INTRODUCING YOUR NEIGHBOUR.
Please meet Rodentia Muridae – Rattus lutreolus commonly called
the Swamp Rat.
Rattus lutreolus has never spread Bubonic Plague nor has he ever
wanted to get into
your roof and chew your electric wiring because he is
happy constructing well
marked tunnels and runways in long grass and dense
vegetation.
Rattus lutreolus, the Swamp Rat, will never get into your
garbage bin as he loves to
chew on the fresh basal stems of sedges and grasses and for
desert he likes mosses,
seeds, fruit [in Somers he likes to eat the fruit of the
Asparagus Fern], and fungi.
His life is short, just one year, so he needs to hurry to find
the love of his life!
Between September and October he will find the woman of his
dreams and twenty
three days later he will be the father of three or maybe five
tiny Swamp Rats.
Three or four weeks later the little Swamp Rats will be
weaned.
Your neighbour the Swamp Rat needs your help. He needs ‘untidy’
places in your
garden in which to make his home. He really doesn’t like the
Rose Garden nor the
close cut lawn and suitable Real-estate is very hard to find.
Consider dropping some
dead timber in a corner of your garden. Let the Kangaroo Grass
and Weeping grass
grow long; plant some sedges and half bury a terracotta saucer
for water. Maybe you
will be lucky and Rattus lutreolus will come and live with
you.
Rosemary Birney
Back
| 
