We know we have Wood Rats because we have seen them...... well actually we have only seen one about a year ago at the top of a tree. It was dusk and we saw the silhouette quite clearly. It was the size of a squirrel but had a long thin tail. Having spotted it we stopped and quietly watched. It stopped moving and gazed back at us as if it was an undercover sleuth caught on manoeuvres. Our cat Guiness does the same. If you look away for a second then look back, he has vanished. The Wood Rat did the same.

In the past we have found evidence of a nest under a pile of logs. It was stuffed full of half eaten Almond shells. Clearly something large had chewed off half each shell to get at the nut inside. At that point, we had no idea what could’ve done the damage to all those nuts. The tree was on the other side of the garden so they had carried them a fair way before eating them.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago.....Each morning when I went down to feed the chickens I found the remains of a party that had clearly been held on the top of the fridge. Not only were there droppings of all sizes but dozens of olive stones . There is a small tree outside the chicken shed full of ripe olives and something had been carrying them inside the shed and eating them leaving me to clear up after them. The party was repeated each night until the tree ran out of Olives.......

There is no stored food left out in Chook Palace so nothing there for them, everything is stored in big plastic bins, however there are spaces for them to climb into the chickens area and help themselves to grain that is in the feeding bowls!
The chickens are not much help they insist on sleeping outside on the edge of the pond come rain or shine that’s where they sleep, they only come inside to lay eggs during the day. Presumably the Rats by then are sleeping off their nightly feast tucked up on a bed of pillaged straw and wood shavings.

About a month ago I took one of the big plastic bins outside to refill it and surrounding the bottom of it was a big pile of soil. There is a covered gutter that goes from inside to out and we haven’t ever got round to doing anything with the floor of the food prep area so it’s just dirt and gutter.

On top of the soil I had put some large tiles so the bins sat flat. I moved the tiles and found borrows had been dug alongside the gutter. There is no way anything as large as a fox could’ve got in and the way through to where the chickens are, (the floor inside is concrete) nevertheless something had been trying to burrow in through the brick sized hole in the wall !

I put all the soil back in the hole and stuffed stones over the entrance to prevent them getting in again,
Round 1 to me.

Mal has now gone back to feeding the birds and decided to make some alterations to the work surface down there and put some crates in to store things. He moved a bin in the corner and found another enormous pile of soil stacked around the bin on top of the tiles. The intruders were back, by the size of the tunnel it could only be the wood rats. This was like the great escape from Colditz only they were trying to get in, not out.

Round 2 to the rats.

Mal had other ideas and mixed cement.......yes, he moved from the ‘only lift a coffee cup’ stage to mixing tubs of cement in the space of a month !!! His surgeon would be horrified. Mal put the cement into the burrow and triumphantly put a stone across the end.
Round 3 to Mal.

The very next morning while he was down there he decided to check the state of his cement, the stone was nowhere to be seen and it appeared the rats had spent the night rearranging the cement to line their tunnel. Clever..........
Round 4. The rats win again !!!

Both of us then spent a good portion of the next day cementing in stones. We are now listening for the sounds of little pickaxes working through the night.

Round 5 is ours for now but I don’t think we have seen the last of them. The chickens really couldn’t care less and spent the day getting in the way being incredibly nosy as we played with cement and rocks.