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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
Idaho, also. Sorta, kinda mostly, Yeah.
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Sep 18, 2009 - 10:11pm PT
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Cocido soup?
Do tell..........
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Could be worse. In parts of the Choco region in Colombia, the leaf cutter ants (this is the insect kind) stray from just clipping up the vegetation into little discs and carting them away for their gardens, to clipping up just about anything else that's laminar. My experience on a rain forest collecting trip was, first they chopped up the newspaper we were pressing the plants in, plus the specimens themselves leaving only the twigs, then started working on the hammock shelter I was trying to sleep in - away went little pieces of the rainfly, not too many of the mosquito netting (couldn't cut it up as easily), then skritch skritch skritch, plink plink I hear them working away at the hammock ropes too. Not very comforting. A colleague had his shoes (cheapie basketball high-tops, which are great rain forest footwear) completely eaten, leaving only the rubber soles, toe cap, and metal eyelets. At least, you can eat the rodents once you wham them. Ants are not so good of a dinner.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sounds like they'd be a high-fibre diet...
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Cocido has chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, corn and spices.
I usually put cilantro in mine.
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hossjulia
Trad climber
Eastside
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WOW! Is this stuff kinda new in the Sierra? Have they been especially bad in the past couple of years? Or have I not had problems like this because I rarely sweat? (Go ahead, I've heard it before.)
The wood rats, golden mantels and mice have been really bothersome this year. What gives? Not enough predation? (Shoot away)
TPR live trapped a wood rat and a golden mantel and hauled them down to Warren Corner. Not far enough, I said. Sure enough, both a wood rat and a Golden Mantel with the same MO as the trapped ones showed up about 2 months after being relocated. I swear it's the same ones.
We know relocating bears doesn't work, seems to not work with rodents either.
(shoot away!)
Snap traps successfully killed off the mice in less than a week.
WAY quicker than I thought.
After 9 summers cleaning mountain cabins, which involves rodent control, I swear I will be haunted be dead mice the rest of my life!
That stinky old cabin smell?
One place I worked and a really stinky cabin. (NOT TPR!)
We knew what it was and ripped off the old drywall to clean it out, disinfect and replace. The carcasses were stacked about half way up the wall.
G-R-O-S-S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marmots started attacking cars at Tioga Campground this summer too, and everyone I know has had nests in their engine compartments this year, reminds me I better check my cars air cleaner!
The camp hosts motor home had a pack rats nest filling the engine compartment. Might explain the electrical problems they were plagued with.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, jerry... say, i have pet rats... and if a towel or anything get close to the cage, they "have at it"... thus---i think they "do it" to "do it", they are pre-programmed, so it seems...
yep, its just their nature, so naturally have much WORSE if there IS something they like, flavor-wise... :O
and reilly, as to this:
I was terrorized for a whole night by marauding rodentae intent upon anything resembling chewable goods on or about my person including the boots on my feet.
i just got down reading one of chappy's old post as to him and a climbing buddy sleeping in a cave somewhere???? ready to get some shut-eye:
he said all night they were tormented by an extremely rowdy mouse... (his wording was better, but something similar to this)...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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So Dave and I were enjoying a loverly evening on Dinner Ledge; we had special permission from the matron of the Old Climbers' Home to go camping.
We tucked each other in for the night after a second helping of Dave's special 'Geritol' brownies. It has always been my practice to keep my food bags close at hand as I'm not fond of sharing so they were arrayed like a couple of extra pillows. I awoke from one of my habitual dreams of stealing helicopters to sounds emanating from the haul bag about 5' from me. I leapt to my feet with headlight in hand. I stood the bag up and shone the light in. To my amazement I was greeted by the sight of a Ring-Tailed Cat and a goodly sized one at that! Well, since this was a National Park I decided to refrain from my usual practice of gene pool cleansing and went with a little behavioral modification instead. I closed the bag and proceeded to administer a suitable number of vehement wacks all the while reminding the little bugger that he'd picked the wrong haul bag to crawl into especially considering it was bereft of comestibles. When I re-opened to torture chamber I peered in and started gagging. Apparently I'd scared more than the bejeezus out of him; who knew they were related to skunks ! Then I realized that in my maniacal raging I'd been completely unaware that I'd also managed to scare the bejeezus out of Dave. Poor baby had downed more than his share of the brownies and had awoken from his stupor to such a commotion as to cause him to think I'd succumbed to a terminal Alzheimers conniption. I turned the varmint loose to Dave's relief and watched it seemingly hurl itself off the ledge. Oddly enough the next morning found the haulbag purged of the stench. We had a good chuckle when I found an empty one pound package of fig newtons (not ours) about 30' up the wide crack. Apparently other campers hadn't been so 'defensibly' minded.
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Rob Roy Ramey
Trad climber
Colorado
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This is not such a new problem. When bivied at the Igloo bivi, 2,500' up the North American Wall in '81, Chris Cantwell and I encountered woodrats. One the pitch below the Igloo I felt a tug on my rope that was tied off above and when I looked up, a woodrat ran across the pile of rope. According to my field journal entry: "Chris had a hard time fighting off the woodrats which kept chewing on his sleeping bag to get nest material." During the night, the woodrat stole my Swiss Army knife and his bandana, dragging them deep into a crack. We managed to fish these out in the morning.
Previously, I'd had mice on Mammoth Terraces, a third the way up El Cap, and on the narrow bivi ledge that is halfway up Half Dome (the one several pitches below Big Sandy).
But shortly after spotting the first woodrat on the North America Wall, I had another strange nighttime encounter. From my field journal: "Not long afterward I felt something fall onto my leg and stay. Reaching down, I felt something wet, slimy, and cold. Then it moved. On with the headlight! A frog had landed on my leg! It stayed there about 30 seconds or so, then without provocation, it turned and made a leap into the abyss."
It was then that I realized that the El Cap "ecosystem" was largely the result of organisms pouring over the rim above. Seeds blow or wash off the rim to colonize cracks and ledges, while woodrats, deer mice, frogs, lizards, and crawling invertebrates disperse over the rim, down-climbing or falling, to colonize those same crack systems and ledges. (And yes, I bet that more than a few have even free-soloed up from below). And the birds, bats, and flying insects can come and go, to colonize as they please.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there rob roy ~~, say, this is very cool, thanks for the neat share:
It was then that I realized that the El Cap "ecosystem" was largely the result of organisms pouring over the rim above. Seeds blow or wash off the rim to colonize cracks and ledges, while woodrats, deer mice, frogs, lizards, and crawling invertebrates disperse over the rim, down-climbing or falling, to colonize those same crack systems and ledges. (And yes, I bet that more than a few have even free-soloed up from below). And the birds, bats, and flying insects can come and go, to colonize as they please.
god bless...
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adam d
climber
closer to waves than rock
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for those that haven't seen the Bugaboo car protection scheme...essential!
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Oct 26, 2009 - 12:54am PT
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rat f*#kers got us again...
tried different tricks this time, but to no avail. It wasn't just a fluke.
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axlgrease
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Oct 26, 2009 - 01:35am PT
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Those goats in Glacier really are salt starved. The ones at Logan Pass and Hidden Lake Overlook are so habituated, they're known to lick the sweat off of you bare arms. I also had a t-shirt destroyed by deer up in the Trinity Alps. I left is spread out on a rock overnight, and the next morning it looked like rwedgee's Patagucci there up-thread, only with more holes. They had licked right through the fabric...
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Oct 26, 2009 - 02:50am PT
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The marmot army that lives at Martha Lake (sw of Mt Goddard)
Kings Canyon NP, cleverly allowed us to setup camp before they
poured out of their holes to surround us.
It was like a scene from that movie Willard!
Grabbed or gear and staggered over to the Ionian Basin.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 26, 2009 - 03:11am PT
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Fun on a Winter Night
Required Ingredients
1. Small, unheated backcountry shelter.
2. Backcountry skiers, preferably adolescent males of any age or sex.
3. Midwinter, -20 or so.
4. Long, dark nights with only candles for light.
5. Infestation of noisy rodents in walls, due to previous visitors thoughtfully leaving food lying around.
6. Bench, sitting height.
7. Pot lid - must be round and reasonably flat.
8. Bucket or large pot - pot lid must approximately fit, with room beneath.
9. Bait - cheese, peanuts or similar.
10. Mind altering substances to add to the hilarity.
Instructions
1. Place pot lid carefully balanced on edge of bench.
2. Place bucket/pot directly below.
3. Place bait very carefully balanced on outer edge of pot lid. (As the house mouse, or husmus as they're called in Norwegian, weighs only 10 - 20 g, some care or even sobriety is required to find the tipping point, although experimentation helps. If necessary, text Ed. H and ask him what to do.)
4. Extinguish light and sit quietly.
5. Upon hearing "crash" of pot lid landing in bucket, leap up, turn on light, check bucket to see what's been caught.
6. Giggle and laugh, identify victim scurrying frantically in bottom of bucket, take trophy photos, gloat, and then release prey for another round.
Everyone comes out ahead. Mousy gets some winter vittles, humans get some fun, nobody gets hurt. In the case of an infestation of something larger or nastier than mice, more aggressive measures could be taken, e.g. hurling contents of bucket out into the snow, or even half-filling bucket with water. But not in a national park.
Perhaps the fall from bench to bucket could hurt a mouse. But I saw a mouse at the FaceLift take a flying leap off the back of Ken's truck onto the ground and shoot off, unharmed.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 26, 2009 - 03:32am PT
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Rats can swim. I once woke up in a house in Nepal to the sound of rhythmic scratching noises and upon investigation discovered a rat that had fallen into a plastic bucket of water who was swimming away, the scratching noise being his little claws scratching against the slick wall of the bucket. That one got heaved out the door into the cold.
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Oct 26, 2009 - 03:51am PT
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Mighty Hiker's entertainment specifications recall a hilarious story related by Greg Child in his stellar slide show on Patagonian climbing given at the P-gucci outlet in Reno (and no doubt other locations). The miserable ramshackle hut in which they were waiting out interminable bad weather was unsurprisingly infested by rodents feasting on the climbers' rations. These they were eliminating one by one by means of a ski pole baited in the middle with peanut butter, placed over a large plastic bucket with water in it. The rodent arrives at the goods, the ski pole rotates, plop, gurgle.
But one of the critters proved incredibly adept at escaping his watery doom, earning the name "SuperMaus" (Greg's partner for this trip being Swiss) and resulting in much discussion, many otherwise boring hours thus being whiled away. But in a fit of cabin fever, the partner (Peter was the name, I believe) decides on a solution. Immediately after dark, Greg hears the reliable splash of the critter having gotten the bait, and expects to hear it jump out as always. But his partner leaps to his feet and chucks a lit match into the barrel, and WHOOOM! goes the fireball of stove fuel he's poured in instead of (or on top of) the water. Although this certainly wins the war against thievery, crushing boredom then descends on the hut, with Peter often lamenting, "You know, Greg, maybe we should not have killed the Supermaus."
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 26, 2009 - 12:18pm PT
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Incineration seems gilding the lily, in terms of the morals and ethics of the bucket solution. After all, it's humans who leave the food out for the little guys in the first place. Maybe not deliberately - humans can be kind of dumb. And these are fairly natural areas.
Leaving aside the potential for burning down the hut, of course.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Oct 26, 2009 - 12:26pm PT
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BITD the NPS Ranger at the base of Mt Olympus (Olympic NP) bragged to me about 'offing' 100 mice one night with his 'wheel of death'. He set up a gangplank leading to a wheel with some cheese on it suspended over a big bucket; death by drowning. He had to get up several time to empty the bucket!
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The_Kid
Trad climber
Idyllwild, CA
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Oct 26, 2009 - 12:29pm PT
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Ground Squirrels on the north face of suicide ate my food and chewed through my friends harness bag while we watched from the rock little bastards!!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Oct 26, 2009 - 12:33pm PT
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Mongrel's Supermaus story reminded me of a gross childhood experience.
We were visiting friends who had a summer cabin at the base of Idaho's Sawtooths.
The wife (Betty) was baking a cake in their propane oven.
After a while there was a really bad smell, then smoke could be seen coming from the oven.
When Betty opened the oven-door: a mouse on fire came running out and made it under a couch. We then had to do a search for the burning mouse before it took the cabin with it.
We never found the mouse, the cabin did not burn, and we did not have any of the cake before leaving.
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