Last nights dreams were all about these little guys…hundreds of them flooded my dreams!  They came off the hill to the North, crossed the highway and entered my trapping area nose to tail.  Once into the main stream, they spread out like ants on a gum drop, devouring everything that had meat in it, including my caught rats!  I developed a plan to attack their front line and will implement it today!

Six live traps will be my defense and I plan to catch six of these guys every day until I have their numbers under control!

Pete told me that all summer long there are continual dead raccoons along this area of the highway.  With the small amount of traffic that drives that road, there must be a lot of raccoons crossing there and going down the hill to the headwaters of this drainage.  In this water are found hundreds of thousands of fresh water clams and the shells of those that have been eaten before are strewn throughout the bottom of the stream.  I picture an every night scene of many raccoons going down the water way digging and picking up the clams, breaking them open and eating them.  Then along comes me, and the rats are bonus food for the critters!  I hope they all get a belly ache from eating so much!  And hope that a scene like this will be mine to observe soon:

Today I have to be home earlier than usual and so trap setting will be at a minimum, if I can get 10 set that would be great, but 5 will be acceptable.

How many rats will the line produce today?  Boy, after yesterday that is a tough one to guess.  I think Pete’s pond is just about empty of rats and so I’ll give it a one rat catch today and will probably pull the traps from there tomorrow.  Bull Run will net 10 rats and I hope at least 2 of them are still intact.  Remember I need 3 to pay for gas.  So, 11 rats are expected today.

Bears Butt

February 12, 2014