Snakes on a Farm

Nothing will make you have to change your underwear faster than opening up the worm compost bin and finding a snake inside.  Apparently, I shrieked like a little girl before I called for Colin, our much more manly houseguest, to come and catch it.  Its interesting to get to be part of a more natural cycle of life when you choose to take even a small step out of our consumer grocery store lifestyle and try something as simple as letting worms eat your garbage.  We don't throw our spoiled food in the garbage, we let the worms eat it, then the worms attracted a mouse (which I noticed in our bin numerous times), the mouse then attracted this beautiful California Kingsnake! Yet another reason NOT to use poison for rodent control! There is no such thing as poisoning just rodents, everything that eats them gets poisoned too, which eventually makes your property a dead zone.  When things are in balance, you might have some rodents, but you'll also get snakes, owls and hawks to keep them in check. Let nature do the work and we will hopefully will have less mice, better compost and more fun animal encounters.

I might have shrieked, but Camille is one brave little girl

Forget kittens, these girls want a pet snake

Colin having a moment, thanks for catching it buddy!

How to kill a rat

If you are like us an into organic gardening you might be more than a little hesitant to run to HomeDepot and stock up on rat poison. With cats, dogs, kids and the occasional barn owl, we can't justify/risk having nuertoxic poison laying about.  Last summer we noticed our tomatoes and cucumbers getting nibbled or completly stolen, we have unearthed rat's nest (complete with babies in our compost pile) and seen plenty of poop in corners, underneath our lawn mower and other disturbing places. Let's face it, rats are everywhere. They aren't a stigma of poverty. Your suburbia strip mall, complete with Starbucks and Trader Joe's, has rat bait stations all around, you just not looking for them or don't know what it is.

I have heard for every rat you visibly see, there are 50 more.  That is a frightening statistic.  When we first moved in, I watched a rat chase a Gopher snake out of a bush.  I should have known then we were in for trouble!  So the question remains, how do you effectively control rats without poison?

RIP Max...wherever you are. Tiger Lily (right), more lily than tiger.

Method #1- Cats- Our cats are somewhat prissy and feminine and aren't the big mean tomcats that could easily dispatch a fully grown rat.  I recommend getting a male kitten and not neutering him (i  know, i know, but you gotta keep that testosterone following).  The purchase of our farm came complete with such a tomcat, who was an excellent hunter of rats, gophers, even rabbits.  This was in part because we didn't realize he was ours and weren't feeding him. Once we realized he was ours, we made the mistake of neutering him, shortly after, he disappeared. My wife blames coyotes, but I feel that had he had an intact manhood, he could have stood up to any coyote. He was like a bobcat, his neck was thicker than my bicep and his head was like a kids bowling ball.

Method #2- Owls- Apparently a nesting pair can take up to 3,000 rodents in a single breeding season!  Needless to say, I built owl boxes.  I still have hope that owls will move in, but one box is already full of bees, and you can't rush owls.  I've been trying to make the remaining box as romantic as possible...to no avail.

Method #3- Removing Habitat- we had iceplant ground cover and other thick/dense shurbs that was ideal cover for rats. We noticed most of our tomatos were being lost and nibbled closest to these shurbs. I have seen Ground Squirrels eating iceplant and figure its a water source during our dry California summers.   Getting rid of it and planting California natives instead has helped.  Turning our compost regularly keeps momma rats from setting up nests too.

Method #4-Traps...not for the faint of heart. Buying a trap, baiting them with peanut butter (buy a jar strictly for traps, let's no mix our PB&Js and rat control together) and leaving it out does not guarantee a rat. You gotta think like a rat. Rats scurry along the bases of fences, alongside your house and other walls.  You'll hardly ever see a rat run across open space. So your traps need to be set perpendicular to walls, fences, etc.  That means the peanut butter bait butts up to your wall, this way a rat coming from either direction will find it.

You can buy all sorts of traps. I have had luck with them all. Even the quintessential cheap $2 traps, although these are so light and pack such a spring loaded punch I have screwed them to a heavier board to keep them in place when the spring shut (this increases the chance of it actually snapping on the rats neck).  I don't recommend the sticky traps because then you have to deal with a live rat if you catch it.  I have a friend that claims he had a sticky trap with a chewed off tail and foot, it seems like a quick broken neck is more humane.

A well used traditional trap along our fence,
 notice the dense brush is good rat habitat

This traps runs about $6 and is easy to arm,
placed along a garden bed wall 

With traps you have to move them around, rats are smart, if they spring one and get away they get wary and won't come back to it.  I also try and wear gloves and touch them as little as possible to keep human smells off it and rat germs off me.

**But what to do with a dead rat?  I hate the idea of a dead rat decomposing in my trash can and stinking it up to high heaven.  So I dig a hole, 8 inches will do, cover it up and squirt it with the hose to seal up all the dirt and keep the dogs from finding them. Plus it adds some nutrients back into the soil.

When it comes to rat control, we have employed all these techniques and it seems to be helping. We try and pick our tomatos before they fully ripen, but we still see nibbles out of vegetables from time to time, but these just go to the goats and chickens instead of the kitchen.  If you have any other good techniques, I welcome a comment, as I am always trying to improve my odds.

Owls: nature's rodenator.

Sarah and I (BJ) have been a little obsessed with owls lately... I know they're trendy right now and its hip to have vintage owl bric-a-brac around your home, but what about the real thing?  We have a Barn Owl that flies around our canyon at night, and I have been trying to attract him and his friends to our property since we moved here in May of 2010.  Why? because the one thing we are really good at growing on our farm is gophers.

The gophers have made it clear that they were here first and aren't leaving without a fight.  I've tried traps, smoke bombs and even flushing them out with water from the hose. All to no avail. Our biological controls (our cats) were working OK.  Like the gophers, Max the Cat also came with the purchase of the farm (although I don't remember seeing him mentioned in the lease agreements).  Max survived on gophers for the 1.5 months we were in escrow and continued to be his favorite food after we realized he wasn't a neighbors cat and he was our responsibility.  Unfortunately, like all bad ass tom cats, Max would not be contained indoors after dark, and eventually he and a coyote had a run in.  I like to think he took a piece of that coyote with him before the end.

What I really want is a Rondenator, but I can't justify spending $1,600 on something that blows up gophers (a little too much like the movie Caddy Shack). Which brings us back to the owls.

Right around the time we moved in, that OwlCam thing online was really big, my dad kept sending me the links, so eventually I too got sucked into watching baby owls eat various rodents for hours on end.  It was here I learned that nesting owls can consume something like 3,000 gophers a season!!  So I promptly built my first owl box and precariously hung it in an old pepper tree on our back hill, and to my surprise someone promptly moved in. Unfortunately it was bee colony.  Owl box #1, Fail!

I currently find myself with a lot of free time, so I decided to try again.  This owl box is complete with metal roof and is attached to 4 separate branches in a tall lemonade berry via hooks and wires.  My thought was, if it fill with bees again, I can lower it down by the wires and scoop out the bees and put them in our unoccupied hive (currently Sarah's project).

For those of you that want to build an owl box there are about a 100 different ways to do it, and every internet site will tell you their way is best.  But really Barn Owls they need is an enclosed space with a 6" diameter hole in it.  In nature, they use tree hollows, they aren't picky.  Just make sure there are some drainage holes.  And think through if there are anywhere from 2-10 owlets in there (plus parents) how much space they might want.  Lastly, make the entrance hole higher on the box, so baby owls can't accidentally fall out. So there you go, build a box, put a hole on it and hang it at least 10-15ft up.  Happy owling.

A rat just ate our tomato!

So BJ and I just got back from a night expedition of setting rat traps around the property. We have probably collectively caught about 28 rats over the course of last 3 months.  They have eaten a good  30% of our tomatoes, devoured our new pakistani mulberry tree down to stubs, crapped on our shelves, munched our compost, stolen our peanut butter traps and generally have given us the middle finger every chance they possibly can.  Now if you are a Jainist, or a hardcore Vegan I aopologize for what I am about to say.  If I could press a magic button and electrocute the bastards off our property I would.  And mind you I consider myself a pretty compassionate guy. I save spiders and carefully remove them from bathtubs to the safety of the outdoors. I used to live catch mice at our old house and take them to a local canyon to be released.  (Come to think of it maybe I was releasing them in Radion Canyon).  I was a vegetarian on moral grounds for almost 13 years.  I idolize Gandhi and have heard the Dalai Lama speak in Central Park.  My compassion credentials run deep.  However I also am a firm believer in situational ethics and I pride my self on being an occasional hypocrite. So yes I don't get along with rats. Well except my pet rat Merlin in 6th grade but he could do tricks and didn't eat my tomatoes. 

I must admit my hatred for rats goes back to the late 90's in Indonesia when a rat we tried to posion in our thatched hut ate through a hand carved bamboo drum I had bought just a week before.  I still have it in our room.

The eradication of rats on Radio Acres is a now a nightly past time.  So instead of stressing anymore about our nocturnal nemesis I decided to  let my feeling out like my Psychologist tells me to do. She says I have musophobia or murophobia but I don't believe her.  I have shared dark dreams with her about rats spontaneously combusing on our property. I hope I can make it through this.

What about your cats you ask. Well Tilly the white cat had a tramatic childhood and she is better at catching leaves, and Sylvia is eating to much cat food and prefers to catch baby birds and baby gophers.  We do have a new cat  (Spooky) that might be a better strategic hunter when we let him outside.  We will have to wait on that one. So for now we will have to set traps.  If you have a better idea for the time being let us know. 

As Tom Waits said " You can drive out nature with a pitchfork but it always comes roaring back again...."

Discalimer:  We never use poison because of bioaccumulation (posion moving up through the food chain). We also have owls and hawks fly through the property regularally which is why we choose traps.

****We only use Certified organic peanut butter to snap their necks and the wood for the traps is sustainably harvested, FSC Certified and made in America by union workers.