It's been a week of pest patrol once again here at Struan Farm.
More rat poison under the house (we know to do so when we hear the gnawing again in the middle of the night...), rabbit shot in the paddock, three possums caught down at the Homestead and one in our back bush.
Waikato Regional Council has been poisoning possums every few years in our area, hiring contractors to put out bait stations with follow up surveys to monitor the success or lack thereof of the control programme. This has made a major difference to possum numbers around the farm. (For years John's parents couldn't grow any fruit trees, they were completely decimated by possums.) The Regional Council is about to start another round of bait stations shortly, a very good thing from our perspective. As a result our efforts have shifted mostly to trapping and poisoning rats, since both possums and rats are serious threats to our native birds.
Possums are migratory, however, and when/if we see evidence that they've been around we jump on the case. Last week John saw one at night down at the Homestead. He set a trap and caught one, then a second, then a third. A few days later we caught the first one in a long time in our back bush reserve. The dead possums are delivered to Clifford, who was a possum hunter in his younger days but hasn't been patrolling the property due to his bum back leg. The first one got buried somewhere, Clifford likes to "season" things. The only problem with this is that sometimes he forgets where he's put them, and I stumble across putrid rabbit and possum carcasses in my flower beds when I'm weeding. "Ick" to say the least!
John decided to have a bit of fun with dead possum #2. Apologies for this "rural humour" if it offends you, and please note that this is a dead possum that was killed humanely in a trap:
Clifford doesn't like us to know where he hides his trophies. He sneaks off to bury them. So I quietly stalked him. This one was stashed behind our hedge along the drive, good to know it's not in one of my flower beds:
And here's number three, not sure where that one got stashed or number four:
Given that we've trapped four over several days, we will now set several traps in both locations and check them daily.
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