Allston rats better whoop it up now
ISD is meeting with increasingly disgusted residents on May 13 at the Jackson-Mann School to discuss "a mass rodent extermination plan" for the Willardesque hoards of rats now roaming the neighborhood.
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I certainly hope they're going to use humane traps
I say that tongue in cheek.....
Years ago, there was a referendum question about animal traps that passed, making it a real PITA for suburban folks dealing with beaver dams. If your basement floods because of a beaver dam, you have to go thru all sorts of hoops to control the problem, if you are allowed to do anything at all.
My argument then and now is, fine, vote for humane traps. But when it comes to controlling rats in the city (the four-legged kind, not the political kind), you also have to use humane methods for controlling them. Yeah right, that'll happen. ;-)
Humane traps
It's not hard to buy a humane trap. Trot on down to Home Despot and pick yourself up a HavaHart. I recommend the Model 1025 for that squirrel living in your attic.
A little peanut butter, a little patience, and you've got yourself a trapped rodent. Congrats for being humane! And now...
What do you do? It's illegal to transport a wild animal in Massachusetts. If you release it outside your house, it'll just go back in; it's not like it doesn't know its way around.
contact the Humane Society,
and hopefully, they'll come and take away the trapped rodent(s).
And even if it were legal to transport the captured rats
would you want to live in whatever neighborhood they were released in?
Another problem with poison
Even if you get a poison that is specific to the target animal (and doesn't kill every other opportunist in the area), it can migrate up the food chain.
Rat poison has been known to kill hawks when hawks eat a poisoned rat ... a bad idea since hawks will clear out a lot of rats in their lifetimes and stay on the job for long periods of time.
Wildlife
There isn't really much in the way of wildlife left as the rats have driven them out. A hawk is a very rare sight in Allston. Seen any stray cats lately?
Surprising
There are hawks all over the city, and they tend to migrate toward the fast food ... er ... rat infested areas because easy food is easy food.
Sounds like you could use a couple - they like urban areas, like Harvard Yard.
Do what?
There are hawks hanging out all the time at the ballpark backstops and other perches near the running track at the Harvard athletic facilities and Smith Playground fields.
Confused?
You seem to be confused about the predator/prey relationship between hawks, cats, and rats.
#1: Hawks hunt rats, so how on earth do you figure that rats drive them away? As a matter of fact, I watched a crowd of crows chase a hawk right over my roof on Monday. Crows are arguably more likely to drive hawks out of a given neighborhood, but crows are not rats.
#2: I've seen quite a few stray cats lately - there's actually a growing population in my neighborhood. Again, the cats will hunt rats, so I don't get why you think that rats drive cats away.
Speaking of wildlife in the city, I have also seen wild rabbits on the next street to mine on several occasions over the past 2-3 years.
Has it ever occurred to ANYBODY, including Harvard, that
the behaviour of a great many of their tenants has an awful lot to do with the rat problem(s)?
Something to think about.