Fuzz, page 26
Rodents are a good bellwether. If people can be less cruel to rats, if it even crosses their minds to be less cruel to a rat, then things are heading in a good direction. Not just good for rats, maybe also good for humans. “If man can be taught to respect the home of the worm,” wrote the nineteenth-century historian Léon Ménabréa, “how much more ought he to regard that of his fellow man.”
A few months after I returned from Colorado, I was reading a book outside. I happened to look up as a roof rat ran across the end of the deck. My immediate impulse was to drive to the hardware store and buy a snap trap. But I didn’t. How could I? Little Miss Coexistence. Put your money where your yap is. Besides, as I knew, removing one raises a VACANCY sign for another.§ My neighbor livetraps the squirrels that raid her peach tree and lets them go in a neighborhood park. She has been doing this, Sisyphus-like, the entire decade we’ve lived next door to each other.
A few days later, heading down the stairs from the deck, I saw the rat again. He was running down a tree branch, with a loquat in his jaws. Our eyes met. He froze. I froze. He dropped his fruit. Seen head-on, the naked tail hidden from view, the roof rat is certifiably cute. The species is smaller than the Norway rat, with fur of a warmer, prettier brown. It’s a squirrel without tail fluff. This guy was fully as adorable as the ground squirrels that run around the bayside park where I hike. (And if history is any indication, less likely to pass on disease.) I went on down the steps and put my load in the washer and forgot about the rat.
A week later, I heard something moving inside a wall. “Your little friend is going to chew through the wiring and set the house on fire,” said Ed. I told him I wanted to figure out how it was getting in and practice “exclusion.” He gave me a week to figure it out.
I set up my wildlife camera in different places around the outside of the house, and we figured out where the rat was getting in. Ed filled the gap, and that was that. The noises stopped. I continued to see the rat around, mostly on the camera, but once or twice our paths would cross. I’d nod hello, and we’d go about our days.
* Will Pitt, of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, documented it when he was with the NWRC. The house mice tested were all able to access food by passing through 13-millimeter holes—the average width of the local house mouse head. Less formal proof takes the form of my friend Steph, who, one hot day, upon returning from a walk with her dog, grabbed a water bottle from the floor of her truck. She took a swig and discovered, in order, a fetid taste and a dead mouse inside the bottle. “I don’t think you’ll need a doctor,” an advice nurse said upon hearing that she’d spat the water out. “But you may need a psychiatrist.” For me, Steph dutifully went back and measured the head. It was exactly the size of the water bottle’s opening.
† To eradicate invasive, bird-decimating brown tree snakes on Guam, the U.S. government has used a bait of dead neonatal mice (or “pinkies,” in the pet snake community) laced with acetaminophen (or Tylenol, in the pain-relief community). But pinkies aren’t cheap, and within three days they start to become unpalatable, even to a snake (“green coloration … followed by swelling, seepage, odor, and eventual rupture”). So began a fifteen-year search for a replacement bait. Because snakes don’t chew and savor their food as we do, the thinking was that you could coat a cheap core material—sea sponge was tried, and gum rubber—with an irresistible attractant. A dozen or more wrappings and coatings failed to seduce captive snakes at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia: Roquefort cheese, termite attractant, poultry fat, fetal pig skin, evening primrose oil, baby formula. (The researcher, Bruce Kimball, had expected resistance from the baby formula company, but they were all in. The Tylenol people have maintained a cool distance.) Eventually a winner emerged: “mouse butter” on a core of potted meat product. “We reverse-engineered Spam,” Kimball told me with understandable pride. Spam is cheap, keeps for at least a week, and doesn’t attract ants—and the snakes, like the humans of Guam, are inexplicably fond of it.
The other challenge was to get the baits where the tree snakes were (and other creatures weren’t). The pinkies had been strung with plastic parachutes, like toy army men, and dropped from helicopters into the canopy, where the parachute cords would catch on branches. Your taxpayer dollars making my day. However, hand-attaching six thread-thin parachute cords to each bait proved “tedious,” and to cover all of Guam, you’d need two million baits. Now they use an “aerial broadcast system,” a sort of helicopter-mounted machine gun that shoots potted-meat baits with biodegradable cornstarch streamers to entangle them in the trees.
The upshot? While brown tree snakes have quickly eradicated nine out of twelve native Guam bird species, the combined might of the U.S. Navy, the USDA, and U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife has thus far failed to return the favor.
‡ Unscrupulous bounty collectors would cash in twice: scalps in one county and tails in another. Some would fashion faux tails by wrapping portions of the hide around a skinny stick. Still others would cut off the tails and set the rodent free to breed yet more tails. In considering a bounty program for invasive brown tree snakes in Guam, officials worried that people might be tempted to release them on islands where they did not yet exist, in order to create a novel income source.
§ Or on a more magisterial scale, “I know from my own estate in Yorkshire… . as soon as one kills 300 or 400 grey squirrels in any given month a similar number come … and take their places.”—the Earl of Feversham, parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, at a meeting of the House of Lords to discuss the Grey Squirrels (Prohibition of Importation and Keeping) Order of 1937.
Acknowledgments
While working on this project, I would occasionally encounter the term “vertebrate pest.” I don’t much care for it, because it reduces an animal to its role in the context of human enterprise. However, there is one mammal for whom the term seems fair and apt, and that is me. For kindness and forbearance in the face of ceaseless pestering, a few people must be singled out. Bowed down to. Carried high by the cheering crowd. They are: Stewart Breck, Justin Dellinger, Travis DeVault, André Frijters, Joel Kline, Dipanjan Naha, Aaron Shiels, Bruce Warburton, and Dazy Weymer. You made this book, as much as I did. And in return I have those two words that never really capture the feelings they represent. Thank you.
Though they are less visible on the page, the following people also welcomed me and shared their time and knowledge, often with little or no advance warning. Giant neon thanks to Samantha Brown, Father Carlo Casalone, Aaron Koss-Young, Charlie Martin, Dean McGeough, Nico Nijenhuis, Toni Piaggio, Qamar Qureshi, Saroj Raj, Tom Seamans, Shaun Templeton, Kurtis Tesch, Rafael Tornini, R. B. S Tyagi, and Tina White.
Kim Annis, Jonathan Clemente, Bradley Cohen, Sarah Courchesne, Doug Eckery, Julie Carol Ellis, Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, Dave Garshelis, Katherine Horak, John Humphrey, Bruce Kimball, Mario Klip, Page Klug, Tim Manley, Stella McMillin, Vicky Monroe, Julie Oakes, Seth Pincus, William Pitt, Samantha Pollak, Heather Reich, Virginia Roxas-Duncan, Shane Siers, Steve Smith, Peter Tira, Catherine VandeVoort, Harry Wetherbee, Kate Wilmot, and Bonnie Yates: if I did not achieve full pest status, I was, at least for an hour or two, a thing buzzing in your ear. Thank you for not waving me away.
Tim Bibby, Paul Deckers, Carol Glatz, Thaddeus Jones, Gail Keirn, Kirsten Macintyre, Fabrizio Mastrofini, Heather Steere, Kevin Van Damme, and Brian Wakeling: your help made possible entire chapters that would otherwise not exist. My thanks to you. Keli Hendricks, John Griffin, John Hadidian, and Kellie Nicholas, you put things in context both historical and political, and I deeply appreciate your insights. For allowing me to infest your inbox, thank you, John Anderson, Meera Bhatia, Johan Elmberg, Ann Filmer, Robin Konrad, Georgia Mason, Christina Meister, Sanath Muliya, and George Smith.
My reporting took me to places where I did not understand the language and culture. My gratitude to Raffaella Buschiazzo and Charles Lansdorp for help with translation and interpreting. Nilanjana Bhowmick, Aritra Naha, and Shweta Singh, to each of you: your skillful ear and quick mind added nuance to my reporting, and your companionship made me feel at home when home was far away.
To Jill Bialosky and Jay Mandel: twenty years and seven books down the line, here I am, thanking you again. Yet it never feels like enough. Because everything always goes well. How often, in publishing—in any business? in life!—does that happen? Contributing in other immeasurable ways to the ongoing W. W. Norton miracle are the following excellent humans: Steve Attardo, Louise Brockett, Steve Colca, Brendan Curry, Ingsu Liu, Erin Lovett, Meredith McGinnis, Stephanie Romeo, and Drew Weitman.
I am indebted to Janet Byrne for her graceful and expert copy-editing and for the patience, tact, and zeal with which she checked my work. Few are as good as she (as her? Janet! Help!).
A nod to Carlton Engelhardt for the emus and to Andy Karam for the stilettos. Cynthia, thank you for introducing me to Nila. Jeff, thank you for listening and for thinking it was a good idea, and Jesse, thank you for the New Zealand connections and hospitality. Steph, thank you for adding monkey-time to the itinerary. And Ed, always Ed, thank you for everything.
The Fuzzy Trespasser
RESOURCES FOR HOMEOWNERS
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has a helpful “What to Do About” series on its website. Included are strategies for resolving—or, better, preventing—problems with urban and suburban wildlife species, among them, bats, bears, Canada geese, chipmunks, coyotes, crows, deer, foxes, mice, opossums, pigeons, rabbits, raccoons, rats, skunks, snakes, squirrels, sparrows, starlings, wild turkeys, and woodchucks. https://www.humanesociety.org/resource/wildlife-management-solutions
More good advice can be found in the “Living in Harmony with Wildlife” series on the PETA website. Included are bats, geese, mice, chipmunks, pigeons, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, rabbits, and rats. https://www.peta.org/issues/wildlife/living-harmony-wildlife/
If wild animals have begun raising a family in an attic or crawl space, you will need professional help to undertake a humane eviction of both mother and young. Before you make any calls, I recommend reading the HSUS “Choosing a Wildlife Control Company” web page. Getting them out requires specialized know-how.
As does releasing them afterward. Best practice these days is called “on-site” release. Once the operator has helped you seal any entry points and eliminate or close off other appealing nesting sites, the animals are released inside their home range—that is, your property. Driving them to a nearby woods or park sounds humane but likely isn’t. “The squirrels did not fare well,” concluded a study by University of Maryland and HSUS researchers who radio-collared thirty-eight gray squirrels and relocated them inside nearby Patuxent Research Refuge. Seventeen wound up as carcasses, or a skull or piece of fluffy tail lying by a collar, or just collars—two “with tooth marks on them” and one inside a fox den. The remaining eighteen squirrels disappeared, on average within eleven days, fate unknown. Raccoons, by one study, fare better, but some states prohibit the practice, because rabies virus could be relocated at the same time.
Good news for homeowners and rodents: more and more pest control companies are offering “exclusion” as an alternative to poison bait boxes or trapping. It’s a matter of locating all the (surprisingly small) crevices and gaps where mice, rats, or squirrels could gain entry and then filling them with something rustproof that the animals can’t easily gnaw through: steel wool, typically. Xcluder Rodent and Pest Defense makes “cut-and-stuff” stainless steel fiber products. In a seven-day NWRC test, none of 10 Xcluder-blocked gaps were breached by rats and mice attempting to reach their preferred “lure foods” (peanut butter oatmeal balls and, for the house mice, hot dogs and cheese).
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A QUICK WORD OF INTRODUCTION
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1. MAUL COPS
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