked it stood still long enough for me to put a water glass over it until I could deal with it next day.  It was relocated to the outdoors.

I went to lunch with Nan last week and as I was driving down the river I smelled something odd. When I arrived I parked the car and looked under the hood. Sure enough there was a Pack Rat's nest on top of the engine! Neatly built and woven in among the wires and hoses was a great deal of the insulation from the lining to the hood of the car. I was using something called Fresh Cab - sachets of ground Balsam Pine needles, the odor of which rodents do not like.  However unknown to me they had disappeared, so there was no deterrent and the Rat moved in. 

I have a live trap that I use for Pack rats so I baited it and set it out by the car.  The bait was gone and the trap sprung several nights in a row. Then I realized that I had not set the trap properly. I made another attempt and this time I was lucky.  There, the next morning, was the one you see in the picture.   I was going to town, so I popped him in the car for relocation.  On the trip I remembered how my cat liked me to play an Enya  CD on the way to the vet hospital; I thought about playing it to Gregory, but then dismissed it - figured he wasn't that intellectual. He was dutifully dropped off by the ruin of a old log cabin where he can pack happily without destroying my car. 

Thanks to Amazon & UPS I now have some new Balsam Pine needle sachets under the hood, plus I read that rodents don't like peppermint oil, so I made a couple of those too. Now I am driving into those cool, wet, critterly Fall days, in a world scented with peppermint and pine - what more could a person ask for?!