Washingtonians

[Ogress]

Quote:
Did it have a hairy tail ?
That would be a packrat, common in Eastern WA & OR, have not seen many on the wet side.
Ours here are black, and have short noses & big round ears.
They want no part of any bait we have tried lately, including peanut butter or the chocolate frosting we had luck with last year.
We are going to try veggies next, our rats must be a herbivore type.
DH wants to try frozen peas....

The Audubon Field Guide to North American Mammals says that packrats/woodrats exist in Western Washington, and the habitat says North Bend is a possibility.

Weirdly enough they're talking about rats on the radio right now.

I have failed to do nothing today: I got a phone call from somebody who got our number from a computer-fixing friend. The call itself and the succeeding conversation got me REALLY paranoid about my wallet, so I called to see if a theoretical honest person might have turned my wallet in to the cops and now I'm waiting for an officer to call back and take a stolen property report.

I am not having a good day.

I just looked up photos of rats, and yes, I now think both were packrats / bushy tailed wood rats. For some reason I was expecting, with a name like that, for the tail to be squirrel like. My rats both had short faces that don't look anything like the Norway rat, so I guess they must be wood rats. Roof rats can'thave white bellies. (the rat zapper rat didn't, but the cat rat did). Cat rat looked exactly like the one here: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bushy+tailed+wood+rat&view=detail&id=99BFAE7FFB9B5CADC38AA445F57CDCD9EB3FC653&first=0&qpvt=bushy+tailed+wood+rat&FORM=IDFRIR

The one in the rat zapper looked more like this:

http://blog.elizabethenslin.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC_2044.jpg

Not sure if those worked.

 

[SadieSue]

Quote:
Did it have a hairy tail ?
That would be a packrat, common in Eastern WA & OR, have not seen many on the wet side.
Ours here are black, and have short noses & big round ears.
They want no part of any bait we have tried lately, including peanut butter or the chocolate frosting we had luck with last year.
We are going to try veggies next, our rats must be a herbivore type.
DH wants to try frozen peas....

I just used chicken feed - I figured that is what he was after. The trap needs dry bait.

The tail was only a little bit hairy. According to a book I looked at, there are only Norway Rats, roof rats and bushy-tailed rats here. He did not fit the bill on any of those, but if limited to those choices, I would sat Norway, where the one the cat caught was either a small roof rat or a big field mouse. Markings and color were all field mouse or lighter, but I've never seen a field mouse that big.

Glad your rat zapper is doing it's job! I worry about rats. I've only seen one or two around here. One night one skittered across my driveway as I was pulling in. The only other time I've seen any was when DH found them dead in our backyard. Pretty sure they were woodrats. We live by Chambers Creek and there is still plenty of wooded area available for critters. I'm not sure WHY they were dead when we found them but I'm glad. Don't know if it was our cat or dogs - didn't someone say possums would kill rats too?

 

[Chickielady]

Quote:
My daughter in law says they sell for $6 a dozen at the farmers market here.

WOW $6 a dozen !!!! I feel bad about having to put my price up to $2.50. I did have one guy say "Well I can get eggs at Walmart for $1.96" I told him well Randy you just head off to walmart and get ya some of them old stale eggs with who knows what in em. Ya know he comes back about once a week for eggs. One of my other people told me it's about time you finally raised the price. He said He didn't care how much I have to charge as long as he doesn't have to buy eggs at the store.

I sell year round for $3 a doz, mixed, large & Jumbo.
We keep the fart & small/medium ones for us.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
The Audubon Field Guide to North American Mammals says that packrats/woodrats exist in Western Washington, and the habitat says North Bend is a possibility.

Weirdly enough they're talking about rats on the radio right now.

I have failed to do nothing today: I got a phone call from somebody who got our number from a computer-fixing friend. The call itself and the succeeding conversation got me REALLY paranoid about my wallet, so I called to see if a theoretical honest person might have turned my wallet in to the cops and now I'm waiting for an officer to call back and take a stolen property report.

I am not having a good day.

I just looked up photos of rats, and yes, I now think both were packrats / bushy tailed wood rats. For some reason I was expecting, with a name like that, for the tail to be squirrel like. My rats both had short faces that don't look anything like the Norway rat, so I guess they must be wood rats. Roof rats can'thave white bellies. (the rat zapper rat didn't, but the cat rat did). Cat rat looked exactly like the one here: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bushy+tailed+wood+rat&view=detail&id=99BFAE7FFB9B5CADC38AA445F57CDCD9EB3FC653&first=0&qpvt=bushy+tailed+wood+rat&FORM=IDFRIR

The one in the rat zapper looked more like this:

http://blog.elizabethenslin.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC_2044.jpg

Not sure if those worked.

Yeah, you're high enough in the Cascades for woodrats/packrats to be a possibility; down further the stupid ratzenfratzen Voles are a bigger problem: the only thing I can say in the defense of voles is that they don't chew metal or cured wood, unlike our international nightmare the Norway and Black rats.

Well, I have reported my lost wallet, and also taken my shower and my insulin and tried to decide if I should build a door frame for my Hamburg tipi or go take a nap instead. Should we have a vote on that?

 

[Chickielady]

http://www.und.edu/org/ndwild/woodrat.html
this is the westrn pack rat, and we have tons of voles, but they are small like a mouse, have a short tail.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
Townsend's Vole is as long as my fist, about half the size of a Norway Rat and 2/3 the size of a Rattus rattus. Their tails are about half as long as a rat's. There's... I think six? species of voles in Western Washington, of which Townsend's is the largest. I did a big old obsessive study of rodents the first time I saw a black rat on my bird-feeder: it was a rat, all right, but I was hoping it would be anything else at all. I hate rats, and we didn't actually have a problem with them until the apartments went in across the road and contracted for one-day-a-week trash (dumpster) disposal: the snow storm of December 2006 coincided with Tacoma Rail dead-heading some "empty" grain cars on the siding near here and two missed trash pic-ups between Christmas Eve and January 2, and we were off to the races, rat wise.


I also have the infamous Mazama Pocket Gopher, but besides being uglier than sin and eating the occassional rose root system, they're much less annoying and destructive than the voles: Zathras finds the voles supremely tastey, and hunts them when there are no gourmet baby bunnies.

 

[Chickielady]

Our rats are black, regular rat sized & slight hair on tail, not much.
Black tails, short stbby nose but not as short as say, a pica's.
High, very round ears, like Mickey Mouse.
No white on belly.
Slow, brazen, they came waddle out in broad daylight.
They seems to not be interested in meat, peanut butter ro chocolate.
I will try grain next.
There were here when we got here, trying to learn their native foods.
Insects, maybe worms & grasses ?

 

[Chickielady]

Stumpfarmer, you need to call Equifax & your bank & stop all charges on all your credit cards & stop all loan applications until further notice.

I have had to it twice.

Once had a woman in a far away town (in CA) call my Grandmother's house (on her phone, not mine!!!???) and ask me when I planned on paying her for the damages I did to her car when I hit it.
I called the police immediately.
She had my driver's license # and I guess the person who stole my DL looked up the only person in my town with the last name, Grandma (my # was a cell & so unlisted)
Seems the person who hit her car had my DL but was a kid, a young woman of 20s or so...I stopped all charges & reported it.
Better safe than sorry !!!

 

[pettec63]

Quote:
Nice!! very pretty!!! oh by the way three out one left to hatch!!! yeaaaaa I like this small batch compared to the 14 I did the first time, and I had the eggs upright too that seemed to help!!! I will send pic later!!

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
That was done yesterday, and the police report was because the wrong number had gone through an identity theaft thing years after losing a credit card that only got stopped by having a police report case number.

I wouldn't have lost it, if it was lost and not lifted (Freddie's in both Lacey and Tumwater have occassional outbreaks of pickpockets, as is common for groceries next to the freeway: I was bumped by a woman pushing past me to get diet soda and all I thought of when it happened was how much it hurt my ribs) but for a whole bunch of failed routines: the biggest two were that I'd left the house in my work pants, which have terrible front pockets, because I was too tired to change, so my wallet was in my back pocket and we left the house an hour later than I thought it was so by the time we got to check out I was having a low blood glucose crisis and was shaky and sick.

Luckily we're not in the process of taking out any new loans.