It comes down to this, if you buy a house in the desert, you shouldn't be surprised that
there are pack rats and rattle snakes nor should you feel it is your perogative to
exterminate them to meet your needs.
I don't mean to prolong this. It's just my opinion.
Ty
IndyEsox_at_aol.com wrote:
>
> What about rattlesnakes and pack rats? My best friend and his wife live
> close to the edge of open desert in Tucson. It is common out there to have living
> fences of prickly pear cactus. It keeps the coyotes and peccaries out of your
> yard and your dogs safely in. Pack rats burrow under the cactus and
> undermine it on their slope and eat prickly pear. I reason that when it is in his
> yard, it is a varmint.
>
> They also attract rattlesnakes. While neither he nor I would consider
> wantonly killing a rattlesnake in the open desert, ones on his property are
> destroyed. Though I watched him hesitate to kill one once because in the low light he
> wasn't sure it was a venomous snake; I identified it as a 5' + Western
> Diamondback. You don't want them living in your yard even if you don't have kids or
> pets. Venomous snake bites seriously damage healthy adults. I reason
> rattlesnakes in his yard are varmints, just like disease carrying Kissing (?)
> beetles and scorpions. The peccaries and occasional bobcats that wander through go
> unmolested.
>
> The raccoon that crawled three stories up the side of Liz's apartment
> building and ate the moth larvae she was raising for a biology show is a varmint. So
> is the one that got in her apartment and ate her highly trained pet bird. A
> raccoon that lives in the middle of Hoosier National Forest isn't a varmint.
>
<snip>
>
> Chuck Church
> Indianapolis, Indiana USA
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