Hickory Dickory Dock
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Are not a fan of mice then Jon? Don't go in my loft 
.
Thats the trouble with old houses and this time of year all the rodents head in from the fields. Only ever get mice in the house (well mice, shrews and oddly a single tree creeper.
Rats in the garden are common this time of year though - still, its all target practice!
Red
. Thats the trouble with old houses and this time of year all the rodents head in from the fields. Only ever get mice in the house (well mice, shrews and oddly a single tree creeper.
Rats in the garden are common this time of year though - still, its all target practice!
Red
Am constantly fighting a big battle with mices...Are not a fan of mice then Jon? Don't go in my loft
Thats the trouble with old houses and this time of year all the rodents head in from the fields. Only ever get mice in the house (well mice, shrews and oddly a single tree creeper.
Rats in the garden are common this time of year though - still, its all target practice!
Red
They seem to love my shed. I had 9 in the trap a few weeks ago. I delivered them to where I was working at the time, about 20 miles away...
Yep - we have the same (although I don't live trap - I wants em dispatched). I like to see em out in the woods woofling around but won't have them in the house. I thought I would offer a better picture of this fellah as (I think) you can just make out a faint yelow band round the neck
Red
Red
Well as much as I like the tin cat and wild release, I have heard this causes them more stress in the long run, so I am now feeding them with little bits of blue corn....
Someone will come on now and say that is cruel too....I can't win....
ps...Red, your second picture is so big I cannot read all of your post...
Nice photies !
The only time I see mice is the one that nests in the compost bin and looks astonished when I throw in a basin of wet tattie peelings, or when cute, cuddly and vicious, aka the moggie, plays with them in the garden. Well trained though, never brings them inside.
Don't you have a barn cat Red? a good mouser and ratting Tom is a very good thing indeed, though a Tabby with a couple of kittens is often more effective. Our home is an end terrace 1970's built; it's kind of characterless but no mice, rats or bats, slaters or ants. I suppose it has to have some redeeming qualities
cheers,
M
The only time I see mice is the one that nests in the compost bin and looks astonished when I throw in a basin of wet tattie peelings, or when cute, cuddly and vicious, aka the moggie, plays with them in the garden. Well trained though, never brings them inside.
Don't you have a barn cat Red? a good mouser and ratting Tom is a very good thing indeed, though a Tabby with a couple of kittens is often more effective. Our home is an end terrace 1970's built; it's kind of characterless but no mice, rats or bats, slaters or ants. I suppose it has to have some redeeming qualities
cheers,
M
Theres a ferral who sleeps in my shed as it happens
The bats I like (we have a winter roost in the loft). The problem is the nature of the farm - loads of arable and then game birds in the woods. The amount of corn put out for pheasants and partridge, pesticide free farming etc. means huge food supplies. This is great since we have buzzards, peregrines and sparrowhawks, barn owls and dozens of tawnies less frequent kestrels and kites, foxes, loads of deer etc. Sadly the balancing side is a plentiful supply of rodents.
We never get rats in the house only small wood mice and yellow necks and only for a few weeks in the autumn as they move out of the (now empty) fields. Rats in the garden are despatched by me if tabby doesn't get em first. Its jsut the price you pay I guess.
(Oh I shrunk big scary mouse Jon but its still in your quote)
I have to say I'm not a cat person (although more than the gamekeeper who err...disposes ...of ferals since they kill the game birds). A good Jack Russel is pretty effective but we both work so thats not an option for me right now
Red
The bats I like (we have a winter roost in the loft). The problem is the nature of the farm - loads of arable and then game birds in the woods. The amount of corn put out for pheasants and partridge, pesticide free farming etc. means huge food supplies. This is great since we have buzzards, peregrines and sparrowhawks, barn owls and dozens of tawnies less frequent kestrels and kites, foxes, loads of deer etc. Sadly the balancing side is a plentiful supply of rodents.
We never get rats in the house only small wood mice and yellow necks and only for a few weeks in the autumn as they move out of the (now empty) fields. Rats in the garden are despatched by me if tabby doesn't get em first. Its jsut the price you pay I guess.
(Oh I shrunk big scary mouse Jon but its still in your quote
)I have to say I'm not a cat person (although more than the gamekeeper who err...disposes ...of ferals since they kill the game birds). A good Jack Russel is pretty effective but we both work so thats not an option for me right now
Red
I don't think I'm a *cat* person, but while some folks seem incomplete without a dog or two, I seem to have a cat shaped *space* in my life; I've never gone looking for a cat, but one always seems to find me when I have an empty hearthrug that just needs a moggie Half the village colluded to get me to say yes to Tamsin, losing the last cat hurt too much. To the rest of the world Tom was a, "Devious, evilminded, bad tempered fiend from hell" (direct quote ) while to me he was a constant black furred friend who walked with me, slept on my sewing, shared my oatcakes and cheese, loved roast chicken, and curled up besides me when I wasn't feeling well..... and was responsible for there being a plethora of black and white kittens in the village He did like to wander a bit Dogs I get distracted by and have to attend to, cats don't need that thankfully, I like the way cats don't seem to feel the need to constantly demand my attention.
Back to mice I didn't know there were yellow throated ones, Thanks for that BR.
cheers,
Toddy
Half the village colluded to get me to say yes to Tamsin, losing the last cat hurt too much. To the rest of the world Tom was a, "Devious, evilminded, bad tempered fiend from hell" (direct quote ) while to me he was a constant black furred friend who walked with me, slept on my sewing, shared my oatcakes and cheese, loved roast chicken, and curled up besides me when I wasn't feeling well..... and was responsible for there being a plethora of black and white kittens in the village He did like to wander a bit Dogs I get distracted by and have to attend to, cats don't need that thankfully, I like the way cats don't seem to feel the need to constantly demand my attention.Back to mice
I didn't know there were yellow throated ones, Thanks for that BR.cheers,
Toddy
Toddy, I now have a vision of you as Nanny Ogg and Tom as "Greebo"
A definition of "Greebo"
A huge, one-eyed tom who divides his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most incestuous feline tribe. He is technically a mottled grey but is covered with so much scar tissue that he looks like a fist with fur on it. He can only be said to have ears because there's no other word for the things left on top of his head. Greebo's good eye, his left one, is yellow. The other one is pearly-white. He radiates genuine intelligence. He also radiates a smell that could knock over a wall and cause sinus trouble in a dead fox. Although he is addressed by virtually everyone as "Yarrgeroffoutofityahbastard", to Nanny Ogg he is still a cute little kitten and still sleeps on her bed when not out at night looking for something to fight, rape, eat (or all three).
I know the "animal shaped hole". I miss my old dog. To everyone else he was a silent, vivious hell hound who made Cerberus look like a pedigree chum advert. To me he was a mate, hunting companion, hearth rug and occasional footstool. Hope there are rabbits where he is.
Red
A definition of "Greebo"
A huge, one-eyed tom who divides his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most incestuous feline tribe. He is technically a mottled grey but is covered with so much scar tissue that he looks like a fist with fur on it. He can only be said to have ears because there's no other word for the things left on top of his head. Greebo's good eye, his left one, is yellow. The other one is pearly-white. He radiates genuine intelligence. He also radiates a smell that could knock over a wall and cause sinus trouble in a dead fox. Although he is addressed by virtually everyone as "Yarrgeroffoutofityahbastard", to Nanny Ogg he is still a cute little kitten and still sleeps on her bed when not out at night looking for something to fight, rape, eat (or all three).
I know the "animal shaped hole". I miss my old dog. To everyone else he was a silent, vivious hell hound who made Cerberus look like a pedigree chum advert. To me he was a mate, hunting companion, hearth rug and occasional footstool. Hope there are rabbits where he is.
Red
Yellow necked mice are not too common (not exactly endangered though) so when we had them in our house in Wiltshire we used a live trap and then dropped them off in Savernake Forest. Had they been house mice I'd have been more inclined to poison them as these are actually Chinese in origin (i.e. not a native species - they came over on ships). The live trap we had was very effective - got it from a company called Bits and Benches (if I recall correctly). The design meant that the one trap could catch multiple mice (up to 15 I think). As mice are curious, once one mouse goes in it is more likely that other mice will follow.
Yellow necked mice can be identified by the yellow band that stretches right across between the forelegs. House mice can be identified by being the only mice that can fly ... or at least the one that decided to join me in bed when I lived in London. I woke up one Sunday morning to see a little furry critter wandering around on top of my duvet about chest height :yikes: a quick bat on the underside of the duvet with my hand sent the whiskered wanderer sailing through the air across the room. Poison was bought on the Monday morning! A month or two later my room really started to smell ... found a little desiccated carcass under my wardrobe
Yellow necked mice can be identified by the yellow band that stretches right across between the forelegs. House mice can be identified by being the only mice that can fly ... or at least the one that decided to join me in bed when I lived in London. I woke up one Sunday morning to see a little furry critter wandering around on top of my duvet about chest height :yikes: a quick bat on the underside of the duvet with my hand sent the whiskered wanderer sailing through the air across the room. Poison was bought on the Monday morning! A month or two later my room really started to smell ... found a little desiccated carcass under my wardrobe
I cannot remember ever seeing so many dead rats around the place, hit by cars?? I dont know if its just the area I live in, but in 10 years at Darlington I saw only 2 or 3 in all that time?? Only last week next door's cat carried a HUGE dead rat across our garden, not sure if it was recycled road kill or if he had done the deed himself.
Is that practice with a rifle/catapult or what?
Years ago my Dad used to sit up on some painting steps like a tennis umpire right near the chicken hut and shine a torch to the rat run's, then hit them with a small shotgun (not sure if it was a 410 or a 9mm "garden gun"). The latter weapon I eventually inherited, it was belgian, made about 1895, heavy octagonal barrel. It used paper cartridges that evaporated and produced a sort of loud crumping noise and a cloud of paper dust when you fired so only the copper (not brass) cap was left to eject. Was just about enough stopping power to kill a squirell or punch a hole in a tin. Me and my mate used to take turns hoying tins up and try to hit them in mid air
Oddly you can still get a licence for a garden gun (not sure what for though!)
I do have an FAC with a number of rifles on it, but I use a silenced air rifle on rats as a rule - its enough power to do the job and not too much to risk safety issues (although I ive on a shooting farm so its not like despatching them in a town or the like).
"Lamping" rats is a good way of getting them without a doubt, although I recall a pest controller saying the only "solution" was guns, dogs, traps, poison and a small thermonuclear device. The reality is that denying food is of course the only solution but on an arable farm that puts out food for many thousand game birds thats not really an option
Red
I do have an FAC with a number of rifles on it, but I use a silenced air rifle on rats as a rule - its enough power to do the job and not too much to risk safety issues (although I ive on a shooting farm so its not like despatching them in a town or the like).
"Lamping" rats is a good way of getting them without a doubt, although I recall a pest controller saying the only "solution" was guns, dogs, traps, poison and a small thermonuclear device
. The reality is that denying food is of course the only solution but on an arable farm that puts out food for many thousand game birds thats not really an optionRed
Being in east anglia and theres plenty of horse stables and pheasant's about, maybe there feed attracts rats also? I see them every day flattened down on road's and paths What was odd about darlington was that our terrace backed onto a coronation street type back alley which at times was little better than an open drain (the bin lorries sort of pliughed up the cobles in time) , and there was no wheelie bins just black bags that often got split open by cats and foxes, amazing there wasnt more evidence of rats really.
What was odd about darlington was that our terrace backed onto a coronation street type back alley which at times was little better than an open drain (the bin lorries sort of pliughed up the cobles in time) , and there was no wheelie bins just black bags that often got split open by cats and foxes, amazing there wasnt more evidence of rats really.Being in east anglia and theres plenty of horse stables and pheasant's about, maybe there feed attracts rats also? I see them every day flattened down on road's and paths What was odd about darlington was that our terrace backed onto a coronation street type back alley which at times was little better than an open drain (the bin lorries sort of pliughed up the cobles in time) , and there was no wheelie bins just black bags that often got split open by cats and foxes, amazing there wasnt more evidence of rats really.
What was odd about darlington was that our terrace backed onto a coronation street type back alley which at times was little better than an open drain (the bin lorries sort of pliughed up the cobles in time) , and there was no wheelie bins just black bags that often got split open by cats and foxes, amazing there wasnt more evidence of rats really.Yellow necked mice are not too common (not exactly endangered though) so when we had them in our house in Wiltshire we used a live trap and then dropped them off in Savernake Forest. Had they been house mice I'd have been more inclined to poison them as these are actually Chinese in origin (i.e. not a native species - they came over on ships). The live trap we had was very effective - got it from a company called Bits and Benches (if I recall correctly). The design meant that the one trap could catch multiple mice (up to 15 I think). As mice are curious, once one mouse goes in it is more likely that other mice will follow.
Yellow necked mice can be identified by the yellow band that stretches right across between the forelegs. House mice can be identified by being the only mice that can fly ... or at least the one that decided to join me in bed when I lived in London. I woke up one Sunday morning to see a little furry critter wandering around on top of my duvet about chest height :yikes: a quick bat on the underside of the duvet with my hand sent the whiskered wanderer sailing through the air across the room. Poison was bought on the Monday morning! A month or two later my room really started to smell ... found a little desiccated carcass under my wardrobe
Sounds like the tin cat I have.. http://www.amazon.com/Victor-Tin-Cat-Clear-Pack/dp/B000B75ESK
Please be careful peeps if you do use poison for getting rid of mice or rats...If you have buzzards, kites etc, they may eat the dead, poisoned mouse....
Mmmm couldn't agree more Jon - I tend to burn the bodies when I can although I'll settle for a good deep hole otherwise.
Red
Red
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