Not trying to rattle you, but I really believe the state of Missouri should follow New York City’s lead – in one specific area.
Back in April, the Big Apple hired Kathleen Corradi to serve as its first director of rodent mitigation (translation: rat ridder) for $155,000 a year.
Corradi made rats disappear for the New York Department of Education and is tasked with doing the same for the nation’s biggest town.
Missouri, are you paying attention?
Obviously, we need a new state department – the RMV – to expel Rats, Moles and Voles. If you’re like the Besses and have struggled with “Show Me” lawn and home care over many years and in several locales, no doubt you agree.
OK, OK, since you asked so nicely, I’ll nominate myself, my husband and our cat to head up the new agency, and for a Midwest salary, let’s say, $75K – $73K for me, and $1K apiece for the spouse and cat.
Just like Corradi, we would come to the job with experience.
With rats, it goes back to 1977, when my newly minted husband and I rented a statuesque Victorian sort-of mansion from the editor-publisher of the Farmington Evening Press. The bargain-basement rent ($50 a month) was meant to supplement my husband’s meager paycheck as a one-man sports reporting department.
There were two caveats: We had to take care of Boxer, the ancient dog who lived outside the house, and kill the legion of rats who lived inside the house.
Giving credit where doo-doo, I acknowledge that my husband took care of both jobs.
And you know, remembering that, I guess he deserves better pay for similar work in 2023. How about another K? (From the Kat’s share; she won’t miss it.)
Boxer was still alive when we left the home for new digs in Desloge nine months later, but the rats were all dead. (Good job, hubby!)
I never saw the critters, but I could hear them scurrying about within the walls and occasionally overheard one slipping and falling – “squeak!” (rat), “eek!” (me).
I asked my husband last night how big those rats were.
“Oh, about the size of a squirrel – or bigger,” he replied.
You’re shuddering, too, right?
Since that was quite a while ago, I asked Debi Kelly, field specialist in horticulture with the county University of Missouri Extension, whether rats still reside in Missouri and she confirmed it is so – here and everywhere in the United States.
The local version is the Norway brown rat, which, indeed, can grow quite large and live for about two years without intervention.
As described, Gordon is fully capable of intervening.
Our experience with voles is more limited, but memorable.
When expecting our first child in 1980, we decided we needed a home of our own. For $22,000 (the least expensive home for sale in Jefferson County at the time), we snagged a two-bedroom domicile in Barnhart. It had a bad roof, ugly floors and windows that were painted shut (OK, we did that ourselves, while “fixing up” the nursery).
There was another flaw, discovered one day when I observed Amber the cat crouched in “stealth mode” about 3 feet away from her food dish. She was watching a vole happily chowing down on cat kibble, seemingly unperturbed by the feline just one spring away.
Kelly tells me our specimen was undoubtedly a “prairie vole,” one of three types that live in Missouri, but the predominant critter in these parts.
My husband chased away the little guy – Amber sure wasn’t going to – and then patched up his entrance hole from the great outdoors.
Amber, who died at age 15 in 1992, was the sweetest cat ever and no doubt sensed what Wikipedia reports. Voles may be yard-killers, but they typically don’t bite and are intelligent, empathetic creatures with short lifespans (three to six months). She just didn’t have the heart to take him out.
Ivy, our current cat, is a different story. She was rescued from a feral cat colony and retains her claws. Sometimes, she pretends to be sweet, but that’s not who she really is. Voles, beware.
When it comes to moles, I confess we’ve probably never actually killed one, but Kelly said you don’t necessarily have to.
The “eastern mole” that lives around here has very sensitive (although tiny) ears. While some folks use repellents, toxicants or traps to de-mole their yards, Kelly notes that moles don’t care for vibrations.
She reports spotting some mole mounds around her home in late winter one year.
“I just walked across them, that’s what I did. They sense that vibration and may not go back into that tunnel for a while,” Kelly said.
A temporary fix only, yes. But Kelly notes that moles can eat up to 70 to 80 percent of their body weight every day, and since they are “insectivores” who eat grubs and other pests that destroy your lawn, moles are not all bad.
Personally, I don’t like the mounds, and I see an easy solution. I’d procure a music-playing device that won’t mind a little dirt, cue up a loud version of the Beach Boys hit “Good Vibrations” and stick it in a mole tunnel.
Note to the state of Missouri: Send our checks c/o the Leader and we’ll get started.
