Rats
Rattus norvegicus, variously know as the Norway rat, sewer rat, brown rat, wharf rat, common rat and Hanover rat. I had noticed an unusual although not unpleasant smell in the shed some weeks ago and some minor evidence of rodent damage. If I ignore it for long enough, I thought, it will go away. Closer inspection revealed havoc however. All around the edges were piles of earth and rubble (not just gravel), rat droppings on a toolbox (but only there) and substantial holes in the wooden sides. They have bitten through wiring too as is their wont. This is not the first time we have had these visitors and I knew enough to try blocking up every point of possible entry and exit. I patched the sides with odd bits of wood and used around 20kg of cement, sometimes mixed with gravel, all around the bottom edge. They do not seem to have made it back inside. The burrow entrance is to the front of the shed and there is a void underneath which I tried blocking some years ago. I assume the large individual above is the mother. Rats are having a bumper year I am told and always around in this rural location. I thought I could continue to tolerate one or two. But then this, underneath the bird feeders.
Rats have been a constant problem at both animal rescues where I have volunteered. At Trindledown they used poison but refuse to do so at HART because of likely secondary poisoning of raptors and other animals. Trindledown is very much a place for visitors and it’s understandable that parents with young childen are not going to want to see the place swarming. At HART they have used kill traps and preventative measures – slabs on the bottom of the various enclosures and just recently rat-proof wire netting with smaller holes which even rats cannot penetrate. Generally though, if they want to get in somewhere, they will. I know that some people love them and that they can make devoted pets and that they are highly intelligent, but I could not live with what promised to be a population explosion here. I admit that I am squeamish about them in a way that I am not with most animals, even ones that others find scary or repulsive. At Hart at one point they gnawed off a living duckling’s leg. Although it goes against almost everything I stand for when it comes to wild animals, I confess I called the professionals. Adrian was very pleasant and extremely knowledgeable and thorough. The exclusive use of the top of the toolbox was a typically mammalian use of a latrine area, he explained. These young rats (roughly six weeks old) would be sexually mature in just two weeks or so and would breed prodigiously and incestuously. Kill traps wouldn’t work – in all likelihood one would be caught and cannibalised, the others would learn from the experience. Our small cat is terrified of them once grown but did catch and torment one of the young ones the day before Adrian’s visit. The sick individual who limped across the garden in front of Adrian and me was perhaps poisoned elsewhere or may have been the cat victim. It was summarily squished, which was without a doubt the kindest and quickest thing to do at that point. The interaction between the young rats and the Jackdaws was extraordinary. They had ignored the mother but found these little ones irritating and there were many little stand-offs, with the rats jumping up at the birds and holding their ground.
With a heavy heart and conscience it was clear that poisoning was going to be the only solution. The anti-coagulants usually used result in long and painful deaths, especially the second-generation versions, and many populations are now completely resistant to them anyway, but now bio-science has come up with something new: Cholecalciferol. It is a form of vitamin D, also leading to an unpleasant death, but it is at least relatively quick and the risk of secondary poisoning is minimal – raptors for example are not affected. It is quite rightly only available to licensed operators. Some salve for my conscience then, as was releasing rather than killing a queen wasp we found in another shed, but if you accuse me of hypocrisy I could not argue with you. They seem pretty much to have disappeared but there is still at least one running around in view as I write. The birds are on peanuts only for now.
They are amazing creatures, living in a strictly hierarchical society with as many as four castes or classes, alpha, beta and gamma, with ‘zeta’ rats at the bottom. I thought of two albums, Rattus Norvegicus, the first by The Stranglers, and UB40’s Rat in Mi Kitchen. I have now learnt that the title track was written by Astro, inspired by rats at Ali Campbell’s new house, and that the rat that the song is specifically about was Margaret Thatcher.
George Monbiot and Just Stop Oil
Mr Monbiot is on superb, fiery form here, wondering as I do how it is right that farmers are able to protest with impunity whilst Just Stop Oil protesters have been demonised and given Draconian jail sentences. Protest, he says, is of course disruptive by its very nature, that is kind of the idea. Farmers are protesting only for themselves, Just Stop Oil and others are protesting for the planet and all the life on it.
George Monbiot | BBC Politics Live | 2 April 2025 | Just Stop Oil
Blue and Great Tits
For light relief. I will never be bored by the way light shines through the wing feathers.
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