Andy brought the truck down for its yearly maintenance Tuesday. In addition to the usual work, the shop had to change the air filter because a rodent had made a nest in the old one. They also had to replace a wire to one of the cylinders because someone had chewed through it. The bill would no doubt have been a lot bigger if it hadn’t been for the rat zapper.
The shop also put some “stinkum” in the engine compartment to try to discourage the rats. We’ll just have to see if it works any better than the Rid-a-Rat. The new totals are
rats in truck 21
rats in well house 10
mouse (in truck) 1
ground squirrel (in truck) 1
So the zappers killed 5 more rats in the truck since we put in the Rid-a-Rat, and one more rat in the well house since we installed the motion-detecting light. Again, it’s been an unusual year.
October 3, 2014
I’m not fond of unwanted animals at all…especially when I have not asked them to drop by! That includes ant invasions in the kitchen…sometimes I can’t seem see what they are clustering around!
Here there’s been bears that came through an opened widow when they smelled freshly baked pies. Twice that I’ve heard of.
I agree, Cathy! We’ve been lucky about ants where we are. For some reason my mother used to have a lot of trouble with them in California.
Living in rural parts creates such problems everywhere. I was sharing your posts with a visitor from our sugar belt when he too said that they have similar problems with their cars though tractors being more open, do not have such problems. I suggested to him that perhaps he should use only a tractor to move about!
😀
Some people just keep the hood of their car open when they’re not driving. It works for the same reason — it’s not dark enough for the rodents. It only works if the car is parked in a somewhat sheltered area.
I’d like to use “stinkum” to deter trick-or-treaters. I buy candy. Mostly they don’t come anymore because of parties in school gyms on Oct 31. I’m left with candy which I don’t want to eat.
I gave apples & once, homemade Health cookies. Found them smashed on the sidewalk. So much for that.
We haven’t been having trick-or-treaters, so I don’t worry about buying candy.
They used to come from afar with pillowslips for all the candy. Now it’s just a few neighborhood ones. I’ll use the candy we got from Free digital coupons or something good we already have.
what is andy doing with all the dead little bodies?
is there a mass grave he keeps having to dig anew . . . or cremation? or . . .
who would have thought such a problem with them.
kind of like when there’s a massive insect or other kind of invasion for a season.
one summer . . . EVERY single tree in town had masses of web worms in them.
i thought “oh no! they’ll never be the same again!” and they survived and the next season there were no web worms. weird.
i hope next year there’ll be no more rats.
Andy just puts them out on the ground. The ravens love them and sometimes will squawk at him when he doesn’t have a new one for them.
We have rabbits and squirrels in our vehicles. The rabbits chew the wires, and the squirrels cache pine cones on the engine and in some filter. During our last visit to the repair shop, they removed two buckets of pine cones from the inside of the 4Runner engine. The gas mileage improved substantially after that!
So, I understand the critter-vehicle issue 😉
I didn’t know that about squirrels, but it makes sense. Pine cones aren’t a problem, of course, since all the trees burned down. Even though we have a lot of rabbits, none of them have bothered the truck. It’s mainly the pack rats.
bhb: well even ONE bear on the loose around here would make front page news…the only bears here are all safely behind bars or similar!
And as for squirrels they aren’t even at the zoo…
Rabbits yes, but then they don’t seem to be kind to lurking in the city streets…some parks with hillocks and like have them.