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| Come on in mouse, help yourself and make my day! |
After having checked what pests we have in Zealandia we are now in the process of laying poison to kill them. Mice are all we have found and now we are out to get them.
I volunteered to assist and had a lot to learn. Firstly I had to put my kit together which consisted of quite a few odd bits and pieces which only made sense after enquiring what on earth they were for. After being briefed on safety with regard to the terrain and to handling poison I set out. My first bait line was on the east side of the valley. It took a while to tramp up to the perimeter fence, find my line and start.
It was a beautiful day but damp and slippery underfoot. The transect was steep and after having my feet slide out from under me a few times I decided to use part of my kit to hold me more firmly to the terrain. This was one of the things I asked about. They were a pair of bright orange stretchy plastic things with metal chains and hooks attached which turned out to be slip-on crampons and very useful they were.
Every twenty metres or so down my line I came across a bait station. These are of various kinds. Conservation is run on a shoe string in New Zealand and improvising and recycling is the thing. Most of the stations are ice cream containers with a nice little mouse hole cut in the side. These are gradually being replaced with more solid and lasting novacoils or plastic ridged tubes open at both ends with a covered hole at the top.
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| A piece of novo coil turned into a bait station |
There are wooden boxes with ice cream containers inside. The stations are marked with bright flagging and are numbered. The thing is not to miss one as it is always a pain having to retrace your steps. Having helped to cut out and mark the transects previously I had a better idea on how these tracks work and also could make sense of my map which was most useful.
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| A bait station |
I was used to the fact some birds such as kaka are microchipped but this was the first time I had been tagged with a GPS system so someone back at base could track where exactly I was at any time. If I stopped moving they would know I was either skiving, or had crashed off the track somewhere. More importantly it helped them know that their transect lines were covering the area they were supposed to.
Ropes were conveniently placed in very steep places and with that support plus crampons I made my way safely along, stopping to add bait to the stations every twenty metres or so.
The valley floor has its challenges too - wet ones! A shallow river flows there surrounded in places by wet lands. Though I scanned the territory carefully before placing my feet, a couple of times I sank or splashed in to my boot tops resulting in soggy socks. But the war on mice has to go on and I am a willing if dirty and wet soldier. This once a year concentrated effort knocks the little suckers to minimal numbers and allows the native life to thrive.
The bait stations have intriguing ways to stop those very natives from getting in to to sample the bait. Robins are inquisitive and will hop in a tunnel to see what's there. Fortunately they cannot crouch, only hop, so a horizontally placed piece of plastic card at each end of a tunnel will keep them at bay. The plastic ice cream containers have a hole too small for robins or tuatara to enter.
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| A little piece of plastic keeps the robins out. |
You never know what might be lurking in the bait stations so there is always a little tension when taking off the lid. Today I was confronted by a brown skink, a weta and several black tunnel web spiders. I flicked the weta out of the box and immediately a robin turned up and eyed the potential meal. It hopped around the weta cautiously then decided against it and went off to forage in the leaf litter for smaller prey.
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A skink scurrying out of a bait box.
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So, come on mice. A lot of lovely green crunchy pellets have been placed throughout the valley just for you. I have got truly grubby just for you. I kept my nerve steely when confronted with creepy crawlies just for you.
Eat to your heart's content and make my day!
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