I'm next to a field and the little rat critters always eat half the fruit or more every year. Too many in the field for traps or poison to have much effect. I read where rodents hear higher frequencies than dogs & cats, and am wondering if a whistle in that range might keep them away without irritating the pets next door?
Or some other way to keep them out of the trees? Maybe trimming the trees so that the limbs are not touching anything might work for some trees, but not practical for all of them. And then wrapping aluminum foil or some other guard around the trunks?
Wrapping the trees might help but a black rat (rattus rattus) can climb and jump as well as a squirrel so you will have trouble making the tree inaccessible to them AKA roof rat, tree rat, fruit rat or "palmetto squirrel"
We have a lot of experience with rattus rattus around here., Everyone seems to want a fruit tree or five, then they wonder why they have rats. In the wild like this, rats are really just squirrels without a publicist so I am not freaked out about them (they carry the same dangers) but we do try to keep them down. Promoting my long skinny reptiles is a small price to pay but most of the damage they do to the rat population is eating the babies. I suppose a big rat snake could take down an adult but I doubt it is their main target. That is the problem with "natural control". They want to eat but I think they will not eat the last one and endanger the food supply, even if they could. Rats are tough to eliminate. A few will always get away and they breed very fast.
The most common snake here is actually the black racer and they tend to keep most of the other snakes down. They will take a rat tho.
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This guy lived in my screen cage for a month or so. He cleaned out every other living thing (lizards, tree frogs, bugs etc)
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I finally let him out but I am not sure he wanted to go.
We usually had stray cats on the farm to keep the rat, mice and ground squirrel population down. The strays with kittens seemed to be the best hunters. Feeding them made them lazy just as it does with humans.
One exterminator site claims 10 mph for the Black Racer. I think it's more like 3 mph. They can be aggressive. A South Carolina man reported that he was haying with his brother when he felt something bite his calf. It was a Black Racer. He carried it across the field and resumed haying. It returned and bit him again. He carried it farther. It returned and bit him a third time. As the bites were harmless, he didn't hurt the snake.
We have lots of black rat snakes. They're slow and docile, but neighbors kill them. They get rat infestations. I don't. I'm always glad to see a rat snake in my yard, in my trees, in my cellar, or on my steps. When I find a snake skin in the attic, I know my friend has saved me from an infestation of bushy-tailed gray rats.
One winter my BIL had mice in his kitchen. Extermination could have been a long process, but suddenly they were gone. In the spring, he found a snake skin behind the refrigerator. The difference between a mouse and a rat snake is that the rat snake won't do you any harm.
Neighbors across the street loved to kill rat snakes. Then they had an infestation of rats who did thousands of dollars' worth of damage to electrical equipment, electronics, and plumbing.
A neighbor had a chronic mouse infestation. A couple of years ago, she called me to kill a rat snake in her car port. I refused. I said a kitten was more dangerous, and she was right to be afraid because if she stepped on it she could injure it.
I told her rat snakes are like beagles, going where they smell prey. The snake had gotten wind of her mice. It would eat them and move along to another home where it was needed.
She checked with others, who confirmed what I said. In a week or so, there was no sign of a snake or mice. Year after year, she paid an exterminator $300, and he never accomplished what the snake did for free.
A couple of weeks ago, the neighbor on her other side was removing shrubbery with a front loader. I saw a 5' rat snake on the road in front. it was rippled, so I knew it was frightened.
I saw the neighbor lady the next day. She said he'd killed the snake out front, and she'd called him about a smaller rat snake on her patio, where the mice used to get in. He chased it into a pipe hole in her brick wall. He stood back and the snake came back out. Obviously, the snake hadn't wanted to enter her house, but because it had dared enter, she felt that it had to die. The neighbor killed it.
The difference between rat snakes and neighbors is that rat snakes are intelligent and well behaved.
That has not been our experience, when you have a lot of "outside" cats, they kill everything else and the rats are the only ones who can compete. With no other pressure on the food supply from ground birds, rabbits squirrels etc, the rats thrive.
Enter the story of Towser the wonder cat who killed a million rats ... but he never actually stemmed the population. There were always plenty for him to kill.
fruit or more every year. Too many in the field for traps or poison to have much effect. I read where rodents hear higher frequencies than dogs & cats, and am wondering if a whistle in that range might keep them away without irritating the pets next door?
trees so that the limbs are not touching anything might work for some trees, but not practical for all of them. And then wrapping aluminum foil or some other guard around the trunks?
I had one of these rat terriers years ago and come to think of it never saw a rodent. Good animal but kind of yappy and moody - liked to snip at you. Training helped but didn't change the attitude problem.
No snakes here - lovely Miseries goes nuts at the sight of a garden spider or slug...
The definition of a Jack Russel IS attitude. Another definition is "all heart and mouth" They make the energizer bunny look lazy. They will chase a ball untill your arm falls off, and they are loyal almost to a fault. Just don't piss one off!!!
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