Drat that rat in the garden

BY MANDY EVANS

I'm a morning person, and always have been. It's a peaceful time of day. After a poke around the garden, it's nice to sit with a coffee at the computer and work while the world slowly awakens.

When I take a break, I can gaze out the window, watching the wind riffling the leaves in the orchard and the chooks pottering around their run.

Closer to the house is the vege garden and its satisfying to run my eyes across it, particularly as the weeds don't show up at this distance.

A couple of times recently though, my peaceful contemplation has been shattered as my eyes drift across the lawn closer to the house, and alight upon a RAT, chewing at an abandoned bone with as much relish as generally shown by the dogs.

You'd think that there'd be canine protest about this behaviour, but there isn't, because both dogs are usually lazily dozing at my feet in the study. Unless I'm going to offer something exciting like a walk, they've informed me, they agree with the rest of the world that the earlier hours of the weekend are best spent asleep.

I could just let them out to chase the rat away but there are drawbacks to that plan. The first is that they've only ever once caught a rat, and that was trapped in their run, but they do have a reputation for getting carried away chasing rats, to the detriment of my flower and herb gardens. An overexcited 36kg dog tends to do more damage than a rodent accustomed to sliding through small spaces.

The other, equally important reason for not letting the dogs out is that the she-wolf likes to explain to the neighbourhood at full volume exactly what she's doing and what she thinks of the dogdamn rat who's just taken the best piece of gristle off her dogdamn bone.

The she-wolf's full volume could be likened to an emergency siren  piercing and impossible to ignore. Not the best way to endear myself to either the other half or the neighbours at 6.30am on a Sunday morning.

We live near a creek, so you have to expect a rat or two just as they have to expect a human or two, living near houses.

However, having been wakened several times in the night by a mouse stomping round the bedroom in what sounded like size 10 mouse boots until he finally wandered into a trap, I'm not inclined to feel charitable towards another rodent today.

Rats and mice don't give me urges to stand screaming on a chair  unless its to get a better view to hurl something heavy and preferably fatal at the offender while uttering war cries.

If this rat would keep out of my stuff, I'm sure we could happily co-exist. But rats like the dog and chook food almost as much as the dogs and chooks do. Even more annoying is this rat's habit of digging holes in my tunnel house.

Back in spring, I was heard to mutter several nasty things about rats when the appearance of a new hole resulted in the disappearance of a plant I'd been growing on through winter, which, 24 hours prior, had been happily growing in the exact spot where the new hole appeared.

Whenever I see evidence of a rat, I slip out and set a trap, but they're a bit smarter than mice. You really have to catch them unawares to trap them. This rat seems to have a sixth sense for a dodgy situation involving a rat trap. Poisons are a no-no with nosey dogs in the household; rats aren't the only thing these poisons kill, although there is a rat-specific organic poison on the market now.

I'm not that keen on poisons though; a snap trap is quicker, if you can outsmart the rat.

I've decided another tactic is called for and have Googled rat deterrents. The first suggestion was to get your own predator, such as a dog. Great. This rat has his own personal Fear Factor game involving the dog run.

The she-wolf, who has developed a special vocabulary for swearing at rats, reckons he has a good poke around when they're not in residence. I believe her; I once saw the back end of a rat vanishing through a hole in their fence.

Another suggestion was to scatter dog hair around problem areas. This rat would probably take it home for the missus to build a nest.

More to my liking was using a smell deterrent like an ammonia-soaked rag in a tin.

However, I'm also pretty averse to the smell, so it may keep me out of the tunnel house too. I'll try it anyway. Maybe the rat and I will finally have something in common.

- The Marlborough Express