I've been in the woods a bit. The only cats I've seen have been native bob cats and a really long long tailed cat that the state tells me is extinct here. I've never seen a house cat in the wood. What I do see...... Hundred of hogs. Last year I got tired of killing them. Also many many Coyotes and Wild dogs. Hogs #1 by far as far as damage. It was Spanish Hogs along with European disease brought by DeSoro that wiped out the native population in North America. It finished the Mound-builders and emptied Kentucky. The tribes encounted in the 17-18 Centuries were a mere remnant compared to the population of the 15th and 16th Centuries. A damn hog will eat any damn thing and they reproduce like ...rats. #2 Canines..... Coyotes Wild Dogs Coyote Wild dog Possibly even wolf hybrids... These are what's wiping out quail. Quail nest together at night a canine will kill every one of them...just for the hell of it. Feral cats are a problem but they are not the problem.
Cats. I have four of them patrolling here. Mice, I have none. My old Basset would catch them too, it was hilarious to watch. Antifreeze in a 5 gallon bucket works real well, but I suggest you cover it up enough that other animals can't get in and take a drink.
I know a woman who has 5 cats. and the mice got in her car and took tissue paper and built a nest in her air cond box and she had to get that fixed, then mice got under the hood and chewed the wiring for the electric fan and she overheated her car. Then rats got in the wall of her house and chewed the 220 volt wires going to the air cond and that shorted out and caused a electrical fire. She didn't call 911 or the fire dept . She called me. I went and pulled the meter and had the fire out before the fire dept got there. and she has 5 cats roaming there.
Funny you mention mice. I pulled a valve cover off a head on the shelf, that was not bolted to the head. And inside was a mouse nest that nearly took up all of the empty space. And I've got ultrasonic things banging away out there all of the time too. A few years ago, I was scrapping a car. I decided to cut off the exhaust pipes to make getting the transmission easier. That pipe was full, of mouse hair. That poor car could have never started with so much packed in there. And that was one of those, it ran when I parked it deals too. Actually it ran pretty good too. So glass packs without baffles, invite the little buggers to crawl way up front, in the dark too. Stubborn little things. DeCon ain't that it used to be. I got some rat poison from a feed store, that seems to work.
My son just paid a grand to have the wiring fixed on his wifes SUV that the mice had chewed up under the hood. It is really surprising seeing as how the car gets used almost every day. My favorite rat trap is 5 gallon bucket half full of water and a stick that will be counter balanced when the rat climbs up the stick to get the bait the stick flips him into the water and he drowns. When we lived in Florida we drained down our above ground pool in the winter. One morning I am going to my shop and found a pair of racoons in the pool. One had drowned and the other was barely making it . So I got my skimmer out and he swam to it and hung on while I got him out. I had to fish out his partner and bury him. The other one never came back after he regained his strength.
The plot next to my house got leveled & cleaned out. Junk sheds, junk trucks & trailers. Now I had a rat problem. I opened my gas grille one evening, had one staring at me... love the grease... I got a bunch of big glue traps, nailed them to scrap lumber or else they walk away with them. One had chewed his leg off to get out of it. The traps had poison in the glue, so I nailed a couple of them that way. Old fashioned snap traps, got more of them. In total I got about 8 of them.
This is my main mouser, Ivan. He's now 3 and still on the small side. But moves like greased lightning. He was a feral kitten my son brought home from work at 5 weeks old.
I pulled an old 350 SBC out of the corner in late 2015. I had it wrapped up tight, but some tape came off in a couple of spots. I found seed pods they left behind all throughout the engine. Under the intake, in the exhaust manifolds, even set up house on a piston that was on the down stroke...
Snap traps are the best way to kill rodents get a decent sized plastic storage container drill a 2 inch hole on each side of the container with a hole saw. Put 2 or 3 traps inside the plastic bins baited with peanut butter and a smear of peanut butter around the holes in the bins. Put the lids on the plastic bins put the bins up against the outside of buildings or any other strategic location and let the rodent killing begin. Some rat poisons work by making the rat extremely thirsty the rat can then nibble through pipes to get the water or get the water elsewhere and crawl into some impossible to get at spot to die. It will stink so bad your wife will never shut up ,ask me how I know. I have never liked the sticky traps could you imagine if you spilled gasket glue on the floor of your garage and somehow became entrapped in the glue and your wife ignored your screams for help and you died of thirst and hunger and couldn’t reach your car magazines!
Yes rats migrate. loss of habitat or overcrowding will cause them to travel looking for new homes. Mice and rats continually urinate and as they travel they drag it along with their tails. leaving scent trails and others follow the trail.When you eradicate the ones you have it leaves a empty habitat and very soon new rodnets move in to fill that void. So its a constant battle. Myself I don't thing a asteroid killed the dinosaurs. I think it was rodnets. The plant eating dinos layed eggs. and when rodnets appeared they ate the eggs , no young and then the mature plant eaters died and the meat eaters starved out. We still have dinosaurs. Crocks Alligators ,snakes & turtles. and those Reptiles will eat a rat coon or anything the goes after their eggs. and furbearing critters brought parasites the dinosaurs couldnt tolerate. Ive trapped three Bobcats over the years at this corner. Pretty cats. One hide brought $35.
In the 1950,s it was a different world. My dad would take me to the US steel pipe yard. when the snow was deep. the rabbits would get inside the pipes. and us kids would shoot them with a 22. they usually came out the far end. Dad had three 20 ft sections of gal pipe. he would couple them together so we could push out any that stayed. sometimes there was a muskrat, opossum .raccoon or best of all a cat in the pipe. We skinned everything and sold the hides. Just part of being redneck cracker hillbillies. We lived in Portage Indiana. A area bordered by the tri state Dombey Road and Marquette Road. Called Hillbilly Haven by the local Yankees. Everyone there was from Tenn ,Kentucky , Arkansas and some place down south. When Deer season opened back home. Every male who could hold a gun was gone . they left their jobs & school to go deer hunting. Everyone had hound dogs. Beagles , Blueticks , Redbones , Walkers and others. A used vehicle might cost $100. It wasn't uncommon for a good coon dog to sell for $300. these kids today don't know what they missed.
If you think that rat pictured in HOTRODPRIMERS post above is gonna be scared away by dryer sheets,peppermint oil,kingsford coals,Irish spring soap or any other Martha Stewart remedy — dream on. You gotta exterminate that bad boy!
This is a lot to read, but statistically it shows far more people are injured by dogs than cats. (Personally I like both). Dog bites are by far the most common type of animal bites in the U.S. with around 4.7 million dog bites occurring each year.An estimated 800,000 dog bites are serious enough to require medical care.About 2/3 of all dog bites occur near or on the property of the victim; in most dog bite cases, the victim knew the dog that bit them.On average, there are about 31 fatal dog bite cases per year.Around 92% of fatal dog bite cases involve male dogs; of these cases, 94% of the male dogs were not neutered.Chained dogs are more likely to bite by a factor of 2.8 times more than unchained dogs and account for 25% of fatal dog attacks.Slightly over 71% of all dog bites occur to the arms, legs, feet, and hands. However, 65% of dog bites among children are to the neck and head.Pit bulls are responsible for the most human deaths each year, followed by rottweilers and huskies. However, many dog bite cases don’t get reported.Half of all dog attacks involve children younger than 12 years of age.70% of all dog attack fatalities involve children who are less than 10 years old. There are an estimated 400,000 cat bites each year.An estimated 66,000 hospital emergency visits each year are due to cat bites.In 2009, there were 81 rabies cases from dogs, but 300 rabies cases from cats, meaning that cats were three times more likely to be rabid than dogs that year. Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk
BS, I have used the same traps in the same spots with mouse blood on them to catch as many as three or four mice in a day. Best thing for getting rid of them quick is the 5 gallon bucket with a plastic bottle that spins on a piece of welding rod or heavy wire across that is held by two holes drilled just below the top. Cover the bottle with dollar store peanut butter and put a few inches of water in it and set it so they can climb up to it. I've laid aboard against it in the cellar. Make sure you dump the bucket pretty often as it stinks the beat hell if you go off and forget it for a few days. I haul the bucket out and dump it in the field and the magpies or some other bird seems to clean it up but I have a big field. I can't use poison because our dogs both catch mice and the cat catches them.
I use for inside the house trapping those little grey traps that have a door that shuts once the mouse is inside. Victor makes one type. The trap is on a fulcrum, the door is counter-weighted. Once the mouse gets over the fulcrum, the door swings shut and has a little catch on it. One night, I bag one in the kitchen before I go to bed, so I can't let it rattle around all night. I used to hop in the car, take them a couple of miles away and let them out. I get in my wife's nice car and set out, the mouse & trap standing up in the ash tray. I see out of the corner of my eye, the door starts to open. So I grab the trap and close the door. At a stop sign, I take a look... Mr. Mouse's head is caught in the trap and he is quite dead. His neck was squeezed flat and both eyes are out of the sockets. Looks like some obscene Pez dispenser. So it was a short ride that night. And mannn.. can those traps stink. Male mice smell terrible and most of them will poop inside the trap.
My wife worked in a bank and they had mice. Maintenance puts out these little glue traps all over, they were supposed to come in early and remove any full ones. So one morning this girl comes in and she's not the squeamish type, she picks up a loaded trap, thinks the mouse is dead... guess again. She panics, drops the trap onto her panty hose and it sticks. Between getting the trap off her leg and freaking out, she has a small cut on her leg. Most likely from her own nails. Off to the ER.... she was ok. One of the guys took the mouse outside and stepped on it.
Great story...but I had to write a better ending. "Off to the ER.... she was ok. One of the guys took the mouse outside where it bit him, ran back into the ER. It bit every patient in site, then off to the elevator where it continued it's horrific rampage. Meanwhile, back at the lab, test results came back positive for rabies! The entire hospital was under quarantine as that mouse ran out the main entrance biting anything and everyone who crossed his path. The whole city was under attack! Troops were called in with tanks and gas. That mouse was never captured! Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk
One day these city kid & there mom came to visit. relatives of some kind. And the next morning at daylight we where up and the dogs had something treed. So I went down there with the 22. In a bug tall scycamore on the creek there was something black way up there. leaves on the tree couldn't make it out. So I looked as my shells. picked out a super X long Rifle. Shot it and down it came. In that pack of canines was a big mongrel female. She had pups hidden under the barn floor. she had a kinda mane on her shoulders. rodiesan ridgeback maybe? any how those city kids seen it hit the ground. It was a angora cat. They where agast. Randy killed a kitty cat. then that big old female came up and swallowed the cat whole. they where horrified the smalles one crying. Then the mother dog went in front of the hole she had dug Under the barn. and regurgitated the cat. and barked and her pups came out and started chewing on it. They ran to tell their mother. Before they left I caught and gave them a puppy. I seen one many years later at a funeral wake. everyone was drinking a bit. She told the story and some of then said nothing. a few chuckled . Then the story teller stated and he gave us a puppy we loved that puppy. and after it grew up it killed and ate every cat in the neighborhood. everyone laughed.
When I was working, if you had a mouse problem pretty soon you had a rattlesnake problem too The peanut butter on a Victor spring trap worked the best for us. If it was inside a building, I would usually tie the trap off with a piece of string otherwise the little suckers would crawl off and die where you couldn't reach them. I also couldn't believe that guy in the Army training film picking up those dead rats with his bare hands. Yuck! I guess he never heard of hantavirus.
There is guy on U Tube Jonathan W. He got a setting and rotting non running stude with a Packard 352 engine. others had attempted to get it going and failed. He finally got it running by pull starting it. Ran horrible. He ran a Compression check and the comp was low. Tore it down and was gonna install new rings. It had two damaged pistons and every exhaust valve needed replacing. He decided mice had crawlen in the exhaust and built their home. The urine ate the valves. and when someone tried to start it debris got on the piston tops and when it was cranked over the debris between the heads and pistons bent the crown and top ring lands. I agree with his assessment.
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