Pietenpol-List: Rats!
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:58 am
Original Posted By: harvey rule
Ken Chambers wrote:> the rats have dragged the T-88 Part B Hardener away and> chewed up the bottle. I thought I had them all killed offOK, here's whatcha do:First off, buy a snake. A large rat snake, perhaps. Snakes eat rats. Ratsnakes are a pretty sure bet for eating rats. Unless it's a small rat snake.Then they'll only eat mice. But strangely, there's no such thing as a mousesnake. You'd think a small rat snake would be a mouse snake, but it's not.It's just a small rat snake. Which should be just fine with you, though,since you have a rat problem, not a mouse problem. There's a differencebetween the two, you know. Mice are the cuter of the two.Anyway, release your rat snake into your shop, and wait a month or two forhim to eat all the rats. You'll probably rarely see the snake, andeventually you won't see any rats. You won't see any mice, either. But don'tjump to conclusions and assume that your big rat snake also ate your mice.Especially considering that you didn't see any mice in the first place. Isure hope you don't always jump to conclusions that quickly.So now you have no more rats, and one fat snake. NOW, you (or your spouse)might decide that you really don't want a big ole snake hanging around theshop where it might startle you while you're using the fly cutter on yourinstrument panel or something. SO, now you should do what any sane personwould do: buy a king snake. King snakes eat other snakes, as you might beaware. And they'll also finish up any rats that the rat snake missed. Micetoo, even though you don't have any. King snakes aren't rodent snobs.Now you have an even bigger king snake to deal with. What to do? Well,duh... get on eBay and put a bid in on a mongoose. Mongeese (?) eat snakes,as everyone knows. Any old mongoose should do... well, they hunt in teams,so better get three. Don't want to interrupt a natural behavior that's beenhighly tuned and developed over the last few thousand years now, do we?Good. I don't know how to pick a good mongoose from a bad one, but I'm surethat you can get on Google and find out. Or just go to"www.howtopickareallygoodmongooseforyourworkshop.com" or a similar site tohelp you out. Remember, the key to smart mongoosing is to do your homework.Now, realize that mongoosae (?) are mischievous little critters, and they'lllikely cause all sorts of havoc around the farm. So now is a good time toget into the market for a largish hawk. A red-tail or Cooper's hawk wouldprobably be about right, while a chicken hawk or Ethan Hawke is right out.New or used, it doesn't really matter... just make sure it's a live hawk.You might scare the mongoosia pretty bad at first with a cheap dead hawk,but sooner or later they'll catch on, and be right back to their old tricks.And then, they won't even respect you for trying to trick them with a deadhawk. Plus you're stuck with a stinky, dead bird of prey on your hands...you'll be lucky if you can sell it for as much as you paid. Avoid thiscommon trap that inexperienced raptor buyers often fall into, and buy a livehawk to start with. Some hawk hawkers may try to sell you a hawk in a comaor drunken stupor or an otherwise not entirely well bird, at a reducedprice. This can be a dangerous gamble, and I don't recommend taking thisrisk except for those who really know what they're doing. The Better BirdingBureau (BBB) is rife with reports of shady and unscrupulous hawkers offeringinferior predatory poultry to rookie raptor requisitioners.Once a suitable hawk has been obtained, set it out on teh back fencepost andsee if it will try to catch the mongooses. The hawk, however, will need lotsof room to perch, fly, catch prey, etc. so be sure to keep him outside atall times. He could actually fly away, however. To help keep him around yourhouse (you never know when he'll leave to hunt for your neighbor's mongoose,which is just poor form and considered quite rude, unless they actuallyinvite you to share in their personal weaseldom) you need to get a couple ofrabbits.Umm, wait a minute... we have 3 pet rabbits, and I'd really hate to think ofa cute little bunny getting eaten by a hawk, or anything else for thatmatter. Which is even scarier since a lot of things have been known to eatrabbits, including mongooses. So on second thought, keep the bunniesindoors. They make great house pets, they're more affectionate than a cat (alot smarter, too) and they'll probably get along with the dogs just fine.Heck, ours think they ARE dogs. With luck you might even train aparticularly ambitious bunny to help you round up cattle. But I digress.So go buy some baby quail chicks instead. They don't cost much and they'llkeep the hawk coming around. They're also not terribly noisy.The quail which manage to survive the hawks, mongii (?), and king snakeswill probably reproduce like crazy, seeing as how they live on a nice biggrain farm and all. But that's OK. Since I somehow forgot to mention thefiner points of living with house rabbits a couple of paragraphs ago, andyour attention has been diverted with ordering and raising your quailchicks, I suspect that by now you're realizing that you REALLY should havehad at least one of your original two rabbits fixed as a couple dozen oftheir descendants have now magically appeared. They're all cute, and thankthe good Lord above that they're litter-trained, but honestly... they'restarting to eat you out of house and home, and you're starting to havelitter and chew toys delivered on pallets. Worse, they're jumping all overthe furniture when company comes over, they're molting all over the carpet,and they like to nip at your toes when you don't scratch their foreheadsfast enough. You need a break from the long-eared hordes, don't you?So go grab your gun, walk outside with the dog (he needs a break from hisnew friends too, who like him but have affectionately licked his forehead tothe point he's got bald spots) and flush out some quail. Shoot at them. Trynot to hit the hawk, as that's illegal in most states. Don't hit the dog,either, that's just plain wrong.Ahh, that's better... and now you have a nice quail dinner to boot. Too badthere's no salad to go with it, since the bunnies smelled lettuce andmanaged to pry open the refrigerator door while you were outside. By thetime dinner's over, you find that you have fifty-seven more rabbits in thebedroom alone. It takes an hour and forty-five minutes to herd them all intotheir hutch (the entire second floor of your 12-room farmhouse) for thenight, and you're really starting to miss being able to enjoy your "CSI:Spring Valley" reruns on Thursday nights.As the commotion upstairs finally dies down to a dull roar of thumps,scratching, jumping, and the gentle sound of chewing on hay, you are finallyable to drop off into an exhausted slumber, slumped in your rabbit-chewed,carrot-stained easy chair under a picture of a Pietenpol.And as you drift quickly off to Dreamland, you quietly long for the good olddays, when your biggest worry in life was having a couple of glue-snortingrats wandering through the workshop...-MikeMike Whaley merlin@ov-10bronco.netWebmaster, OV-10 Bronco Associationhttp://www.ov-10bronco.net/___________________ ... ______Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:24:17 -0500
Ken Chambers wrote:> the rats have dragged the T-88 Part B Hardener away and> chewed up the bottle. I thought I had them all killed offOK, here's whatcha do:First off, buy a snake. A large rat snake, perhaps. Snakes eat rats. Ratsnakes are a pretty sure bet for eating rats. Unless it's a small rat snake.Then they'll only eat mice. But strangely, there's no such thing as a mousesnake. You'd think a small rat snake would be a mouse snake, but it's not.It's just a small rat snake. Which should be just fine with you, though,since you have a rat problem, not a mouse problem. There's a differencebetween the two, you know. Mice are the cuter of the two.Anyway, release your rat snake into your shop, and wait a month or two forhim to eat all the rats. You'll probably rarely see the snake, andeventually you won't see any rats. You won't see any mice, either. But don'tjump to conclusions and assume that your big rat snake also ate your mice.Especially considering that you didn't see any mice in the first place. Isure hope you don't always jump to conclusions that quickly.So now you have no more rats, and one fat snake. NOW, you (or your spouse)might decide that you really don't want a big ole snake hanging around theshop where it might startle you while you're using the fly cutter on yourinstrument panel or something. SO, now you should do what any sane personwould do: buy a king snake. King snakes eat other snakes, as you might beaware. And they'll also finish up any rats that the rat snake missed. Micetoo, even though you don't have any. King snakes aren't rodent snobs.Now you have an even bigger king snake to deal with. What to do? Well,duh... get on eBay and put a bid in on a mongoose. Mongeese (?) eat snakes,as everyone knows. Any old mongoose should do... well, they hunt in teams,so better get three. Don't want to interrupt a natural behavior that's beenhighly tuned and developed over the last few thousand years now, do we?Good. I don't know how to pick a good mongoose from a bad one, but I'm surethat you can get on Google and find out. Or just go to"www.howtopickareallygoodmongooseforyourworkshop.com" or a similar site tohelp you out. Remember, the key to smart mongoosing is to do your homework.Now, realize that mongoosae (?) are mischievous little critters, and they'lllikely cause all sorts of havoc around the farm. So now is a good time toget into the market for a largish hawk. A red-tail or Cooper's hawk wouldprobably be about right, while a chicken hawk or Ethan Hawke is right out.New or used, it doesn't really matter... just make sure it's a live hawk.You might scare the mongoosia pretty bad at first with a cheap dead hawk,but sooner or later they'll catch on, and be right back to their old tricks.And then, they won't even respect you for trying to trick them with a deadhawk. Plus you're stuck with a stinky, dead bird of prey on your hands...you'll be lucky if you can sell it for as much as you paid. Avoid thiscommon trap that inexperienced raptor buyers often fall into, and buy a livehawk to start with. Some hawk hawkers may try to sell you a hawk in a comaor drunken stupor or an otherwise not entirely well bird, at a reducedprice. This can be a dangerous gamble, and I don't recommend taking thisrisk except for those who really know what they're doing. The Better BirdingBureau (BBB) is rife with reports of shady and unscrupulous hawkers offeringinferior predatory poultry to rookie raptor requisitioners.Once a suitable hawk has been obtained, set it out on teh back fencepost andsee if it will try to catch the mongooses. The hawk, however, will need lotsof room to perch, fly, catch prey, etc. so be sure to keep him outside atall times. He could actually fly away, however. To help keep him around yourhouse (you never know when he'll leave to hunt for your neighbor's mongoose,which is just poor form and considered quite rude, unless they actuallyinvite you to share in their personal weaseldom) you need to get a couple ofrabbits.Umm, wait a minute... we have 3 pet rabbits, and I'd really hate to think ofa cute little bunny getting eaten by a hawk, or anything else for thatmatter. Which is even scarier since a lot of things have been known to eatrabbits, including mongooses. So on second thought, keep the bunniesindoors. They make great house pets, they're more affectionate than a cat (alot smarter, too) and they'll probably get along with the dogs just fine.Heck, ours think they ARE dogs. With luck you might even train aparticularly ambitious bunny to help you round up cattle. But I digress.So go buy some baby quail chicks instead. They don't cost much and they'llkeep the hawk coming around. They're also not terribly noisy.The quail which manage to survive the hawks, mongii (?), and king snakeswill probably reproduce like crazy, seeing as how they live on a nice biggrain farm and all. But that's OK. Since I somehow forgot to mention thefiner points of living with house rabbits a couple of paragraphs ago, andyour attention has been diverted with ordering and raising your quailchicks, I suspect that by now you're realizing that you REALLY should havehad at least one of your original two rabbits fixed as a couple dozen oftheir descendants have now magically appeared. They're all cute, and thankthe good Lord above that they're litter-trained, but honestly... they'restarting to eat you out of house and home, and you're starting to havelitter and chew toys delivered on pallets. Worse, they're jumping all overthe furniture when company comes over, they're molting all over the carpet,and they like to nip at your toes when you don't scratch their foreheadsfast enough. You need a break from the long-eared hordes, don't you?So go grab your gun, walk outside with the dog (he needs a break from hisnew friends too, who like him but have affectionately licked his forehead tothe point he's got bald spots) and flush out some quail. Shoot at them. Trynot to hit the hawk, as that's illegal in most states. Don't hit the dog,either, that's just plain wrong.Ahh, that's better... and now you have a nice quail dinner to boot. Too badthere's no salad to go with it, since the bunnies smelled lettuce andmanaged to pry open the refrigerator door while you were outside. By thetime dinner's over, you find that you have fifty-seven more rabbits in thebedroom alone. It takes an hour and forty-five minutes to herd them all intotheir hutch (the entire second floor of your 12-room farmhouse) for thenight, and you're really starting to miss being able to enjoy your "CSI:Spring Valley" reruns on Thursday nights.As the commotion upstairs finally dies down to a dull roar of thumps,scratching, jumping, and the gentle sound of chewing on hay, you are finallyable to drop off into an exhausted slumber, slumped in your rabbit-chewed,carrot-stained easy chair under a picture of a Pietenpol.And as you drift quickly off to Dreamland, you quietly long for the good olddays, when your biggest worry in life was having a couple of glue-snortingrats wandering through the workshop...-MikeMike Whaley merlin@ov-10bronco.netWebmaster, OV-10 Bronco Associationhttp://www.ov-10bronco.net/___________________ ... ______Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:24:17 -0500