The Mountain made me love Rats!!!!!

All of my previous experience of rats and mice has been of the “get rid of it as quickly as possible and preferably in a permanent way” type. As a small group of us headed towards the mountains and a new phase of our expedition I wondered how small mammal trapping and myself would manage to coexist. It turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.

The day we arrived we were straight out and placing our 60 traps in 3 carefully pre chosen locations. Baiting them and stocking them with a little scrap of torn blanket (can’t have the rats being too uncomfortable?!) we then placed them along a straight line heading into the bush. The excitement would come the following morning when we checked to see what we had caught.
Up early and full of that pre dawn bonhomie that suffuses these projects we drove back to our locations and then walked the line looking for sprung traps. Part of me wanted to find something but a little part was also saying “it’s going to be a rat...it’s going to be a rat”. Wouldn’t you know it; a few of the traps had rats. We carried those traps back to our vehicle and the rear door was folded down to become a makeshift rat lab. The rat bag was unpacked of its equipment and we set to work.

We all had turns at each task of measuring and when it came my turn to reach into that plastic bag I found myself a little hesitant. It turned out to be a lot easier and much more fascinating than I had imagined. The rats were not the giant, ugly brutes that you encounter in dark, dank places but instead were cute little ones that often had lighter coloured racing stripes down their backs.

We would reset the trap line after recording all the captures and then come back again that afternoon to do it again. By the end of our time in the mountains I was handling the animals with all the aplomb of a hardened biologist and looking forward to finding those sprung traps. I think I can now genuinely add “rat measuring” to my CV.

Greg Wright, Karongwe, SA - Feb 2010

The Mountain made me love Rats!!!!!