Backyard Nature Study

Psalm 19:1-4

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world."

EEEW!!!


Last week the children came yelling, "A rat is in the garage!". Zoe, our West Highland White Terrier is an expert rodent killer. I called her and ran to the garage. I saw the rat sitting in the window on the outside of the garage behind the boards we set up "temporarily" against the wall. Temporarily turned into a year with all the excessive heat this summer.

I began pulling boards off one at a time. As I pulled more and more off the stack I could smell the stench.... rat urine. Yuck is just not sufficient. Zoe began to get excited. I decided that there may be more than one... possibly two? So, I got our other dog Daisy. Daisy began sniffing and getting excited also. At this point I decided to position the kids on each end of the wall, up high and out of reach of any escaping rodents. I wanted them to tell me how many they saw and which way they ran if they slipped by the dogs.

I finally got to the inside boards. As I pulled one big board off I saw something totally unexpected. Not one, two, or even three rats. There must have been at least 9 clinging to this board 3 feet from my face. The dogs went crazy and the rats went scurrying away in every direction. I headed for Zane because Lilly decided to go in and get popsicles for everyone.

Zane was fine. He was not even phased by all the commotion. By the time all was said and done. I had definitely accounted for 6 rats. Four the dogs killed and two that scurried away in opposite directions--a few down the fence line toward the field in the back.

Needless to say I am reevaluating our backyard feeding of the birds. The rats were feeding on the scattered seeds. In my research I've found that the best way to get rid of rats and mice is to eliminate any food source. That means rethinking where and how to feed the birds and bringing the dog food in away from all the critters.

Considering all the snakes we killed were along that fence line, David thinks that the snakes were following their smell as they headed to and from the back field along the fence. They were looking for dinner too.

We may not have many posts of pictures from our backyard for a while. But, we will continue our nature studies. Lilly is learning keyboarding. As she gains experience I'm hoping to get her to post here as well. Below you will see some pictures of a few picnic & nature outings at George K. Fitch Park & Wolf Pen Creek. The kids love going both places. If you haven't been you should definitely go walk through the nature trails.


~George K. Fitch Park~ is located behind
the College Station Library. It apparently
doesn't get much attention from the city.
We found lots of trash laying around the
trails. On our second vistit we decided to
"adopt" the park and bring trash bags and
pick up a little trash every time we go.




On our outing to Wolf Pen Creek we noticed many new and interesting things. The picture to the right is of a Mockingbird that followed us all along the trails. The interesting thing was that he only had one leg. It didn't seem to bother him in getting around at all. We also had a squirrel follow us dropping nuts on our heads and at our feet. We saw a beautiful white cat along the creek bank. We tried and tried to get her to come out but never succeeded. Lilly was highly disappointed.

We also discovered raccoon tracks in the fresh mud. The kids were
excited to follow the trail and speculate which way it went what it ate and what it may have been looking for. They followed the tracks under a bridge and eventually lost the trail into the water.



Another nice thing we liked about Wolf Penn Creek were the signs that labeled the kinds of wildlife and trees in the park. This is a picture of a Mexican Plum tree. If you're interested in attracting birds to your back yard fruit producing trees and vines are a great way to do this. This is evidently a native species.




This log covered with a beautiful fern was
another find. The log or branch fell from
the tree and was covered entirely with
this fern. We noticed the trees had other
plants growing on them as well including
Spanish Moss. Next time we will be taking
out Nature Books, adding specimens and
writing down the names of the things we
find.

1 comments:

KT said...

Thanks for conquering the rats. Hopefully they will not return. Maybe they will decide to live in the mole holes in my back yard :)

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