More wildlife than I care to have

More wildlife than I care to have

More wildlife than I care to have, originally uploaded by malyousif.



During my regular morning garden inspection this morning, I came across this thing that stopped me in my tracks!

I don’t know what manner of uninvited wildlife it is that came into my garden and dug this hole under on of the oleanders… I think it must be a rat, but it could also be a mongoose (we live near palm groves) but whatever the hell it is, it’s not welcome!

This is the last thing I want in my garden.

The traps and sticky pads are being put in the vicinity to catch the culprit.

Have you any experience in this? Do you know what manner of animal if might be?

Comments

  1. Darth

    I don’t remember you ever posting 3 Garden related articles in a row… We all admire your Garden (Really) – But, I hope this isn’t Mansoor the Idiot related.

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  4. Johnster

    Hi Mahmood

    Could I urge you not to use those glue pads – they are extremely inhumane. If it is a rat, a large rat trap will work quickly and humanely.

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    mahmood

    Thanks mate, this is certainly something to consider. I think it would be much easier to get one of those companies to come and do the whole garden, my worry if there is one there might be more…

    This is what those puddles of rain and left garbage (the cleaning company only empties the large buckets, and resolutely IGNORES everything outside it! And guess where most the garbage is after the single buckets fills up?) all over the place can do to the environment.

  6. ivan raszl

    That’s just the nature of wildlife. You should be happy to have visitors in your garden. Whatever you do, just scare it away, don’t kill it.

  7. Maverick

    The hole looks like a clean cut one. However it could be a very large rat or badicoot.

    You can attract it out with humane traps and set it free elsewhere. 🙂

  8. MHMLK

    Looks a bit small for a rat or mongoose. Maybe mice – we were overrun with them a while ago. What about a snake? Do they live in burrows?

    Let us know if you find out what it is.

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    mahmood

    We had a couple before we moved in. They were living in the garden shed & apparently the pump room. We never saw them though, neither did verminex. After living in the house for 2.5 years, we have to assume they went elsewhere.

    In any case, I doubt that they dig holes like this, it is quite evident that whatever did this did so with strong paws!

  10. Barry

    That looks like the holes the ground squirrels and pocket gophers here make. However, I doubt Bahrain has western pocket gophers and ground squirrels.

    I have pocket gophers in my garden. They are terrible. They are rodents with beady little eyes and big sharp incisors. Fortunately they are common enough that if I can, I trap them (I do NOT use poison, I don’t want some bird, dog, or cat getting poisoned).

    Pocket gophers eat plants and usually do so below ground, cutting them off at the root and pulling them under. In my garden, they seem to be particularly keen on Tupidanthus (a releative of Schefflera). A couple of weeks ago, I was in the back garden and noticed my Tupidanthus was leaning. A tug on it revealed that the gophers had eaten the entire root system to the crown of the plant. I haven’t seen them ruin anything else, just the Tupidanthus.

    Gophers leave huge piles of sand all over. I’ve had many a nice, neat planting bed ruined because they dug up large amounts of sand for their burrows. They can bury small plants. You can’t flood them out either because they just move to a side tunnel and block off the tunnel being flooded. One day I left the hose running and water was flowing into it for half an hour. I’ve actually discovered the tunnels after flooding a planting bed and discovering the water suddenly “dry up” and flow into a hole.

    Unfortunately they like moist soil so farms and gardens are a boon to them. I imagine that the creation of towns with irrigated gardens has only encouraged them. These things appear shy, but they are bold suckers and if cornered will actually attack cats, dogs, and people, and give nasty deep bites. I’ve seen one charge someone before. This reminds me that I need to set some MacAbee traps sometime soon. They may be good for turning over soil in the wild but in my garden they are a pest. Their little corpses I use to feed the crows and stray cats. Or maybe I need to get this snake:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pituophis_melanoleucus.jpg

    We call them Gopher snakes. They can grow to 8 feet long at their largest.

    The other diggers we have which are significant pests are the ground squirrels, although they seem to avoid most gardens. At the university in which I work, they are so abundant you can see three or four in a rather small plot of land. There are areas that are unlandscaped around campus which have so many holes it appears like a block of swiss cheese.

    I’ve seen these animals at the shore among the rocks. They live so close to the sea that in winter the waves wash over their burrow areas during storms. These have become tame, but they are fat little vermin. They are bold enough that they’ll run up your leg to beg for food. I HATE them. They scare me because I know they can bite. Tourists love giving them M&Ms. I made sure to frighten them with tales of pestilence to get them to stop (besides, it’s illegal here to mess with the wildlife at the beach anyway).

    I haven’t seen many moles, but there was one tunnel snaking along an empty planting bed on campus.

    One animal which I wouldn’t mind leaving burrows all over are the burrowing owls which live out in the grasslands outside of town. They are quite small, able to sit in the palm of your hand.

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    mahmood

    You have many more ground pests than we have; we just have rats and mice basically (and some humans!) and in the two and a half years we’ve had the house this is the first ever problem with mice we’ve had. I guess we were lucky and are paying for it now.

    I’m sure it won’t be too much of a hassle to trap and release the little bugger, but I hope I can do that before they multiply and really become a nuisance.

    I want to trap them in a way that the visiting birds and my dogs are not affected, I am really hesitant now to use the sticky pads or the “Tom and Jerry” mouse trap because it might get a bird or knowing Phoebe, she’ll insist on getting whatever food I put out to entice the mouse out.

    This will be a time wasting exercise, but I guess it’s got to be done.

    And no, I would rather have the mice than that bloody huge snake you’re contemplating!

  12. Barry

    We’ve got rats and mice too. In fact, we had an infestation of house mice during that nasty cold snap. One wandered into my room, looked at me, I looked at it, I yelled, it ran back into its hole (the builders of this house, for some unknown reason drilled a huge hole in the dry wall for the plumbing, so they get in through that). One other night, the cat sauntered in with a mouse in its mouth. It dropped the mouse and the mouse ran. Stupid cat.
    I managed to catch one in the garage with a snap trap. They are the only thing I’ve tried which works and kills instantly (so fast the mouse’s eyes remain open).

    One interesting side effect of the artichoke industry is that the meadow mice (actually voles) make nests at the base of the plants. When the tractors go through the fields, the blades used to cut the plants off at groudn level slaughter a good amount of meadow mice. Seagulls here have learned to follow the tractors in search of the meadow mice. They can even tell when a tractor is about to go due to its start-up sound from its motor.

    Anyway, we’ve got lots of ground dwelling animals here. Among the more frightening things if they make contact with you are: velvet ants (a type of wasp, whose sting hurts like hell), tarantula hawks (2 inch long metallic blue wasps which sting tarantulas, drag them to burrows, and lay their eggs on them, and deliver a painful sting), scorpions (fortunately not lethal), and black widow spiders. But, at least we don’t have the kinds of venomous animals Australia has :).

    The tarantula hawks in particular frighten me because of their size and lack of fear for humans. I remember once hiking at the tallest mountain here about 5 males waiting on some milkweed (the tallest plants around them) for females. Our guide warned us to stay away from them due to their sting. The following only reinforces my fear of getting stung by one:

    The sting, particularly of Pepsis formosa, is among the most painful of any insect. Commenting on his own experience, one researcher described the pain as “…immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations.”

  13. Cerebralwaste

    Mahmood

    Try some cayenne pepper sprinkled liberally around the garden. I have found over the years this does pretty well in deterring pests of the furry kind from reeking havoc with my plants. You can also mix some with water and use it as a spray directly on the plants themselves for leaf eating critters.

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    mahmood

    I tried that before Mark, and all i ended up doing is getting a runny nose for days apart from my inability then to smell anything but pepper!

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    mahmood

    Barry, I guess the more successful your garden is, the more birds and other critters come into it. I’ve been battling a couple of cats a couple of weeks ago who decided to come and liberally take dumps in the flower beds; we let the dogs have the full freedom of the garden (we normally dont allow them to go by the pool and we fenced that part off) and now the cats have limited their enterprise to the outside flower beds (I’ve got 3 flower beds outside of the house).

    It seems now that I have to let the blasted cats back in to control these other critters!

  16. Anonymous

    You can attract it out with humane traps and set it free elsewhere

    You should be happy to have visitors in your garden. Whatever you do, just scare it away, don’t kill it.

    You made me laugh guys. May be the next comment will be “Create a space for these lovely creatures in your garden Mahmood or you know donate some to the neighbours” :biggrin:

  17. Barry

    Mahmood:

    That seems to be the reigning theme in mine. We’ve got the gophers, a feral cat which has made the deck a den, and lots of song birds who love the bird feeder, as well as any seeds they can find in the garden. The birds are especially entertaining, there’s a specific pecking order (small song birds first, then jays, and then crows). Our cat loves the bird feeder so much it ran into the glass door trying to “hunt” them, and now mews and paws at the glass when the birds are feeding (the cat is an inside cat).

    Anonymous:

    I recommend trapping vermin live and giving them as a “gift” to annoying neighbors, like we have.

  18. milter

    Mahmood,

    The hole looks too small to be made by a mongoose from my experience from Bahrain, it looks more like a rat. And it looks too big to be the work of mice.

    Whatever it is, in our house we have the perfect deterrent to such attacks. Out two cats, with their innate distrust and dislike of creatures like that have kept our garden rodent-free for several years with squirrels as the only exception.

    There have been a couple of attemps by mice, rats and moles but, a close team work by the two cats has convinced all the intruders that our garden will not be a very safe place for them to settle down.

  19. docspencer

    Mahmood, is there a university not too far from you with an agriculture or related department you could call and send them your picture? There must be a place like that. How about a government agriculture department, burrowing vertabrate pest expert?

    Blind mole rat? It seems to be in your region and the size is right for what your picture shows. The love the nice tilled soil you created and the new tender unestablished roots!

    Vic

  20. Laurie

    Your garden seems relatively pest free. One small burrow isn’t too bad, but removing the offending animal before it reproduces is a good idea.

    Dogs in the yard do seem to help with the rabbits here. Just the scent of a dog keeps them away. Too bad it doesn’t help with the squirrels. Voles are the worst here. The nasty little creatures tunnel through the snow to eat the bark on trees and shrubs in the winter. Nothing is safe from them.

    Are you sure about not wanting snakes? Just a couple would probably eat any rodents that venture in, and they would like sunning themselves on the rocks.

  21. Cecilia

    Mahmood, have you ever seen the movie “Caddyshack” starring Bill Murray as Karl the rodent-chasing, take-no-prisoners grounds keeper? There might be some ideas for you there.

    🙂

  22. River

    you can try some mothballs in the garden too…we do that out here in the forest and it keeps all the crawlies away and out of the house..

    thanx for the garden pics btw
    have a great week

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