The_V's
Overrun with beasties
Never had one here before. We are many many miles from the nearest anything. All desert mostly sand dunes, we hardly even have three bushes on our entire 10 acres yes we are in dry climate. Also it gets avg 130s out here in summertime so we don't have many predators. We've only found one 12 inch long sidewinder baby once last year and three scorpions last fall. People tell us there's coyotes in the next town over but we've never seen one not even on our security cameras with night vision in the whole time we've been here. So you can imagine my surprise when we were sitting by the fire last week and about 10 pm our geese and ducks and even our roosters and chickens all started sounding the alarm making noises we've never heard them make ever before. The family campfire is about 200 feet away from the duck houses and coops but with our pen lights on at night we can see clear through to the other side where our goat pens are. We ran over and found nothing, we thought maybe a snake but at 38 degrees that night it was a little cold for a snake to be out. Uncle Dennis said it sounded like a RAT alarm but we don't have rats out here. So Uncle Dennis explained that they will travel with horses and since one of our neighbors brought horses out the week before that he said the rat probably hitched a ride and we better hope its only one and a male not a female. So we found nothing in the birds areas and went back to the campfire and 30 minutes later another alarm from the birds everyone going nuts! So we run over again and nothing anywhere out of place. We walk back to the fire a second time disappointed that we couldn't see what the birds were obviously freaked out about and decided wed watch the security footage tomorrow. Low and behold the birds went off again and from where I was sitting at the fire I turned to see that hunchback RAT running across the boards between the chicken bar and the duck yards! Havent caught him yet but we've named him Templeton and want any advice on how to kill templeton without poison. We can't use traps because we have teacup dogs and we can't use poison for fear the birds or the pigs or or cat or dogs find him and eat him once he's eaten the poison. Ive already tried sitting and waiting him out to pop him and be done with it but he obviously knows im armed and stays hidden until im gone.
