All For Pie–The Sequel

We have been harvesting the concord grapes and my little rat proofs have worked. If you try it, I have a couple of observations.

One, simply having these strange objects in the vines will decrease rat activity. It won’t stop the little brats, but there will be less damage. Two, a trick I learned over the past week is that if some bunches ripen and you take then out, re-use the rat proof, and the moving about of these containers will also dismay the rats. Every day that I made such changes, the activity of rats decreased markedly the following night, and then increased again the night after. Last of all, we were right to say that some grapes might ‘cook’ in the plastic containers– but this only affected grape clusters out in the full sun. All of this said– we have four baskets of grapes and I plan to initiate processing tomorrow to freeze up the makings for a passel of grape pies for fall and winter!

All For Pie!

I am done with these rats. Traps do not suffice, poison feels unethical and gives a horrible death, the tricks of radios and deterrents are fantasies. Plus, I refuse to have an outdoors cat because of traffic, coyotes, parasites, and the mass slaughter of birds and my delightful lizards. But these rats are eating my Concord grapes– even before they ripen….

Of course I must backtrack and say that if you have been reading this blog for recipes, you will have seen my post about the wonders of Concord grape pie, complete with instructions. We love that pie. Consider therefore, our dismay this spring when I reached for two of my frozen Concord grape pie fillings and could only find one bag. I could have sworn I had at least another couple stashed in the big chest freezer. Our dismay inspired a defrost– it was time anyway, but still after a complete clean-out, only one little pie’s worth of grape filling remained in hand.

So these are desperate times, and despite our drought I have had it in mind that this year’s harvest of Concords will be carefully husbanded for future grape pies.

Now, enter the rats. No not the ones you are thinking of, these are our lovely little Neotoma fuscipes, the dusky footed woodrat. also known as the Trade Rat, Roof Rat, or Pack rat. A charming elegant creature fond of climbing in trees, indeed, with some habits that might make you think of tree squirrels. This is the fellow who is known for filching treasures from campers and, in the old days prospectors and miners, leaving treasures in apparent exchange. (Thus ‘trade’ rat.) They have a fondness for bright, shiny, or odd things– in fact I may have already mentioned that I found a nest in my studio that contained many pink, white and blue plastic beads, a cheap wristwatch, a number of nuts and pebbles, plus forty three (yes, I counted them,) clear-head plastic push pins. The mere idea of the rat carrying these in his or her mouth makes my lips hurt.

But the bad news is that Neotoma likes fruit. Thus I have the little fellows gracefully scampering through my orange trees and hollowing out the sweetest fruit, and they even eat my tomatoes. No gardener is going to take that without a struggle. The tomatoes put me into the red zone, so to speak, and I started trapping. But Nature is infinite and hates a vacuum, so you can trap rats all you like, yet in a drought year the sources for new ones are infinite.

I bring you to the morning I step out, brimming steaming coffee cup in hand, to see the tell-tale signs of knocked-down grapes on my side patio by the kitchen garden.

Rage. Council of war with my spouse who is possibly even more fond of grape pie than I … maybe. Possibly not.

If you cannot take out the enemy, take away access. Cheap plastic food containers, drilled to accommodate the stem,

cut so that you can open and slide the stem in,

 

 

then cap with the tight fitting lid.

Try not to have these hang too much in the sun because you don’t want pre-cooked grapes.

 

Triumph. A solution for the pie hungry family!