Twas the summer of 2007, the coyotes hadn't been heard since March. Something was eating small patches out of everything in the garden.
After setting 40 mouse traps at first and up to 65 traps later per night, killing two birds, three frogs and a ground squirrel; the final tally for rats and mice in the garden was at over 400. Some of the rats I had to kill with a pellet gun since the mouse traps were too small for the rats, and it would just stun them. Some traps we didn't find until a year later--scattered around the desert. Fortunately the three outside cats helped with the killing of rats and mice outside the garden and the roadrunners would come in the morning and take away the dead in the front for food.
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