Even the 300K $ Lamborghini guys . . .

 . . . wanna hang with the old duffer with the cool Volvo .

Evil Critter Mayhem

  Seems the last two years we've had a bumper crop of tree rats .

That's this year's crop . There's at least five , possible six young ones in the nest in the maple tree in the front yard , in addition to the six from last year .

In addition to chewing on the lead flashing on the roof they seem to have developed a taste for PVC plastics . That's the conduit for the 220 volt line that goes underground to the garage under the deck . 

My solution was to wrap it in Bituthane / Ice and Water Shield in order to cover the holes they made and it seems the tree rats  don't care for the flavor or texture of rubber adhesive. 

Good enough . . .  for now .

Then this morning we spotted one chewing on the PVC sleeves over the wooden posts of the fence around an old house slab that is our back patio . 

So dissuasive measure is applied

On all posts .

Never had them before but red squirrels also seem to have made an appearance this year . The slinky trick was no obstacle for this little creep as he simply crawled up the pipe inside the slinky and made himself right at home on the bird feeder .

So I doubled up on the slinky and added a big dome in this case a repurposed aluminum disc sled from the 1970s . That seems to have done the trick . . .  for now . 

If this continues much longer more drastic measures may be in order .

So many tears today

 My ten dollar Pearl

11 / 6 / 2004  - 7 / 5 / 2024

We only had you for the last nine of those and they were not nearly long enough .