The Old Folks Home

[pennyJo1960]

Irresponsible use of vermin poisons is inexcusable. Period. We use the Tom Cat bait traps also. Well worth the investment. I hate ground squirrels, therefore I do not waste poison on them. I use a scoped .22 or scoped .17 on them instead.

We were infested with the nasty little things at our home back in IL. They completely undermined our front yard. One night we came home from the office to see the little devils scatter like cockroaches when we pulled in the drive way (we lived rural, btw). I'd had a particularly bad day at work and without a word, went into the house and still dressed in office clothes hid behind a bush and waited for the furry little roaches to come back out. I think I picked off three that night. It got to be my habit to come home from work and de-stress by sniping ground squirrels. When I got tired of the .22 I grabbed my .17 and used it. I got so good I could pick them off at 100 feet. When I cleared our yard, I went to work on the cemetery next door where our infestation had migrated from. By the end of summer there were a lot less ground squirrels in our neighborhood and I avoided an ulcer.

As for mice, they are one of the main carriers for Lyme disease. Another reason to hate them.

I like your de stresser allot darn way to go

 

[lilwildrabbit]

I have witnessed a crime committed by my rooster yesterday. It's hard to imagine what I witnessed but I did and all I could do is watch and laugh guess I'm a coconspirator to the crime! Was out in the run yesterday working on it hearing a commotion from one of my hens a buff orphington she has never laid an egg before nor let a rooster service her she has always been my little spinster! Well today I hear the commotion next thing I see is the hen running like she is being attacked and Mutt ( my rooster) on her heels. She went from one end of run three times before Mutt cornered her he wrestled her to the ground jumped on top and did his thing all the while all the others upset thinking all hell is breaking loose well when he was done he got off stood up ruffled his feathers and let out a nice big crow! Well my hen still laying there scared me I thought she was hurt so I went over and tried to pick her up she flew out of my hands flapping her wings and squaking like never before! She ran around twice more around the run before settling down and letting out a squawk every so often keeping the others upset. Well I herd about the same squawking this morning so I investigated it as I looked she flew out of the henhouse ran around like her butt was on fire. I did fine a small egg in one of the nest today and I'm figuring she laid her first egg today!! Was so funny to watch it I couldn't help but laugh!

 

[perchie.girl]

https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/norway_rats.htm

I followed the instructions baited stations with "One Bite" and They would pack it in their cheeks and take it back to their nests... to share.

I would never do this for just one or two or a few mice....

The best way to deal with ground squirrels is something called "The Squirrel enator" No bait.
Ground squirrels carry Plague fleas... so they should be dealt with carefeully Here in San Diego the majority of the squirrels are Ground Squirrels. They can collapse foundations. They will eat eggs too

squirrilenator

 

[Cynthia12]

Just streaking through here.....

I have not abandoned this thread, just left it in capable hands for a while. SCG.

Life happens. My Dad went into the hospital with pneumonia and went downhill fast from there. He is back in his memory care ( really nice ) facility, but is pretty much bedridden and needs 24 hour care. I have requested and received FMLA for 6 weeks and will use up another 6 weeks of vacation time when that runs out. After that, I will retire. I will see you guys as much as I can, but there hasn't been time lately.

Love you all!

EDITED to remove typos

Prayers for you and your family. Retirement!

 

[getaclue]

Wisher, sorry to hear about your dad. You're in my prayers.

On another note, last week DD brought a couple kits for making Pinewood Derby cars for 2 of my grandkids, as something they were doing with their Awana group. One of the guys that works with Dh had a bandsaw, so he got them cut. She called yesterday, and announced they had to be done by today. Dh took off to get some supplies to try to finish them. Michael's had just put their supplies away. It seems that several groups, Boy Scouts, Awana, YMCA, etc. start building in Feb. I'm not sure who dropped the ball on this one, but someone goofed. I thought it was my daughter that missed the memo, but she said their group had just gotten their kits in, and most of the parents were scrambling to get the kits, and get the cars done.

Dh said the biggie was getting the weights, and no one had them. I suggested he go to the fishing tackle section, and check out the sinker selection. That's what he did, and it worked. We sanded, drilled, filled, sanded some more, got them painted, and put stickers for the numbers, and some of the decoration. They looked pretty good last night, when the grandkids took them home, especially considering we were given very little time to complete them. Next year will be a different story.

The past several days, it seems like the full moon is a bit brighter than usual. I went out on the patio at 2 am, and all the neighborhood roosters were crowing, as if the sun were coming up. I went back in to double check the time. Too bad the roosters didn't check their watches, and hush, but it really was bright, like the sun was coming up.

 

[pennyJo1960]

@getaclue good grief kudos to your Dh keeping heads about them in the crunch
not good no fair warning this can be the it for kids to remember

 

[drumstick diva]

Hope they do well in the derby, a lot of love went into getting them ready

 

[chickisoup]

Evening everyone.

We got up to a one inch plus layer of ice and hail covered by 6" of snow Monday morning. A bit more snow then it tried to warm up. By this morning most of it was gone as the nights are still cold but the sun is higher in the sky now so it doesn't take as long for things to warm above freezing. I just hope it warms back up at least a little before my chicks ship from Cackle next month.

As for the poison thing. We just can't use it. We are too much a part of our "neighborhood" here. Our neighbors are just about all of the furred and feathered variety and we feel we would just be being unneighborly if we intentionally put something lethal into the bottom of the food chain. Mother nature does a pretty good job of keeping things in balance for us as long as we do our part by keeping our feed controlled, not letting the human part of the neighborhood turn into an overgrown junkyard, etc. The chipmunks and mice still can get pretty "populated". We generally control the Chipmunks when we can by live trapping (we have the Least variety so they're pretty small) and the 5 gal. bucket trap works pretty effectively for controlling the mouse population. Otherwise we have a couple different sized enclosed box weasel traps that work very well and are safe around the birds and larger critters. Anything that is larger than that we have a nice variety of larger metal live traps. We've only been tempted once to resort to poison when we couldn't trap a couple burrowing rodents (aka ground squirrels that were reeking havoc on our gardens) but Pa's aim turned out to still be good so problem solved.

 

[pennyJo1960]

We have not used poison of any type... and yes prefer to keep it this way have some very pesky moles
the BF was looking at pipe bombs ? sold at dels

 

[lilwildrabbit]

No poison here except maybe wasp spray