Panel Eating Predator

Oh wow, do I have a story for you!!!  This one does not relate to mice but it seemed appropriate since it does deal with the local wildlife and my personal property.  My family recently took a quick 5 day road trip north to Portland, Oregon. We were in Portland for a family reunion and it was a very fun time (I will be dealing with that topic on More Cakes and Ale - get excited).  On Monday we were driving the last leg of our road trip home when I got a call from my mother.  It is common knowledge that my husband, kids, and I live on the same property as my parents.  Anytime we are gone, they look after things and feed the animals.  While doing their "house sitting" duties, my father found an interesting thing.  He had my mother call to ask if  my husband had accidentally scrapped or caught my car with the tractor before we left.  I told her he hadn't been using the tractor and why was she asking?  Apparently my car had experienced some pretty extensive damage.  Here is what we saw when we pulled into the drive several hours later:

 

That is the wheel well yanked completly out from under the car.  The bumper had been literally attacked and eaten.

pieces of the bumper and wheel well were scattered all over the ground

The damage was worse on the passenger side of the car but it was by no means limited to that area.  It continued around the bumper to the driver's side.

the license plate was completely torn off the front bumper

you can see the bite marks - they look like punctures

There were also scratches on the hood and driver-side mirror. 

Now for the investigation.  We think, as a family, we have figured out what happened.  Some animal of prey was running away from a predator and decided my car would be a safe hiding place.  Apparently they were correct because we say no evidence of slaughter (no blood or fur).  My husband did see evidence of an animal having been inside the engine bay but nothing with any gore.  So what could possibly do this kind of damage?  I have narrowed it down to three suspects: mountain lion/cougar, bobcat, or coyotes.  A few people have said bear but to my knowledge we don't have bears near us -they live more to the south.  I am leaning right now towards one of the feline suspects for the following reason.  In addition to the damage, there were some very large dirty paw prints on the hood.  They were pretty smudged so there was no clear definition giving away the owner of the paws.  But by the size, I don't think a coyote would be big enough to have that size of paw.  The bobcats I have seen around here have pretty big paws so they could be contenders. 

example of a bobcat - similar to the ones we have here (image taken form Bobcats - Tory Kallman Photography www.torykallman.com)

On one hand I am really annoyed that I have to repair my car when I left it safely at home.  On the other hand I am extremely impressed by the raw power and determination that led to the damage happening.  That was one hungry predator and I hope it has found food before my kids go out to play again.  My husband says its karma and a mouse was the prey hiding in the car.  It is payback for all of our murderous efforts - your thoughts?

Home Invasion

Death toll: 19

Well, we are still battling the mice - we can add one more confirmed kill to our numbers.

One of the risks of killing mice in your home is that some of these mice have little mice babies living within your walls.  When you trap a mommy mouse, this leaves the babies to die where they live.  This is our situation right now.  Somewhere in our hallway walls, we have collateral damage.  How do I know?  Remember, I am achingly familiar with the smell of decomposition (read earlier posts to learn why if you are not already aware).  When we walk from our kitchen into our hallway, we get a lovely whiff of some poor decaying creature.  My best guess is that it is a baby mouse since some of our recent casualties have appeared to be nursing mouse mommies.  Luckily when the decaying creature is that small, the odor dissipates rather quickly.  I am not about to start tearing into my sheet rock to find the corpse.

Beside the mice invasion, we recently had another visitor.  One night I was sitting in the living room watching TV and my big Australian Shepherd started a very loud, aggressive, fearful type of barking.  He was in the kitchen and was most definitely  focused on something on the floor.  I walked into the kitchen to investigate and realized we had a visitor. 

On the floor under the table was a young, very beautiful King Snake.  It is never a calm feeling when you find a snake slithering across the interior of your home but at least I knew this little guy was not poisonous.  Since my dog was barking, the snake was trying desperately to get away and wound up slithering into a storage bench.  I yelled for my husband and he started to empty out the storage bench.  There the snake was, all curled up trying to figure out just where the heck he had wound up (okay, I confess, I have no idea if it was a boy or girl but the name King Snake really lends itself to the assumption of boy).  My other half ran and grabbed his thick leather work gloves and then stood somewhat frozen, staring down at the snake.  I told him to remember to grab it behind the head and he responded, "I have a real aversion to reaching in and grabbing it."  We decided to take another tact and I emptied out the kids play dough bucket.  We truned the bucket upside down and trapped the snake.  We slid a piece of thick paper under the snake and flipped the bucket.  Here was our prize:

The snake was taken outside and tuned loose in our orchard.  I really hope this fulfills our snake in the house quota for a long while - we got lucky it wasn't a rattler.

Murderous Melee

Wow, we have literally been exploding with mouse activity this week.  My husband and I have been laying in bed listening to the little buggers run through our ceiling as we try to sleep. The first night this happened we new the gantlet had once again been thrown down - it was time to jump into battle once more.

Last Friday we set a few traps and caught one mouse.  The little guy had made two appearances during our evening TV time - brazenly running under the couch where we were lounging.  We knew there many more based on the pitter patter of their little feet above our heads so we upped our game.  On Monday we set four traps around the kitchen and pantry.

One of our traps sitting on our kitchen counter - very hygienic.

 All I can say about that attempt is that the mice had a very nice midnight snack.  They literally licked the traps clean but did not trip the snapping mechanism.  My husband decided that we needed new traps so he stocked up on Wednesday night.  This is where we really got serious because each day we were seeing more and more droppings.  They were concentrated around the kitchen counters and the floor of the pantry. We both felt like we were being taunted. 

Thursday night no fewer than six traps were set.  This time we made a point of really smashing the cheese into the flaps - those little mousy tongues were not going to get passed us again.

Trap set in the pantry - the mice like our rice.  I need to improve food storage again.

Friday morning we woke to no one, not two, but three dead mice - hallelujah!!  Two were caught in the pantry and one was caught in the kitchen.  That made a total of four kills for the week but we weren't done yet.  As an aside, I was getting ready to wash my lunch box to take to work and I had left a small dinner roll in a plastic baggie in my lunch box.  One of our furry friends had scurried into my lunch box and eaten a hole through the plastic and enjoyed the stale roll.  Brazen bastard.

Friday night we set the traps again - all six.  Saturday morning we checked and another two had met their maker.  Both of these were once caught in the pantry.  The total had increased to six dead mice. After all of this carnage, we decided it was time to empty the pantry storage and do some pretty deep cleaning.  We needed to clean out the daily dose of mouse excrement as well as some bodily fluids left by the previous night's executions.  I try to use natural cleaners where I can but yesterday that panty got a very healthy dosing of bleach thanks to my husband.  This made me feel much better.

This morning, we looked at the set traps and rejoiced to see numbers seven and eight had experienced their last supper.  As most people are celebrating the resurrection, we are celebrating the demise of eight of God's creatures.

I didn't realize my husband had been throwing the mice all in the same location when he emptied the traps (see previous blog regarding my feelings on the trap-emptying).  As I took a little walk to inspect our new orchard today, I stumbled upon the burial ground.  Here is what I saw:

At least the vultures will be happy.

Tonight we will do it all again and hopefully the running feet will stop.  Victory will be ours!! 

The Death Toll rises to 18

Hippity Hoppity

I have written so much about the mice out here in the sticks and I have occasionally touched on some of the other animals we encounter on a regular basis.  Today I want to share one of my favorite groups of animals we get to play with.  It is winter so we aren't seeing these guys right now but during the spring, summer, and fall we get inundated with frogs and toads.

My daughter loves these particular animals.  She also loves lizards but we'll leave that for another day. 

These two were found in a hole when my daughter and mother were watering the potted plants.  They were curled up together and my daughter dragged them out to carry them the 100 yards to our house.  I opened the door and this is what I saw:

My little ragamuffin - I think she was as dirty as the toads.

She was able to find these two in the same hole on two other days.  They finally got tired of being ripped from their home and moved on to find a more peaceful abode.

On another day, we were tearing out some dead plants.  My son and daughter pulled up a dead lavender plant and found a very fat toad.  He was safely hiding amidst the roots.

Her hands are masking his fat belly but he measured about 5 inches across at his mid section.  We put him back in his hole and caught him one more time before he moved out.  My children have yet to catch on to the cause and effect nature of catching animals.  Kids catch, animal moves away. 

During the summer, we will drive home in the dark and it is toad/frog mania.  We have counted 15 toads jumping around the driveway and yard at one time. 

One night this guy hopped up to the wall of our house and was tying to escape behind a storage container. In my efforts to move him back toward the grass, I dropped him on top of the container. 

At this point, he peed all over the container.  Yes, my fumbling scared the piss out of him.  I really need to leave the animal handling up to my daughter.

Another night I went out to give the dogs water and found this handsome guy waiting for me:

I took a quick pic but afterward I felt a little bad. I am guessing their eyes are not used to such bright lights.  The next day I moved the water dish and there he was, safely hiding in the dirt underneath.  He became a fairly regular resident under the water dish but that is to be expected now that I blinded him.

Most of what we see are toads but occassionally we find tree frogs.  My kids had a blow up swimming pool at Grandma's house.  One day they found this guy taking a swim:

Over the summer months I think my daughter caught 3 or 4 of these guys.  You may have noticed I have said a lot about my daughter catching these guys.  My son gets very excited about the animals but is much more hesitant about touching them.  He leaves that up to his fearless older sister.  Isn't it great that she actually gets to catch these slippery slimy things?  How sad that so many kids never get to see these things out of a cage...

Spice of Life

Well Hello There!
It has been a LONG time since I was able to sit down and enjoy some blogging.  I started a new job in August and time is not something I have in excess.  That new development has not changed the battle on the home front and it is time to share our recent activities.  You will, of course, have to forgive me if my grammar skills continue to be problematic.  That also has not changed.

Once again the weather has turned chilly and the rains are on and off.  Well if I am being honest the rains are mostly off since we usually get single digit inches of rain each year but for us, its been wet.  When this cooling trend happens, animals of all sizes seek out warm places to hunker down.  Our summers are very warm (many days over 100 degrees F) so rodent activity largely happens outdoors.  Now is the time of the hunkering and a warm, well stocked house is very desirable.

Before I go into specifics about our recent victories, I must preface with the fact that the mice that have entered our home this year seem to be of a lower cognitive ability.  Now I realize the cognitive abilities of mice can be debated but I have been impressed with what these small furry creatures are able to accomplish.  As an example of this lower cognition trend, lets get into the details of our first kill of the season.

Spice of Life
Several weeks ago a lady at work was pulling out the final peppers and tomatoes out of her garden.  Due to a warm early fall, we had tomatoes all the way into late November.   This lady asked if I liked jalapenos and, as most self respecting native Californians would, I said I loved them. (Side note: if you don't understand Spanish pronunciation, the j is pronounced like an h, the e is pronounced like a long a sound, and n is pronounced like an ny sound or rather hall-uh-pay-nyo).  The next day she brought me a small basket of tomatoes and three jalapenos.

Over the weekend, I used one of the jalapenos and the tomatoes to make salsa.  My husband, also a native Californian, ate the other jalapeno raw.  The third jalapeno was left sitting out in the counter.  The next morning, I was making breakfast and noticed something.  The end of the jalapeno was gone.  It look as though my husband had taken a bite out of it.  I asked him and he told be that he hadn't eaten the jalapeno.  I then noticed some lovely black droppings on the counter and my suspicions were confirmed.  We had a mouse and the mouse was clearly a native Californian. 

View One of the Jalapeno - if you look closely you can see the tiny bite marks

View Two of the Jalapeno - seeds and all for a spicy mouse!

 Needless to say the traps were set that night.  In the morning, the trap was still set but the peanut butter we had put on it was gone - a very lucky mouse indeed.  The trap sat  that way (un-baited) for two days.  On the third day, I walked out to the kitchen to make breakfast and came face to face with my native Californian mouse.  Well, I should say my native DEAD Californian mouse. The stupid mouse had been killed by an un-baited mouse trap.  I call it genetic cleansing.  This is the first round of my anecdotal evidence that these mice may be lucky but they are not the caliber we faced last year.  More to come...

Death toll had risen to 10

Fascinating Survival

I began writing this blog months ago with the focus being on eradicating those pesky mice from our country home.  We have been very successful in this process.  In the last six weeks, we have caught two more mice via traps .  One was in our pantry (no surprise, that seems to be their hub) and one sad mouse lost its battle with a bait-less trap in the back corner of our counter.  Yes, we did disinfect immediately upon find that poor guy.  The trap had been set several days before and the bait had been stolen.  This mouse was obviously not the one who had succeeded in outsmarting the trap since he/she was caught without any bait at all. 

As I have been living in this house for seven months now, my interests in the goings on of the animal population has evolved into a focus on the ability of these creatures we are living with to survive and persevere.  

It is with this interest that I want to introduce you to a simply amazing creature.  This creature is an arachnid (or spider for you less vocabulary enriched folk).    Look carefully and you will be visually introduced to the Wolf Spider:

Wolf Spider - can you find him?

These spiders that I have seen measure in length about 2" across from head to end.  They are similar in size to a small tarantula (we also have these but they are not currently "in season" - more on them in the fall). What fascinates me about these particular spiders is how they have evolved to catch prey.  From what I have observed, they appear to eat large insects by building a very unique form of web.  Wolf Spiders build their webs on the ground where unsuspecting creature will crawl onto the outer edges of the web.

Top View of a Wolf Spider web

In the center of the web you can see a hole.  Wolf Spiderwebs are actually funnels that lead to holes in the ground.  They look much like the funnel you would use to put oil in your car (or in my case one your husband uses to put oil in the car).  Here is a side view of one of their funnels:

Wolf Spider funnel web

The owner of this web will sit inside the hole at the bottom of the web.  When the web is shaken by prey crawling or landing on the web, the Wolf Spider will leap - yes I said leap- out of the hole toward the disturbance.  I have been able to observe this by taking a stick and lightly shaking the web.  Honestly, it is quite startling how fast these spiders are able to come out of those holes.  You may not be a fan of spiders but how may insects do you think these spiders can eat?  Think about how overrun with other insects we all would be without these spiders.

Now, the spider in the picture above was found by my mother in a very sorry state.  We have another creature living with us out here in the country who is a predator to the Wolf Spider and the Tarantula.  Please have a look at the Tarantula Hawk:

Tarantula Hawk - photo found on

4630048757_0a9c314725_z.jpg flickr.com

These Tarantula Hawks are also about 2" from head to end and are a member of the wasp family.  I can say without any hesitation that these wasps are one of the scariest looking things I have ever seen.  Their method of survival is to find an unsuspecting large arachnid and inject them with some sort of substance that renders them paralyzed.  The Hawk then carries/drags the spider to a safe place and lays its eggs inside.  When the eggs hatch, the babies eat the spider inside out. Lovely.  My family and I had the opportunity to watch one of these carry a large tarantula up the wall of a house, across the face of the house for a distance of about 20 feet (turning a corner of the house) and down into some bushes. 

The Wolf Spider my mother found had been paralyzed and was being dragged across the ground by one of these Tarantula Hawks.  When we approached to have a look at it, the Tarantula Hawk flew away. 

The sophistication of these creatures' methods of survival demands our respect despite the fact that it causes us to have that feeling of fear or unease. People are very removed from having to live moment to moment focused on our own survival.  We need to acquaint ourselves with the reality of how most of the world's inhabitants live day to day.  They are focused on one goal - survival.  I find it fascinating.

New Neighbors

Out here in the country we are always happy to welcome new neighbors.  We are especially thankful for those neighbors that help in the reduction of our mass rodent population.  I wrote previously about the rattle snakes and the gopher snakes that are helping keep down the mice.  They are not the only friends joining our fight.  This week we had a new family move in down on our road.  The road up to our property is a dirt lane that winds through the oak trees.  At night it looks something like the Blair Witch Project but during the day it is quite pretty.  Along the east side, there is a small creek bed that only has running water for about three weeks a year.  Over time, this creek has caused many wash outs in the hillside which make great homes for rabbits and squirrels.  We even have witnessed a badger a time or two living near this creek bed.  The west side slops up the oak studded hills and over the years, we have seen many deer, some bobcats, mountain lions, wild pigs, and lots of birds.  We also occasionally see these guys.

Sorry for the poor quality, I was using my PAS.

This little guy is, I am pretty sure, a San Joaquin Kit Fox.

On Friday, I got a call from my mother asking if I had seen the fox that was hanging out on our road.  I had not.  She called back sometime later to let me know that the fox had moved into a den just off the road, he wasn't just hunting in the area.  We love these little guys and I was really looking forward to seeing him. Last night, I needed to run into town and that is when I got my first glimpse of our new friend.  That was when I snapped the picture above.  He was happily sitting in front of his den.  Well, as I was driving home, I got a very pleasant surprise.

Again, using my little PAS so the quality isn't very good.  I cropped the photo so they could be seen but that made it grainy.

There wasn't just one fox, but a pack of at least three.  Here they are sitting outside of their den having a snack.  It is hard to see but the fox on the far right has a small rodent in his mouth.  I love a neighborhood that shares my priorities.  I hope they are here to stay for awhile!!