This is Swimmy the Rat (ears say mouse, but DAMN if so, he was a BIG DAMN mouse)...I'll call him a rat anyhow.
Yeah, probably a mouse...
In either case, Swimmy has been making a pain in the ass of himself for about a week. Got his little paw prints in the butter, for a little prank. For his bigger prank? Chewed a hole in the condensate pump for the AC. That only cost $500 to fix.
This has been a busy week for wildlife.
Tuesday, I saw a bobcat in the flesh for the first time ever. Was watchin TV, looked up to see a cat cross in front of my car. At first I just registered a black/tan tabby color that seemed off (for a cat, that is, it was a beautiful color). Then I noticed the damn thing was over the bumper (almost 2 feet at the shoulder). What the ...? That aint no house cat! As he kept passing I saw his short tail, and thought "oh wow, that is a bobcat!"
You have to realize that I first moved to this house well over (cough cough) 40 (cough cough) years ago. I had all these junior scientist books, and one of them covered Central Texas wildlife.Little Steve was hoping to see a panther or a bobcat (Little Steve actually wanted to have one as a pet). Unfortunately, the book was already dated, and bobcats had been driven out of the area, and panthers were never common around here...damn cussed Little Steve (I've been cussing ever since I was a little kid, and mom was never able to stop me from doing it, but at least she got me to stop doing it in public and around her LOL). Never seen one til this week. Saw him later that day for just a second, walking back the other way.
Pic - Roads End Naturalist
This is pretty close to him.
OTOH, this article notes that bobcats are surprisingly common. Larry Weishuhn notes that the bobcat population in Texas is expanding, and I myself have noted that wildlife was being pushed into Austin suburbs from development out west since about 2012...I used to see kit foxes and coyotes in Austin while I did patrolling for a security company.
And the next one is not a new one for us...we have a family of hawks that nests in the backyard every spring ( a few years ago, one dive bombed me in the pool when I was trying to mimic his calls LOL).
So, what happened to Swimmy?
We had been trying to trap him for a week. Poison (thinking about this, I think my poison bait might be too old...5 years old), snap-traps, sticky traps, the cage trap above (baited with peanut butter), blah blah blah. What makes it worse is that Swimmy would wander up to about 3 yards away and just look at you, tweaking his damn whiskers. I'd try to panic him INTO a trap, but he never went in. OTOH, he was funny to watch run, and he ran into a wall dodging me once. Didn't really slow him down.
Until Wednesday, that is. One of the glue traps was missing. ROFL, HOW does that happen? I've seen rats, big ones, stuck in em. Short digression, we got flooded out a couple of times, back in 13 and 15, and we got infested with rats both times - I've trapped em, poisoned em, even smashed one with a shovel.
Where the hell did that go? Turns out Swimmy was just sitting calmly in the cage trap...with the glue trap a few inches away from him. I suspect he got one foot stuck, panicked, and ran into the cage trap, knocking the glue trap off. Then he must have sat down and ate the cracker with a big dollop of peanut butter I baited the trap with, coz that was gone! FWIW, that's the first time the cage trap ever worked.
And that is when I came up with a good nickname for him. I took him out to the pool and let him have a good swim; I must be a mean man because I forgot to take him out of the cage. Anyway, he got tired and took a nap after about 5 minutes. I didn't want to wake him up, so I let him nap for another half hour before I dumped him out in the compost pile.
My brother felt sorry for him, until today, when the AC guy came out and charged us $500 bucks to fix the AC.
My bother asks the AC guy if he ever saw that kind of damage to the pump before. AC guy says no, but then asks if we have a mouse in the house LOL.