Hello from the Rat Wrangler

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Hi All,

I've been away for a while. It was mainly because dealing with the pack rats eating my plants was so upsetting. Then the cold virus arrived this year, and life in general has been crazy. I missed a lot of work. I and my extended family are fine in health and finances, but I know a lot of people struggling due to not working. Our orchid society has not met in a long time, and we had to cancel our annual April show.

Pack rats are native here in the Sonoran Desert:
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum fact sheet on pack rats.

They build nests called middens under creosote bushes, inside prickly pear plants, in spaces under or between rocks, and even among pots sitting on a patio. The nests are masses of twigs, dead cactus bits, labels from my pots, wash cloths left out to dry, foam cups, paper plates, and whatever.

They are omnivores, but mainly eat plants. They are not very bright and will eat deadly poisonous plants not native here. I have had them eat Albuca bulbs, Adeniums (desert rose) and other highly toxic plants. They don't think twice about eating Aloes, which even javelina don't eat (our native desert pigs.)

We also have two species of ground squirrel and two kinds of rabbit here, but they stay outside the house, not coming in to eat indoor plants. We have the previously mentioned javelina, many coyotes, and even bobcats.

I bought my house in 1986. I live within Phoenix city limits, but in an area that is mostly natural desert. Echo Canyon Wash, a large desert wash that drains the western part of Camelback Mountain, runs behind my property. A smaller desert wash runs through my property to join Echo Canyon Wash. There were lots of king snakes around when I moved in, but very few pack rats. King snakes are very beautiful, don't bite when people pick them up, and eat many different rodents and reptiles, inluding rattlesnakes. They are responsible for my neighborhood being rattlesnake-free; rattlesnakes are very common in the metro Phoenix area. In the first few years after I moved here, I saw king snakes in my garden at least weekly. Occasionally I saw leaf-nosed snakes, which are quite rare. Herpetologists recognize one subspecies lives only in my neighborhood.

Then two cat feeding people moved into my neighborhood. One of them left wet cat food on her front porch all the time. That of course drew even more coyotes. The other told me she took out the windows of one room of her house so the feral cats could live there. She put out dry cat food constantly, more than 100 pounds / 45kg twice a week.

The cats killed the snakes. The cats also killed the rodents.

Then one of the ladies died, and the other moved away. With no food being put out, and no shelter, the coyotes ate all the cats very quickly. Now there was nothing to prevent the rodent explosion.

The king snakes are slowly coming back, but it will take years to rebuild the population.

The rats began eating my landscape plants. They found ways into my orchid growing room. Every time I had them under control I would buy a few more plants, which would quickly be eaten. In November 2018 I visited Italy for a month. During that time the pack rats got into my house and ate all the house plants.

I stopped buying plants, and just had enough energy to keep my remaining plants alive.

I've hoped before I had dealt with the rats, but they came back. Now it's been over a week since I saw evidence of or heard one, and I'm becoming hopeful.

I'm a consulting, and not primary care, physician. The virus shutdown kept me from working the whole month of April, and I only worked about 20% of the time in May. Things are back to normal for me at work. I have not become ill. I am approaching retirement age. While sitting home in April I realized I spend a lot less money than most financial planners expect people to spend in retirement. I realized I am financially able to retire now, if I want, and I have plenty of things to do to keep me occupied in retirement. I did a lot of repairing things like faucets, sinks and the like, but there is a lot more to do.

I still can't have an outdoor vegetable garden, due to the ground squirrels and rabbits. I want to build a wood post enclosure with wire mesh to keep them out, but that is for later.

So I'm going to wait for a while before getting any more orchids, to make sure the pack rat problem is finished.