Rachel Wise: Oh rats - it's that time of the year again

There was a sound of loud gnawing

It is a lifestyle? Or a life sentence? Having even the smallest of lifestyle blocks can doom the unwary to a life of unruly sheep, petulant pigs, downright despicable chickens, unfortunate episodes involving electric fences, and water pumps that break down on the Friday evening of long weekends. Rachel Wise tells it like it is. Mostly

According to DoC reports, a massive beech mast year is increasing numbers of rats and mice exponentially.

They sent out a report detailing numbers counted and numbers trapped, way up in the ranges.

I could have saved them a walk if they had let me know they wanted to count rodents. They could have come and counted the ones I've caught under the sink at my place. I'd even have put the kettle on and they could have had a hot cuppa while they counted.

I think I'm up to nine this winter. They start to come in when it gets cold, lured by the warmth and the fact the chook-bucket lives in that particular cupboard and is usually well stocked with leftovers and half-eaten grandkid-snacks.

I think they get in via the dishwasher plumbing. I'm not prepared to investigate further as I don't want to come eyeball to eyeball with one of the feral wee beasties.

The other avenue of entry could well be the cat. The cat that's solely employed to catch and dispatch the mice. The cat that's meant to live in the hay shed and protect the horse-food from rodent invasions.

That cat.

The one that's currently on the end of my bed snoring its furry face off.

Oh, she catches mice all right. I regularly find them dead on the doorstep, on the lawn, in the house, and quite recently she presented me with a well-chewed model, in my bed.

But often enough she's just brought them inside - live - to play with them in the warm, and after a while she gets distracted by a sunny spot that needs to be napped in ... and her playtime mice wander off and take up residence under the fridge.

My eldest daughter caught her playing with one on the driveway a couple of weeks ago.

"Awww," she said, "It's still alive. I must rescue it."

"No, you really mustn't," I said, but I was too late, as she had grabbed it and was holding it in the palm of one hand as the cat sat and glared at her.

That's when it sprang into motion, ran up her arm and up the sleeve of her T-shirt.

"Get it out!" she yelled as a small mouse-shaped bump wandered across her back under her shirt.

I had to herd the mouse out of her T-shirt, after which it escaped into the hay shed.

When I reached into the horse feed sack the next morning I nearly scooped out a familiar-looking mouse along with Chalkie's morning oats.

It's hard to use effective rodent control methods when you have small dogs that are the size of, well, large rodents.

I did try a "humane" cage trap once, but I really hadn't thought it through.

I followed the instructions, set it, baited it and left it overnight.

The next morning there was a smallish rat sitting nervously in the cage.

I looked at it and it looked back. Its wee nose was bleeding from bashing against the wire cage trying to escape.

I felt bad.

It was such a small, feeble looking rat.

And I couldn't for the life of me think what I was meant to do with it next. Well, kill it, obviously, but how? Drown it? Clobber it with something?

Quite frankly, nothing appealed.

I resorted to giving the rat a darned good lecture and releasing it into the vege garden.

Which is probably why, last week, I looked up to see a modestly-sized rat strolling casually across from the house to the vege garden in broad daylight.

Affronted, I called the dogs - well, the two that can still hear me, not the deaf one - and went off after it. It had gone under one of my planters, and I demanded that the dogs dig it out and deal to it.

Which of course they didn't.

And that's probably why late that same night we were woken by the sound of loud gnawing. It was coming from under the floor.

Hubby got out bed and jumped up and down on the floorboards in the general region of the gnawing sound. It stopped. Then it started again.

He stomped about a bit more and it stopped again ... until the following night. More gnawing. More stomping, some swearing and a foray out into the dark to peer under the house by torchlight. Him, not me, I stayed in bed.

"I'm putting poison under the house," said hubby when he came back. Which he subsequently did. And the under-floor gnawing stopped.

But yesterday when I was pulling up weeds I saw something had tunnelled under the shed, at the back. It's a really big tunnel. In fact, it's a huge tunnel.

I'm very, very tempted to put out the cage trap just to see what I get. But ... then what do I do with it? Maybe DoC would like to count it?