I have relocated the back garden bird feeder further away from the house: rats for the discouragement of. The rats had created trenches underneath and around the feeder- from which they used to sally forth to grab food the birds had dropped- like Tommies conducting missions in No Man's Land. This morning I fetched earth from a burn site in the field and filled the trenches in.
Rats are cute at a distance, intelligent too, but- as Julia was telling me yesterday- have highly irregular private lives. She's trying to harden me against them in case we have to start trapping and killing. The last resort would be poison but if we went there I'd feel terrible- like a Borgia- or the CEO of Monsanto.