It turns out that my karma has nothing to fear. The rats are indeed healthy and active in not just one but two burrows. Why eat poison when you have 30 tomato plants to choose from? And it’s true what they say, 2 out of 2 rat families prefer heirloom tomatoes.
They’ve now taken out over half of my Cherokee Purple and anything with a hint of yellow on the Green Zebra. The romas I could care less about because I’m up to my eyeballs in saucing tomatoes but the heirlooms are breaking my heart. I don’t mind sharing but apparently rats do.
Note to self: Next year quarantine the heirloom tomatoes and build a screen hoop house over them that sits just inside the wooden bed borders so rats can’t dig in. I did this successfully with the eggplant (after losing 2 of them) which was easy since I only had 2 plants and they weren’t grown into the tomatoes. It’s too late for me to try and do anything like that with the heirloom tomatoes. The vines are hopelessly entangled together and sprawling over beds.
After email exchanges with someone I met through a local urban farming chat group who told me of her rat troubles – complete with a story of a friend who was a vet that contracted a nasty disease from handling a rat and ended up in a coma for two weeks – I’ve taken new measures to help keep the rat population from growing.
Twice a day now I’m going through picking any tomatoes with hints of red and bringing them into the house to ripen. They don’t taste that amazing sun-kissed tomato ectasy but they still beat the pants off anything at the store and you can’t tell the difference when making sauces anyway.
I’m being careful to not leave any food scraps in my little composting strainer just outside the door and to be sure the only thing I’m putting into my open composting pile are leaves and stalks, no fruit or grains. I’ve covered the chicken feeder with an overturned 5 gallon bucket overnight. I’ll be watching that for signs that something has burrowed under the bucket to get in and if I see them I’ll cut a piece of plywood to place the whole thing on.
All those corn cobs we’ve been chucking into the chicken pen after eating? Into the yard waste. It’s a shame because there was still quite a bit of corn left on some of them. Even our chickens are tired of corn this year!
I’m picking up dog poop at the end of the day. As gross as it is, I’m sure a rat would find those pesky piles tasty.
One other thing I hadn’t thought of previously – the grease drip pan on the barbecue. What a score for a rat!
By removing anything that looks remotely tasty those dirty rats are more likely to resort to eating their young, reproducing at a slower rate, or moving on to greener pastures.
I’m hoping that when we look at the back door we continue to see chickens trying to break into the house rather than rats.
4 responses so far ↓
1 joe // Sep 12, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Hi! Enjoying the blog and your rat stories. I’ve had my share of rats but don’t put poison out any more, everyone around here has cats and dogs and there’s too much that can go wrong. I’ll set traps but seem to catch far more in the winter when they want to come indoors. Out in the garden, any time I see a burrow I collapse it and cover it with big rocks. I’ve also gone after them too, tunneling after them with a shovel, or if it’s tillage season, I let the dogs do the work. Twice I’ve caught sight of them fleeing the garden and twice my dogs caught them! Your story about the vet gives me pause, but I haven’t seen signs of them in the garden since June!
Joe
2 admin // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:05 am
Hi Joe,
The poison didn’t do anything anyway but I tucked it way deep inside PVC pipe so that no cats or dogs could get at it. My preschooler would most definitely be setting the trap off if I put one out but I definitely will be going that route when he gets a little more aware of consequences.
I sure wish I could rent a Jack Russell! Love your blog by the way!
3 Jessica // Jul 8, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Another idea is to use beet pulp on your rats. It’s a equine food that soaks up water and expands significantly. If you leave it out dry for the rats, some will gorge and then drink water (and then die). No poison, no traps for your kid to set foot in. It worked for my family’s under-house rat population, so maybe it will work for you as well.
Side note: Sometimes you can get a smart rat that learns. Pesky.
4 admin // Jul 8, 2010 at 2:09 pm
What a great idea Jessica! I had heard that you needed to be careful with that around goats since they will overeat and it can swell up. I bet they have it at Deyoung’s in Woodinville. The challenge is getting them to eat it when there is so much other food around right now…
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