Rats

First let me apologise to readers in the Isle of Man, where I live. Saying the word “rat” here is considered to be so unlucky that we normally call them “long-tails”, “Rolands” or similar. However, as this blog has an international readership who might be confused by such metaphors, for the rest of this post I will lay superstition aside and call them RATS. There are (or were) rats on my allotment. How do I know? Well for a start, they ate my entire corn crop last autumn, leaving only the cobs, as you can see from this picture.

I didn’t mind too much about that because, I reasoned, I could grow another corn crop next year, rats have to eat too, and maybe it was my fault for not growing more corn so there was enough for both me and the rats (the latter being an example of the victim – me - identifying with the perpetrators – the rats). But things came to a head this spring when the rats started gnawing the bark off my newly planted apple trees. I didn’t even know that rats ate tree bark, so I didn’t spot the problem until it was quite far advanced. I had been inspecting my apple trees weekly, but mainly at the top end to check on the leaves and buds, and I hadn’t noticed that the bark at the bases was gradually disappearing. Some of the trees have had the bark gnawed off all the way round the trunk. This is called “girdling” and usually kills the tree. Apparently rats do this in winter when there isn’t much food around (well, they had finished off my corn hadn’t they?).

Replanting a corn crop was one thing, but replanting an orchard of apple trees was quite another. This was serious, not to mention potentially very expensive, and I had to do something. No more Mr Nice Environmental Guy – this was a fight to the death, a “two men enter, one man leaves” situation in which there could be only one winner – me or the rats. 

So I assembled a collection of rat and mouse trapping hardware – see photo. These are, from left to right, the Rat Crusher (a.k.a. Big Cheese Ultra Power Rat Trap), the Mouse Jail (a.k.a. Multi Catch Metal Mouse Trap) and a basic standard mousetrap.

I found the basic mousetraps to be worse than useless. Critters just use them as picnic tables and eat the bait without setting the trap off. None of them has ever caught anything. Don’t waste your money on these. 

The Mouse Jail looked as though it would probably work if I had mice, but as I probably had rats instead, they were too small to get through the little entrance doors to the trap. It didn’t catch anything either. 

The Rat Crushers, on the other hand, did the business, crushing everything from rats to voles and small birds. I felt a bit bad about the collateral damage to the local wildlife, but what can you do –post “Keep Out” signs? The traps are cunningly designed so that it is virtually impossible to access the bait without setting off the trap. 

So now I have no more rats and can look forward to eating at least some of my corn crop this autumn. But this illustrates one of the problems with organic gardening or farming: if you don’t want to use chemical herbicides and pesticides, you need to use some sort of mechanical or barrier methods instead. The barrier methods I am currently using successfully include: 

•  Empty plastic pop bottles around the bases of my apple trees, to prevent any more rodent gnawing. I am going to put some of these around the developing corn cobs too – just to be sure. 
•  Bird nets to keep the birds off the fruit 
•  Fences and wire netting all around the perimeter of my allotment to keep out the rabbits 
•  Brassica collars around the bases of my Brussels sprouts to stop cabbage root flies from laying their eggs 
•  Copper slug tape around the bases of plant pots to deter slugs 

And finally, keep the allotment tidy and the grass short to reduce the number of places the critters can hide. 

In my next post in September, I hope to give you an update on some of the more toxic plants I have been growing. 

  Slaynt vie, bea veayn, beeal fliugh as baase ayns Mannin