|
Brian's Diary
|
Knocking off the pesky critters
Friday, 14 August 2009
About a year ago Reay and I awoke to the lovely scene of two or three bunnies nibbling away at the grass on our lawn. It was a lovely scene and just confirmed what we already thought about how lovely it was to live in the country.
 | | The cute furry interloper. | Our neighbour however was less enthusiastic when we pointed them out to him and informed us we needed to do something about “the pests”. Still under the charm of the scene I ignored his advice.
Over the past few months it has begun to dawn on us that our neighbour was in fact right – and this was confirmed recently when the lawn was not buffet to two or three rabbits but to a dozen.
Shortly after this I came across a passage in a fantastic book I use that said: “Mammalian pests such as the possums, rabbits, rodents and mustelids pose a major threat to the sustainability of New Zealand agriculture as well as causing serious harm to our native flora and fauna. It is the responsibility of every landowner to undertake adequate control measures against possums, rabbits, rodents and mustelids.” (Pg 161 Lifestyle Farming in New Zealand by Paul Martin)
The time had come I decided to do something about our lop eared visitors.
Having read through Ditch Keeling’s columns in Rural Living we gave Coastal Pests a call and Ditch was summoned to see what could be done.
He arrived on a Sunday afternoon and carried out an extremely efficient and expert operation, succeeding in eliminating nearly all the rabbits on our property.
He began by isolating the burrows, then gassing their inhabitants as quickly and humanely as possible. Later in the evening he returned, by now dubbed “Killer Keeling” by my wife, with what looked like a miner’s helmet complete with light and proceeded to shoot about another dozen rabbits.
Now I hesitate to endorse another columnist because of course I do have a bias toward our contributors but I have to say I was very impressed with Ditch and highly recommend Coastal Pests as effective, efficient, and very professional. I now know to call them sooner rather than later where rabbits are concerned.
Talking to the neighbours I realise there is a rabbit problem around our area and can’t emphasise strongly enough the need to get in touch with companies like Coastal Pests before it gets really out of control.
In a future column I will be talking more about the book ‘Lifestyle Farming in New Zealand’ by Paul Martin who studied animal science at Massey before completing a veterinary degree and then working for a long time in the Franklin region.
See you next month.
Brian Neben publishes Rural Living, and during the weekends is an avid lifestyle farmer.
|
|
|
|
