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Persistent Rodent

It was a squirrel that made its entry in our backyard the other day. It was not an event in itself given there are a few wandering around in the general area. This one wanted to stay. I noticed it over a cup of tea one afternoon as this creature sniffed the air standing on its 2 rear legs with eyes alert for any sign of movement.

It had arrived through the neighbors yard and the slatted wooden fence where it found a gap wide enough to squeeze through and had decided this piece of real estate on our backyard clay terrace was the place it would settle for. Now I would not mind an occasional visitor to forage our backyard and find his pick of the dry seeds that are left after the birds have feasted on the summer cherries that grow there.

This guy wanted to get going with his home construction right away. He burrowed deep into one of the sloping clay terraces where I have some society garlic growing and decided that it would do a nice apartment for the upcoming rains. He mercilessly in a manner of minutes pushed out more clay and rock than we could with a handy shovel in that time. He covered all the dark mulch and kept going till he had found that he had a good base to start expanding on the property.

Now you might know of my dislike of all creatures wild or domestic (who are also wild) and this intrusion in an otherwise quiet garden was not a welcome sign. What if it was a she and multiplied over the winter? These rodents can carry disease too.

So deciding to tackle the unwelcome guest right away I went close and made noise and it took off. He had seen me arriving the moment I opened the back yard door and was ready to depart. He went out the way he had arrived through that hole in the fence.

Now I proceeded to shut the hole back down by tamping the dirt in and trying to think if he would be foolish to come back. 15 min later there he was again - sniffing and poking around the same spot.

I too was persistent and headed back out the second time to shoo it away and decided to fix the entry point in the fence with some lumber. No sooner did I do that than this guy returned in another 10 min by finding another slim hole nearby. I went online to look for a way to rid myself of this guy.

Chilli powder it seems works to deter them so I promptly emptied a packet of the potent stuff and laid it on the burrow he had dug the fifth time. This time he came, he saw, he sniffed and did take off never to return again - it has been 36 hours since the first episode and I think I saw him scurrying to another property across the street when I went for a walk earlier.

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