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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.9.37] on Friday, December 07, 2012 at 16:51:57 :
In Reply to: Re: Hmmmm... posted by Marty [50.68.51.62] on Friday, December 07, 2012 at 16:18:21 :
I hear you about the pack rats. I have tried to talk to them. I have tried to communicate with them psychically. I have tried to scare them.
The trouble is that pack rats do not want to live in the wild, but they are also incapable of living in a civilized manner with humans. They chew up everything chewable, this piss and crap everywhere they go. Their piss is both foul-smelling and highly corrosive to any metal it gets on. They venture out into the woods only to collect leaves, sticks, and mushrooms which they stuff into every hollow space they can find, but especially spaces where a pile of stuffing is likely to cause real trouble, like a stove pipe or an air cleaner. And of course, they collect collect pretty much any shiny object that strikes their fancy, including rare hardware and small tools, and hide it away where you'll never find it, usually inside the back of the wood pile.
If you put up any sort of building, or park any large rig for any length of time anywhere around here, it will soon be inhabited by pack rats. Ideally, you induce a weasel to move in and eat them all. In reality, you shoot them, trap them, and poison them. Some folks change the order around, but those are the options. Oh, I also clobbered one on the engine of my truck with a jack handle, and another in the bottom of the tool bin with a grub ax.
I hate doing it, but to answer your question, if you were chewing up all my chewable stuff, hiding away everything small and metallic, and crapping and pissing on everything else wherever you went, then probably you would deserve to die just as much as the rats do.
As for protection, I happen to have known a man who got jumped by a cougar while picking huckleberries, and would have been dead if he hadn't had his 44 with him. Maybe your Canadian lions aren't as hungry as ours. I don't carry a gun in the woods, but maybe when I get to his age I will. I like nature, but I don't want to be anybody's prey even if the predator thinks he's just culling the weakest member of the herd.
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