Blooming rats!

A very pleasant evening out in the garden on Wednesday, despite the chilly wind, drinking a glass or two of beer while playing with our dogs, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a creature move along the hedgerow.

I didn't believe it at first but it was quite a large rat - the dogs didn't seem to be taking any notice and I was prepared to just let it go, and then it turned right and headed across the lawn towards the chickens. With 3 young chicks still only a week old it wasn't the wisest thing to let rats get a sniff of them so, come on Pepper, lets go chase it off.

Pepper is our Jack Russell X,

There he is, in a more relaxed mode!

Anyway, it didn't take him long to realise that there was something in the shrubs that needed catching, and it didn't take Lladdie long to realise there was something up either. Lladdie spotted it first as it made a run for the pampus grass, and got to it before Pepper, but dropped it as Pepper got there. The dispatch process was amazingly quick. Both Pepper & Lladdie had a sniff and left it.

Along comes Gizmo the retriever and he picks it up and takes it off up to mum, who wasn't happy.

Lots of fuss made of the dogs for a job well done when Pepper wanders back to the pampus grass and finds another one, 2-0 to Pepper.

Thinking about it, Pepper had dug a few holes along the fence line where we saw the rat and he had obviously sniffed it out before, but no luck on those occasions. A much swifter demise for the rat than putting poison down.