They like dark hideaways, clutter and cactus and hate sunshine. Rats are nocturnal feeders and hide out during the day. Nevertheless, we can still make our place less attractive to these little buggers.
They also got here before we did, though that’s never cut much ice. As much as we might hate them, rats are a necessary part of the food chain, a key element in the diet of owls, hawks, bobcats, coyotes, ringtails and other wildlife. The forests of Oregon come with the gray skies and rain that keep them lush, and sunny Arizona deserts come with pack rats. How do You Keep Pat Racks from Choosing Your House? We prefer the comforts of home, and so do they. Here they find fatter cactus, fewer predators and lots of stuff to chew. Well-watered landscaped yards offer shelter from the storm. Having lived a perilous life in the open desert for millennia, pack rats view a desert community like SaddleBrooke like a nine-year old looks at Disneyland. One female can produce two babies every two months, and a newborn female can start the same production line in just two more months, blessing us with a ten-fold population jump each year. Unfortunately for homeowners this includes wiring, cables and irrigation tubing in your yard, air-conditioning unit, hot tub, swimming pool equipment, car, attic and garage. They chew cholla and mesquite pods for food and water, and just about anything else to keep their teeth honed. Pack rats crank out a lot of urine and fecal pellets, and spend more time chewing than a baseball player. What’s not to like? Well, from a people perspective, quite a few things. Pack rats are as cute as pet rats, important native desert mammals, not venomous and won’t bite. To be accurate, what we call ‘pack rats’ are White-throated Wood Rats ( Neotoma albigula ), but let’s call ‘em pack rats it will keep the article shorter.
What is a ‘Pack Rat’ and Why do they Bring out our Killer Instinct? To enjoy all this, we tolerate hot summers, spiny stick-yous and scary stuff like snakes and scorpions. Year-round outdoor living: walking, hiking, biking, swimming, pickle ball, tennis, golfing and more. Sunshine brings us here, like moths to a flame. We leave beautiful places, family and friends. We move here to escape crowds, clouds and cold. Many people who retire here, like most of us in SaddleBrooke, came from somewhere else, often somewhere dramatically different. White-throated Wood Rat, aka ‘Pack Rat’ (photo by Jim Cloer)Ī lot of folks live in Arizona for a lot of reasons.
0 kommentar(er)
