Battling wit' Luis Ratones
 

dammit Earl. Sometin been chewing on my plants. At 1st I thought I was being clumsy moving stuff and breaking it. We all know better:biggrin:. 6 bulbs I can break off a jenkinsii. 30 I cannot. Counted 30 leafs bitten off. Thats 2 years of work at least.

Put out some mouse bait. Checked on them today and didnt notice they been eaten any. So decided to clean up the greenhouse some and remove some cubby holes that nothing fit in but empty pots and junk...

Holy fReeking Moley!!! This was not a mouse in my greenhouse. Does the term" We going to need a bigger trap" remind you of a movie? Was no mouse but a big fat azzed field rat!!! Me and the Dog were going nuts running around chasing that damn thing. I didnt know hannah aka 'HAMBO' Queen of Licky Da Bowl Cleen, the rare German bred 'PootzanFartz'. :biggrin: is a Rat chaser. She was on the job. 80 lbs of rat chasing lap dawg. She thinks wiggling her tail all day is a work out.
http://rkidkelly.smugmug.com/Flowers...0%5B1%5D-L.jpg

Found the rat had been living up in the barbeque pit. Hmmm...Ratone ona Stick maybe? I smoked him out. What started out as a little cleaning today ended up being a 3 hour long major ordeal. I hate Rats!!! We got a field a few blocks down they just mowed and dug up and now we got urban invasion of the residents. So habitat destruction is taking place in our backyards and sometimes we dont even realize it until they come out and attack.

Anyway dont know how Im going to catch him yet but you can be sure I will post the corpse when I do :biggrin:...Im liking the electric Zappers.. I do live in Texas after all..

I sprayed the greenhouse down with vinegar, It kills the scent trails. It might help but I want to see this big fence climbing Rkid chewin little son of Luis Ratone on a stick nice and crispy.

Moral of the story is you might not have them but you can safeguard against these invasions with some foresight...

OMG! I nearly fell out of my chair from laughing so hard at your very detailed description of the 3hrs ordeal. Most funny is your little girl's "title". Queen of ....rare......Pootzandfartz.... :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Sorry 'bout the rat...hope you can eradicate it soon.

Love your story and sense of humour. Good luck with the rat!

Shot gun. Pure and simple. 12 guage should work. Whatever ya do, don't corner it. Been known to carry.

Sounds like you both got a workout. :lol: Your rare breed fur baby looks like she wouldn't hurt a fly, much less chase after a fat rat. Wishing you and your hunting partner success! :)

I had to read this one out loud to the family at the dinner table. What a great story! :D

I don't want to rain on the hilarity, but I have to add a word of caution to you, because it doesn't feel right for me not to do so. I would advise you to hire a professional and have the offending rodents trapped, do not use poisons or baits.

Just over a year ago, my 2 year old Labrador, that I had raised from a young pup of 8 weeks old, died suddenly. He was the picture of health. My vet was convinced that someone had fed him warfarin and we'd had a recent incident where someone had been tossing meatballs loaded with rat poison into the yards of known dog owners, so we reported it. It didn't take long to find out that my next door neighbors had put down commercial grade rat bait, which was mostly warfarin, in their garage to control mice and Mugen had been catching the mice in his own yard and was swallowing them whole. The rodents eat way more of the bait than is required to kill them. The amount they eat is usually more than enough to kill an 80 pound dog. :(

First pardon the language....but I am a dog person of thw highest order.....WHAT SICK SON OF A BITCH THOUGHT THAT TORTURE METHOD UP!!! That is a slow and painful death....what about an aspirin? I know that it disolves in their mouths an. It kills them....not sure what may do to a puppy...im sorry for your loss. That does stink...

---------- Post added at 10:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 PM ----------

O dear God this week thus far has been so hectic and stressful this just about killed me I was laughing so hars. See I would do the opposite of hunting at first I would run screaming and leave my dog to destroy it...okay could yous set up mid sized live traps to catch the little monsters the exstinguish them from there? That way maybe ummm PootzandFartz wont be able to get in it?

---------- Post added at 10:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 PM ----------

:rofl:Oh and the pootzandfartz is a cutie patootie:rofl:

Thanks. He was amazing. I don't think I'll ever get over losing him like we did. He was fine until he wasn't. I didn't even know anything was wrong until it was too late.

I got him!!!. I cant find anymore damage but he got about 3 plants and untold budlings. I couldn't catch him at 1st. Sooo I got one them traps look like dinosaur jaws. Put peanut butter in the scoop but didn't se the trap. He ate the PB for a few days. Noticed it was gone. 3rd day trap set and BAMM :biggrin:

I did get one of the electrnic magnetic wave traps n it got wet on the porch n it don't work now. I think I can take it back since its covered under my buyer protection plan on my CC. If it wasn't 40 dollars I wouldn't worry about it.

Havin hard time posting pics bec I got a new laptop n windows 8 is a piece of CRAP. It wont copy and paste across multiple windows and I cnt fnd the back button.

He was big :rofl:http://rkidkelly.smugmug.com/Flowers...2_092530-M.jpg

I showed 'pootznfartz' what she had been chasin around the yard n she ran back inside :biggrin:

Yeah you got it!!

BTW -I love Windows 8 but it does take some getting used to. Once you get a feel for the changes I'm sure you'll love it too. I've been using it since last Fall (2012)and couldn't be happier.

Good job!

:banana: Congrats! Btw., after looking at that, I would've run back in the house too. :lol:

Good work and you did it without harming any other creatures in your environment! WTG!

'hambo' says 'Tanks n' Dat a fact n' wad a Wat'

http://rkidkelly.smugmug.com/Flowers...13%20012-L.jpg

She patrols the fence now everyday one side to other. Shes Rat Patrol now :D

I Think this one might be a smaller male. Nature predicts a larger female to be close by if so.

Im getting better at this Windows 8 but I still don't like it much. And indeed I didn't kill nothing else or use poison.

Rats are a gift from God too. Sometimes you got to gift em back :biggrin:

Keep setting the trap. Where there is one, there are often more nearby. Your dog is beautiful!
So sorry about your lovely lab. We always use traps for that reason.
Windows 8 is great except for a few little things. :)

Aspirin up high where she cant get it should not hurt her. My dog got popped by a bull and the vet said he could have 2 full aspirin (aspirin only no tylenol etc..) a day so even if she got the rat she should be okay. Just an idea for prevention.

I HATE WINDOWS 8!!!...Jean

windows 8 is the reason my next computer will be a mac....windows gets something right (windows 7) and then they mess it up...I am done....

rats are horrible! glad you got this one! the pnut butter traps are best to use, I wish more people would do so...we lost our beloved alley cat a few months ago to poisoned rats....he suffered for months as we tried our best to save him...finally there was no help....it is a horrible way to go for a cat or dog....I guess that stuff should not be marketed....ugh....good luck growing your orchids back....

Vjo, win 8 is very different. I am irked that when I view a picture, I must use the windows button to get back to the desktop. I also can't believe they didn't include the usual pre-loaded games. Just minor. Other things, though, are much, much better. My last operating system was Vista (couldn't find all the drivers for my video card, etc. for win 7) so this is really nice. It is pretty easy to customize and the security is easier to lock down.

RandomGemini, I hope you said something to the neighbor about how your dog died so that poison isn't an option they will consider again. You should also find the name of the exterminator and contact them. That was very irresponsible of them to use those baits where the mice could come into contact with pets. By letting them know what happened, you might prevent other pets from meeting the same fate. When we had mice in our garage (a neighbor decided to feed the birds with about ten bird feeders and let the seed go all over the ground), I looked at all the options and discarded the poison one immediately. Just too dangerous.
Again, so sorry for your loss. These furry kids just come into our lives and steal our hearts with their loyal, unshaking devotion. How awful to go through what you did. :(

I talked to them, yes. They were told by the store that they purchased the bait from, that it would not harm my dogs or their cats if they caught the mice after they'd been poisoned. They believed him, they had no idea how much poison the mice eat when they take the bait.

The second they found out about what happened to Mugen, they were furious because they had been lied to and picked up the bait from around their garage while I was still talking to them. They ended up calling an exterminator to humanely trap and relocate the mice. This is why you should never trust the word of someone who works at a big box store. They get a whopping 30 minutes of training in their department before they are sent out to sell you stuff.

They are animal lovers too, they just didn't know that secondhand poisoning was a danger to my dogs or their cats.

Poor neighbors...must have felt awful. At least you prevented any other deaths.
Our first dog, a wedding gift, was a Westie who was the Great Hunter, sparing only rabbits and birds (We had a pet rabbit and parakeet so she was taught to leave them alone). What happened to your baby could have easily happened to her. I trained our current dogs not to hunt just to be on the safe side.

I could never train my Labs not to hunt. I rescue my dogs and the Labs that always end up in shelters are field bred dogs. Field bred dogs are partially insane. They are bred for their prey drive and when puppy millers decide to get into the mix, they can pump that prey drive up to levels that are just incredible. Most of my dogs either came from puppy mills, or backyard breeders originally before their previous owner dumped them in an animal shelter because they couldn't deal with the high activity level. So they have that insane prey drive. You really can't do anything with it, except channel it into positive behaviors, but there's no way I could train them to stop hunting. That would be like asking them to stop breathing.

BTW, RJ? Your dog is gorgeous. I LOVE her face. Give her a kiss from me. She's a good girl, I can tell. :)