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wildlife

Have you ever accidentally created a death trap?

Malek Beitinjan

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Location: SF Bay, California Zone 10b

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posted 3 years ago

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I've had a big bucket full of rainwater on my deck since the last rain a month ago. I've been slowly using it to water my container plants, and so the water level has been going down.

This morning, I looked in the bucket and saw the waterlogged corpses of two mice. It seems that they went in there for a drink in the night since everything is so dry recently, and weren't able to get out since the water level is rather low. If it was just one, I'd call it an accident, but two is a pattern.

I've placed a big stick in there so that any creatures that wander in can get out, but it was still unfortunate that they died so needlessly. It's a big reminder that I need to be thoughtful of how resources I leave outside might be interacted with. In this case, it took them dying for me to be aware that such a thing was possible, but going forward I can avoid it.

“There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”
― G. K. Chesterton

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Amy Gardener

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posted 3 years ago

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Sadly, yes. I buried a round horse-trough to ground level for the coyotes to drink. Unfortunately, this was a death trap for about 50 baby quail. I felt horrible! By lowering the surrounding soil about 8" from the lip of the trough-pond the babies couldn't fall in and the deaths stopped....
Until it happened again! This time beautiful native grasses grew up around the pond to about 2' tall. The grasses concealed the pond from the juvenile quail who would flush when threatened then fly over the grass to their deaths. Another 50!!! Horrible! I removed the grass and things seem okay for now. I buy quail food as a sort of penance for these "learning experiences."
P.S. Your mouse story sounds like someone could be using rodent poison near you. One of the symptoms of poisoning is thirst. Your pets and/or other wild animals could have eaten those mice and also needlessly died:
https://vet.purdue.edu/addl/news/rodenticide-revolution.php
Maybe having water out can enabled you to safely dispose of the rodents so other animals could not eat them. You may have saved a coyote, raptor or beloved pet with that water Malek!

sow…reap…compost…repeat

Malek Beitinjan

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Location: SF Bay, California Zone 10b

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posted 3 years ago

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Right next to the bucket of water is a container of dirt and compost that I put food waste in. I imagine they were probably just scavenging from there, went for a drink, and got stuck.

The really morbid thing is that last night I went out and transferred some water from it into my watering can and used it on a plant (thankfully an outside one). It was dark, so I have no idea if they were already in there when I did. If they had been alive, I suppose I would have noticed.

Heather Gardener

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Location: Yorkshire, UK 🇬🇧 (Zone 8A, I think)

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posted 3 years ago

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I used to have a cat that liked to wait on the stairs and attack/trip you up as you passed. Does that count?

Forever oscillating between wondering how I can fit everything I want to grow into my tiny urban garden (hahaha I can’t) and how to make enough money to buy my dream mini farm where I can grow everything I want to grow, raise chickens and be a haven for my local pollinators and wildflower species 😁🌱🌻

Kenneth Elwell

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posted 3 years ago

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Yes as well. Far too easily, just like you did, rainwater collecting in a container (not intentionally).
Have found drowned mice, chipmunks, and a squirrel. I tend not to feel terrible about the mice, but those other guys, a bit.

Another consideration is reducing the standing water as a breeding ground for mosquitos. It is a different sort of death trap...
We keep seeing more West Nile virus, and EEE reports every summer in our area.

I hope to do better this year, but it will take some deliberate effort. Turning over pails, barrels, wheelbarrows, etc... they tend to be scattered about...
Perhaps a storage structure to keep the rain off and collect it in a screened off rain barrel. Also some bat houses.

Nails are sold by the pound, that makes sense.
Soluna Garden Farm -- Flower CSA -- plants, and cut flowers at our farm.

Heather Sharpe

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Location: Central Indiana, zone 6a, clay loam

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posted 3 years ago

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I've accidentally created something that could've been a death trap. I got a free IBC (intermediate bulk container) that formerly contained molasses and just needed washed of the bits that didn't drain out. Somehow, the lid got left off overnight. I kept hearing weird sounds all night, but didn't think to go check. In the morning, I found a very upset and sticky raccoon in there. I put a branch down the hole in the top and they were able to climb out on their own. Had I not checked, that could've ended very, very badly for the raccoon. Hopefully they were able to clean themselves off and the molasses didn't cause any skin or other health problems for them.

I have accidentally created a death trap for some stink bugs. I was keeping an old pine wreath with my kindling to add to the fire at some point. One night, I tossed it in. Probably a hundred stink bugs fled from the fire, some crawling whilst on fire and others making terrible sounds as they caught fire and popped. I know they're invasive, but it still felt awful. It definitely made me wary of ever leaving a brush pile outdoors for any amount of time and then burning it where I left it.

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Nick Kitchener

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Location: Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

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posted 3 years ago

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Yes, I caught some tadpoles with the kids and we put them in a big plastic tub half full of water. The sun shone down later in the day, and cast shadows of the tadpoles on the wall of the tub. That attracted chipmunks, and we found 3 or 4 of them drowned before I realized what was going on.

Eric Thompson

pollinator

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Location: Longview, WA - USA

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posted 3 years ago

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I have a bridge crossing a drainage slough on my property and after a few years of open access I closed the gate on it. The next day a deer fawn had been taken down by coyotes at the gate..

Nancy Reading

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posted 3 years ago

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Confession time.
As a child we had a lovely big ornamental pond with fish. The goldfish had babies. I fished out some of those babies and kept them in a bucket. Two days later they were dead. I think they suffocated from lack of oxygen. We definitely were not supposed to be fishing in the pond, and I still feel guilty about killing them. I was probably nine.

Another death trap I made more recently is my home made vole guards. I use cut down 2l fizzy drink bottles (not something we drink, but I asked my customers to bring their empties in for me) Placed around the baby tree and tied to a stake they work really well at keeping the voles away. However I learnt that it is important to keep the grass from growing up around them too much. More than once I found not one, but a whole family of dead shrews in one. I think they get in by climbing up the grass, then can't get back out. Their family hear their distress and come in to rescue them and they all get trapped. I find the inside of the bottle flattened with mud and no growing things just dead little corpses. I'm glad that I have fewer trees to plant now and am more careful about keeping the grass back so the small creatures can't climb in.

I've heard that you need to be careful when putting out slug traps, since other small crawly creatures like ground beetles may fall in and drown. Again putting the lip a half inch above ground level stops most insects, but slugs can just climb in and (hopefulyl) die happy.

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Jewel Sparkles

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posted 10 months ago

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Malek ... You're such a kind person. I wish everyone was like you! I just found a drowned baby squirrel or chipmunk in my rain barrel. I'm so sad and I wish I had noticed that the old hole in it could have created a fatal situation for wildlife. 😭

Anne Miller

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posted 10 months ago

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Jewel welcome to the forum!

Besides buckets of water leaving holes open can be a really dangerous happening.

These can cause death and broken limbs.

The one that I see most though are where a new fence has been added to the old fence creating a double fence. The wildlife gets caught between the two fences and cannot get out. The wildlife struggle until the end up dying. So sad.

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

Steve Mendez

pollinator

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posted 10 months ago

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I was cleaning up the backyard of a rental house between renters. It seems the renters drank beer on the deck and tossed their empty cans under the deck. Many of the dozens of empty cans had lots dead beetles in them. Apparently the beetles had gone into the cans and couldn't climb out. One can had about 1 cup of dead beetles of various kinds in it.
Highway departments that plant wildflowers along the roadways are causing millions/billions? of pollinators to be killed by traffic.

Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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posted 10 months ago

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One piece of "equipment" every blacksmith shop has, and mine is no exception, is the slack tub. This is a bucket/bin/large container of water used to cool off hot tools, soak the coal forge, or just cool off a section of hot steel. I have pulled a few dead packrats out of my slack tub, so yes, it happens. Nature can be as violent as it can be beautiful.

“So I'm lightin' out for the territory, ahead of the scared and the weak and the mean spirited, because Aunt Sally is fixin’ to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.”

Josh Wolf

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posted 10 months ago

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Kenneth Elwell wrote:

Another consideration is reducing the standing water as a breeding ground for mosquitos. It is a different sort of death trap...
We keep seeing more West Nile virus, and EEE reports every summer in our area.

Have you heard of Azolla? It is an aquatic fern that makes a thick mat over the surface of still water, often to the point that mosquito larva cannot breathe. larger animals like fish are unaffected as they push them out of the way. makes a great mulch/fertiliser too, or feed it to livestock.

Nancy Reading

steward and tree herder

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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year

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posted 8 months ago

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I wonder why I was so much more upset about the mouse that appears to have drowned in my watering can this week compared to the dozens(?) of slugs that committed suicide in it? The mice have been ravaging my vegetables and grain just as much as the slugs have - I've even made a bird perch to encourage predators to feed on them. It may be cute and furry rather than slimy, but still a pest!

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My projects on Skye: The tree field, Growing and landracing, perennial polycultures, "Don't dream it - be it! "

Hugo Morvan

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posted 8 months ago

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Fished two dead hedgehogs out of a burried rainwater waterbarrel with overflow a couple of days ago, burried them close to a young tree who's going to grow because of the extra food. Felt terrible though, they're quite rare nowadays because people throwing antislug killer chemicals and them eating the slugs.
A dog with antiflea chemical swam in another waterbarrel the other day, killing all insects and waterlife, nasty stuff that! Countless drown mice and lizards.

I guess if mice drink in streams and get swept away they're food for fish, less troublesome, and the mice and critters who's life were saved from a drink of water we left standing don't leave thank you notes either. A dead animal leaves a niche for a competitor who has more room/food sources.

There are always unintended consequences, just try to not repeat them is the best we can do.

Creating edible biodiversity and embracing everlasting abundance.

Nancy Reading

steward and tree herder

Posts: 9461

Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year

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posted 8 months ago

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Hugo Morvan wrote:There are always unintended consequences, just try to not repeat them is the best we can do.

Yes, I've put a stick in the can as an escape route now (if they can climb up my barley stalks I'm sure they can manage a bark covered twig). I need to check the barrel that is under one corner of the guttering. I think the buckets there already have some iron guttering in, that can be used as a ramp.

How Permies works: https://permies.com/wiki/34193/permies-works-links-threads
My projects on Skye: The tree field, Growing and landracing, perennial polycultures, "Don't dream it - be it! "

Mark Wyborny

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posted 7 months ago

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Yes I accidentally created a bucket death trap. I decided it would be wise to leave a bucket by each of my nut trees to collect rain water with a tiny hole in the bottom side. Sort of a slow drip rain catchment. I went to bed thinking I'd solved the Summer drought problem only to find a pair of songbirds in one a few lizards in others and some mice. I put twigs and sticks inside everyone of them and now they haven't killed anymore wildlife. I even put out good leak proof buckets to catch rainwater under the trees and rare tree frogs are always breeding in them. Its a treefrog chorus at night nowadays. The tadpoles eat all the mosquito eggs and larvae so mosquitos waste their life and time laying in them. I just keep little branches in them now and nothing dies but mosquitos.

Nancy Reading

steward and tree herder

Posts: 9461

Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year

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posted 6 months ago

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I've found another form of death trap

This time a bird seems to have flown into my pea netting and been killed. I guess it was flying fast and didn't see it.
I've now removed the metal netting - I think I will use it for making shelving for drying herbs and soon in my polytunnel instead. Branches and twigs from the coppicing will make much safer pea supports for next year.

bird_death_netting.jpg

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My projects on Skye: The tree field, Growing and landracing, perennial polycultures, "Don't dream it - be it! "

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