The Cellar - View Single Post - Dec 2nd, 2016: World War 1-A

Snakeadelic · 12-02-2016, 07:31 AM

Those things are, in fact, downright pestilential! Some years back, my mom was getting upset because although her chickens were young and healthy she thought they had stopped laying eggs. She had like 7 hens, and was getting maybe 2 eggs a week total.

And then one day she opened the coop just in time to see good old O. beecheyi (which is found all over the West Coast) rolling a fresh egg down a burrow hidden under a corner nest box. They're NOT just vegetarian. They'll eat just about anything if they think they want it, up to and including live baby chickens, eggs, dog food, beehives, and anything in a bird feeder. And they breed FAST--they start young and have big litters that don't come up out of the burrow until they're already fast enough to dodge a dog.

We have a different species of ground squirrel around here where I live, maybe Richardson's but I haven't checked carefully. With all the pets and kids around here, I think the preferred methods of colony eradication are 1: pave the open, shortgrass spaces where they like to hang out (they don't like being in tall grass because it obstructs their view of the sky) and 2: pump inert, odorless heavier-than-air gas down the warren (and then plug holes because OMG the stench). The high school grounds are completely infested, despite routine gassing to keep the football field pristine.

12-02-2016, 07:31 AM	#2
Snakeadelic Banned Join Date: May 2015 Posts: 660	Those things are, in fact, downright pestilential! Some years back, my mom was getting upset because although her chickens were young and healthy she thought they had stopped laying eggs. She had like 7 hens, and was getting maybe 2 eggs a week total. And then one day she opened the coop just in time to see good old O. beecheyi (which is found all over the West Coast) rolling a fresh egg down a burrow hidden under a corner nest box. They're NOT just vegetarian. They'll eat just about anything if they think they want it, up to and including live baby chickens, eggs, dog food, beehives, and anything in a bird feeder. And they breed FAST--they start young and have big litters that don't come up out of the burrow until they're already fast enough to dodge a dog. We have a different species of ground squirrel around here where I live, maybe Richardson's but I haven't checked carefully. With all the pets and kids around here, I think the preferred methods of colony eradication are 1: pave the open, shortgrass spaces where they like to hang out (they don't like being in tall grass because it obstructs their view of the sky) and 2: pump inert, odorless heavier-than-air gas down the warren (and then plug holes because OMG the stench). The high school grounds are completely infested, despite routine gassing to keep the football field pristine.