The Food Chain

So you know we have chickens. We also have a dog and a cat. The cat almost doesn't count (sorry cat lovers!) because she is 15 years old now, and pretty much sleeps and eats. When she was a kitten, she broke everything she could pounce on.

Our dog is another story. I am not a big dog person. Dogs require much more care than cats. Cats are self cleaning and bury their poo. Those are only the important ones, I could go on and on as to why I really like the self reliance of cats over dogs.

We have our dog for one reason. Two years ago, right after adopting BH, our house was burglarized. Badly. We walked into our house on a hot July evening after visiting with friends, and our living room was ransacked. I will spare you the details, because they are heart wrenching. It is just what people say--you never fully feel safe in your home again, and it's incredibly uneasy knowing someone has seen your private home.

The cop who came to our house that night gave us some great tips on what we could do preventativly. Honestly, we couldn't afford an alarm system (we have one now), but he said, "People with big dogs typically aren't burglarized. The next house without a dog is." We thought about it, researched it, and got a dog.

I found a great website to find dogs from rescues. It is http://www.petfinder.com/. I wasn't finding a dog from our local humane society, believe me I tried. I am all about not spending the money on purebreds and helping a dog who really needs a home. I also researched breeds and settled on a collie. Collies are great with kids, and yet very protective of their turf. Perfect!

Next, we found our dog who is a collie mixed with shepherd. So, she has the color of a collie and the body of a German shepherd, and she is not a puppy! Yahoo! I have an opinion on puppies....and I'll talk about that later. Suffice it to say, our youngest was less that 2 months old, I was not about to add a puppy to that mix. Clementine came into our home as a six year old dog, and really quite relaxed and easy. She has been a great dog.

Things I don't like about Clementine: she is a big dog. She will nudge you off the couch if you let her. When she wants attention, she slaps her big paw on you, and that hurts. Her paws are big. She did that to me once when I was asleep and almost took my eye out. Had a nice scratch across my face for a week. She also gets into the garbage. She also will snag food out of your hands if you aren't careful. When my back is turned, she drinks my coffee. I have to drink coffee, in my own home, out of a travel mug to keep her out of it. You could say many of these for most dogs too. Clementine is a dog, and obviously, she is acting like one.

Things I like about Clementine include: she is a lounge lizard and doesn't require my constant attention. She barks when someone approaches our home--love that. When I walk her, she is protective of me. One time, she was growling at a guy who was asking me for change, and he says to me, "What is she growling for, I won't hurt you." I told him, "I trust her more than I trust you." She lets the kids play with her. She also isn't at all rough with the kids. If anything, she stays away from them. We also haven't been burglarized since her bellowing bark can be heard from the street when someone approaches.

Here is the bonus: Clementine catches and kills rats. The chickens are part of that. I won't go into the fact we can't have chickens and dogs loose in the yard, but that is part of the food chain we have. But chickens attract rats. They have hay, grain feeds, and places for rats to live and hide.

Let me digress for a moment. When I saw a rat for the first time in my backyard two years ago I had a mild heart attack, called my husband, and called the county vector (think rodent/pest) control. To my house comes Fred the Vector Control Guy. He is seriously one of the funniest people I have met in recent years, and have no idea how he could have gotten into this line of work. Fred has a few opinions on vectors (disease carrying things). He had a serious opinion about homeless people keeping rats as pets, and challenged me to think about who really was the vector in that scenario.

Anyway, Fred tells me this--you have rats. Your neighbor has rats, I have rats, we all have rats. Why? Because we live in the city. Everyone has rats who lives in the city. Why? Because we have rat environment, we have dumpsters, birdfeeders, compost piles, sewers, and food sources galore. Fred continued to tell me, "You're lucky, you get to see your rats. They come out because you have chickens. Your neighbor doesn't have chickens, and doesn't even know he has rats. Your neighbor thinks you have rats but he also has rats." He was very clear on this, and repeated himself often to get the point across--all of us city dwellers have rats. Period.

Gross huh? Fred gave me a poison box, several lethal traps, a handshake, and was off. With the traps we did manage to kill a squirrel and a blue jay. We gave up on those after watching rats dance all over the dumb trap. I could barely bait it without taking my arm off, yet those little stinkers could jump all over it.

Rat facts. Rats are seriously smart and resilient. Rats can scale a 12 foot stainless steel pole. (My neighbor built a 6 foot wooden fence recently to "keep the rats on your side"). Rats can stay underwater for an incredibly long time. Ever heard of them coming up through toilets? It's not a myth. Rats can leap between buildings up to like 18 feet. Rats can collapse their ribs, like mice can, to the size of a quarter, and squeeze through amazingly small spaces. Considering they are about 4-5 inches in circumference normally, that is amazing. Just think of a squirrel--it's the same size as an adult rat, and it can do that to it's rib cage? Rats and cockroaches will outlive the human race just on their amazing ability to adapt.

The poison box has one confirmed kill. My husband has one confirmed kill with a shovel. Clementine shares one kill with my husband and the shovel. But! Clementine has killed four others without any help from us. She doesn't eat them. She chases them down, kills them, then waits for the treat we give her. The first time she killed one, she buried it for me. What a good girl!

She did get bit in the face recently from a rat, and that rat paid dearly with it's life. Have you ever heard a rat hiss? I did when those two were going at it. It was a fully grown rat who had a little more smarts than some of the juveniles we have seen. She is fine from the bite. Trust me, I called my vet friend for the okay on that one.

We have our chickens, who can't be near the dog, but attract the rats, that no one else thinks they have, that our dog kills. It's our food chain. And we now have an alarm system.

Now, anyone for "Rataouille"? Makes you think twice about rats being loveable creatures huh? French chef rat.....not in my backyard!