Nature

[Courtenay]

Sounds like the kindest thing under the circumstances, Katharine. We had a cat who was an excellent mouser, and cats being cats, she would always come to the door to show off what she'd caught, trying to miaow through a mouthful of mouse. House mice are introduced pests in Australia, so you could say she was doing the environment a favour — she very rarely killed native birds, which cats in Australia are notorious for doing — but I still always felt sorry for the mice. If the poor thing was still breathing, I would try to take it off her, and quite often it would get away alive.

[Rob Houghton]

Our cat loves playing with mice. She's very gentle and I firmly believe she doesn't mean to kill them - just gets carried away in her play. Usually my dad is the one who rescues them and we take them into the wood behind the house and keep the cat locked up till the mouse has escaped!

I also wouldn't agree to have poison in my garden - of any sort. Even though we have a lot of slugs when it's damp, I don't like using slug pellets. One time, years ago, our neighbour used slug pellets everywhere. Our cat got sick and died of kidney failure aged only 12, and I read afterwards that ingesting slug pellets can cause this. It gets on their paws and then they lick the poison in.

[Carlotta King]

I don't have a garden but if I did I would never have any poison of any kind in it. Its just not something I would ever entertain because I can't bear any creature suffering like that. There are plenty of natural, humane ways to keep 'pests' at bay, for example slugs hate copper tape for some reason so all you need to do is put that about, rather than nasty pellets or salt.
Or even just stand your plant pots in water (pots without holes in the bottom) and thatll stop the slugs!
And spiders hate chestnuts so if you put chestnut spray round your windows theyll keep out.

If you do your research properly there are natural alternatives for all kinds of pests.

I know that animals catch other animals (my George regularly saves me from craneflies and bluebottles) so I'm not trying to be all pompous and claiming that not an ounce of death ever occurs on my property but generally speaking, animals kill their prey fairly quickly (a quick chew and it's gone!) but poisons are vile and cause so much unnecessary suffering.
I never kill anything if I can help it, I always put things back outside, even wasps! It usually causes me massive amounts of terror but I usually manage it!!

And as for your neighbour complaining about your garden Katharine, she's got no right to pick you out, because rats are EVERYWHERE, not just in overgrown gardens. She'll have rats in her garden too even if she doesn't think she does. There are no overgrown garderns by me but I still see the rats about.
So next time she mentions it, tell her they're everywhere.

[Courtenay]

I don't like using poisons in the garden at all either. Unless it gets to the point where a weed or pest has got so out of control that there's really no other feasible way, I always think there has to be a better and more humane method. The last time I had charge of a garden — I was just looking after the house in question while the owners were preparing to sell it — I was trying to tidy up the flower beds as spring came along, so I looked for an alternative to snail pellets for protecting the new plants. One idea I found was ceramic chips, which are supposed to be too rough and sharp for snails and slugs to crawl over — you would make a low barrier of them around the plants. They were made from old bathroom fittings (including basins and toilets) crushed up, so they were reusing a waste product and weren't harmful to the environment. They seemed pretty effective, but unfortunately I was only there for another month or so after that, so I didn't really get to see if they worked in the long term.

[Katharine]

I didn't know that about slug pellets Rob. I've always tried to avoid using them as I'm worried about other wildlife eating the poisoned slugs.

I'm not a big fan of chemicals in general, and was particularly annoyed when the aforementioned neighbours once sprayed weed killer on my driveway. They've never admitted they did, but I know they spray their own, and I've never known dandelions to shrivel in that way naturally. Our driveways are side by side, but ours is distinctly separate from theirs as it is slightly raised, so there's no way they accidentally got some on our drive when spraying their own. If the weeds on my driveway offended them that much, I'd rather they had pulled them up.

Thanks Cathy - I was absolutely fuming when I got back inside. It wasn't just the complaint that got to me, but you should have heard the way she spoke to me - like I was a small child that hadn't tidied it's bedroom.

As for the rats, well my other neighbour has seen them in his garden, feeding on what the birds spill from the bird feeder, and we have derelict garages backing onto our properties - full of empty fridges, tyres and goodness knows what else. Oh yes, and the said neighbour has been eating out on her patio a lot recently - and unless she is extremely careful not to drop any crumbs then she's probably inadvertently giving them a free feed herself! Having said that, I am in the process of sorting the garden out, partly because I don't really want to harbour rats unnecessarily, and partly because it would be nice to have it as a usable space again.

Thanks for the ceramics tip Courtenay, I have a few old crocks lying (is that the correct word?) about the garden - I'll try using those when I eventually have something other than weeds growing.

[Courtenay]

They were small broken bits of ceramic that I used, more like pebbles than the "crocks" people put in the bottom of pots — I think the idea is that the more rough broken edges there are, the better, as that's what the snails and slugs don't like to touch. I bought a box of them at the local garden centre, but can't remember the name of the company and can't seem to find them online.

(Incidentally, that reminded me of a study a couple of years ago that suggested that crocks in plant pots have no beneficial effect and could actually worsen drainage, not improve it: Are gardeners wrong to put "crocks" in plant pots? and Using crocks to help containers drain? A potty idea)

Here's another natural anti-slug product that appears to be popular, but as I haven't tried it, I don't know how well it works: http://www.sluggone.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rob Houghton]

I didn't know that about slug pellets Rob. I've always tried to avoid using them as I'm worried about other wildlife eating the poisoned slugs.

I can remember my great aunt using slug pellets years ago, and seeing a starling on her fence being sick! Has anyone else ever seen a bird being sick?! I never had, and haven't seen one since, but I was convinced it had eaten a poisoned slug or snail.

Even weedkiller is not good for pets. Even reputable weed killers, like 'Weedol' that say 'safe for pets' aren't all that safe, because when you read the small print it warns you to keep cats and dogs away from treated areas for so many hours, or until the liquid has dried. The thing is, you can't easily keep a cat away from a neighbours garden for that long, and if you don't know what's being sprayed there your cat might be walking all over the place.

I haven't honestly seen many rats around here. One or two maybe, but living by a canal it's hard to tell if they're water rats or real city rats. Also, there are so many cats around where we live - we have two, a house opposite has another two, next door to them have one, two doors away are another two...I'm sure a rat with any sense wouldn't hang around too long!

[Katharine]

Interesting - I can just imagine the look on my mother's face when I tell her she's been wrongly using old bits of china all these years.

[Courtenay]

Maybe don't tell her then — it does seem to be a bit of a sacred cow, so to speak, for gardeners. Even when I was little we were taught to put stones (not crocks) in the bottoms of pots before putting the soil in!

[Fiona1986]

I don't like how easily people resort to poisons and other man-made chemicals in their gardens. It's more effort but weeds can be pulled out! without then putting dangerous chemicals into the earth which then may go on to affect plants you do want there. Not to mention anything that then eats or touches that soil.

Thankfully we don't see many rats in Dundee, apart from the city centre. Field mice are another matter. We had field mice in our attic on more than one occasion, eating the odd Christmas chocolate that had been left amongst the decorations. We also saw a mouse in a London hotel last month. My sister and I thought it was quite funny but my mum complained and had us moved table.

[Courtenay]

We also saw a mouse in a London hotel last month. My sister and I thought it was quite funny but my mum complained and had us moved table.

Don't tell me it was shades of... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q4S7lZeik" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (yeah, you know )

[Katharine]

I have to say I'm relieved by the general response so far. When I tentatively mentioned the rat situation to a couple of other people they too were 'on my side' as it were, and they were definitely people who would tell me if they didn't agree with me. What really got my back up was that the neighbour had told me the previous day that they had seen a rat run from their garden into ours, I'd said thanks for letting me know, and that evening had gone out into the garden to tackle a particularly overgrown bit between them and us in the hope of discouraging them. I'd also got hold of a non-poisonous trap - sorry to those who don't like any wildlife killed, but I felt I had to do something to try and get rid of them. However, the next day the neighbour was back round saying they'd called the council to get them to lay the poison, and worded it in such a way that it seemed to me obvious that they expected me to do the same. When I said I didn't want poison in my garden they then started making some rather (in my opinion) rude, and unnecessary comments about me and the garden.

If other people choose to use rat poison, then that's up to them, not ideal in my eyes, as there's no knowing where the rat may die, but it's not illegal, so they have the right to use it. I don't like falling out with people, but I feel on this one I've got to do what I feel right for the environment as a whole.

[Courtenay]

If other people choose to use rat poison, then that's up to them, not ideal in my eyes, as there's no knowing where the rat may die, but it's not illegal, so they have the right to use it. I don't like falling out with people, but I feel on this one I've got to do what I feel right for the environment as a whole.

Totally agree, Katharine. As a few people have touched on, too, even aside from it being a pretty cruel way to kill rats, there's also the chance that another animal or bird will eat the dead rat and be poisoned as well.

Have you ever read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring? Very famous book, many years out of date now (and her proposed alternative to poisons — biological control of pests by introducing other predators — jars a bit with us Australians who've seen what happened with cane toads ), but it shows very clearly just how a pesticide that was widely touted as "safe" built up in the environment over many years and had devastating and far-reaching effects. It was very influential as one of the first books to bring to public attention how much damage can be caused by the use of toxic chemicals in pest control. Far better to choose methods that do the least possible harm in the long run, even if they take more work or aren't as spectacularly effective in the short term.

[Katharine]

No it's not a book I've read/heard of. I've just had a feeling of wanting to work with nature rather than against it for a very long time. Although it's not always the easiest way of doing things, and maybe not always practical either. I suppose to really work with nature I'd be living in a smaller dwelling made out of totally sustainable building materials, and certainly wouldn't have gas central heating. I wouldn't drive a car either - my walk in the beautiful fresh air of the forest yesterday was only possible by driving there which involved polluting the atmosphere with exhaust fumes.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Although black squirrels seem to have a spooky feel to them - are there some in Lord of the Rings?

I think there are. I've never seen a black squirrel myself - only grey and red ones.

However I do get a thrill from an unexpected/rare encounter with wildlife, especially if it's something I've only read about in books (usually Enid's).

Same here. The foxes which come in our garden actually cause quite a lot of mess at times, but I still stop and stare in some awe whenever I see them. Of all the wildlife I've seen in our small town garden, I've most enjoyed seeing slow-worms, toads, frogs, redwings, jays, yellow wagtails, wrens, dragonflies and butterflies. Also geese and swans flying overhead. Slugs make me shudder - especially when we get the occasional orange one!

I've never put poison down because it can cause a painful, lingering death and it also gets into the food chain and harms creatures like voles, kestrels and owls. As for weeds, I'm like Fiona - I just pull them up (eventually, anyway!)

The other morning someone posted a note through our door saying that two cats in our road had died of poisoning and we should be aware that someone may be putting poison down in our local area. Later that afternoon I spotted a man in the next road scattering ant poison from a bright yellow canister into cracks around his front doorstep. There are lots of ants about at the moment, and I wondered how many people have been using ant powder and whether it might also be poisonous for cats.

I have a 'pet' gull who sits on the streetlamp outside my window every day to wait for food and if I hold food out of the window he flies up to my hand and takes the food.

That's lovely, Cathy. I live not far from the sea and I never tire of seeing gracefully-soaring seagulls and hearing their plaintive cries.