Re: [RC] Rodent Dispatching and cruelty...... not a good comparison - Barbara McCrary
In years past, any farmer or rancher might
kill anything that moved that wasn't his livestock. I was transcribing my
husband's grandfather's diaries to the computer.....1897 - 1933. Numerous
entries about shooting foxes, bobcats, hawks....no coyotes mentioned and I
wonder if they came along somewhat later, as we have plenty of them now.
In those days, people needed to protect their chickens from predation, as those
chickens meant THEIR food on the table. Nowadays, we feel we just walk
into a grocery store and food will always be there for us to buy. (We
hope.) I wouldn't kill a hawk or bobcat or coon, as 1) We used
to keep our chickens in an enclosure that hawks, coons, possums
and bobcats couldn't get into, 2) We put an electric fence (coon
height) around our fruit trees and flowers (deer height) and that helps a
lot. We will shoot blue jays that absolutely decimate our raspberry patch
or our apples and figs. We will shoot coyotes that run a 2-month old calf
down and kill it. We lost 4 calves to coyotes last season. That's a
lot of income down the throat of a coyote. It's great when they hunt
gophers, but when they start in on calves, that's it......
I will shoot gophers that are eating the
string beans. But coyotes killing calves cause the most economic
loss. I'm not very sympathetic about them.
Subject: [RC] Rodent Dispatching and
cruelty...... not a good comparison
It is very difficult to kill a possum. Had
to buy my first weapon, a 22 rifle, for that purpose. The possum was
fighting my dog for the dog food. So just what is so cruel about
defending one's property?????? I doubt that those chickens felt very
nice being pulled apart. I have lost a lot of chickens to raccooms
and possums, not to mention coyotes. Oh, yeah, the mice they don't eat
much but can run up your arm when scooping for grain and also carry some nasty
diseases. When the damn things ate some horse tack, that meant
war. An old friend told me that rats like EX LAX. We had rats in
our office in Baghdad. He said they used to put it out yrs ago at a grainery
where he worked. Seems the EX LAX gives them diarrhea which makes them
thirsty and dehydrated and they go outside looking for water and die.
Now it won't work during the rainy season and you have to have no water supply
in the area. Just some of my experiences. Oh, the new
replacements did not worry about the rats but when I left it was there
problem. The damn thing got on my desk and ate my jalapena cheese
package.... which was a highly valued commodity. Mary
Ann
