Got to Hate Rats!!!!!!

[living sounds]

Just that nature has a several million year head start. The Rat is highly adaptable to most earth environments, which to me proves it's a perfect design. Those engineers need to invent some pretty emergent things to replicate even the most basic motor functions needed to outrun a rat - let alone survive in the harsh environments where they would be working. I've a feeling genetic engineering will catch up to this task first and produce ways to control rat populations in more civilized ways. Most likely as a side product from human medical research - indeed from trying to make us live longer.

With a sufficiently small flying bot the rat wouldn't run away, it doesn't flee from flies or bumblebees after all. It wouldn't know what hit it.

 

[mac]

Hey Ben,
congratulations on finding a use for Jaycar!!!

rats taste like chicken if you use soy sauce....

Mac

 

[JohnRoberts]

So a tiny flying delivery system that injects a small dose of poison....  Hey we already have that with mosquitoes feeding on us and leaving behind west nile virus.  :'(

JR

 

[Kingston]

Hey we already have that with mosquitoes feeding on us and leaving behind west nile virus.  :'(

JR

And the former has some 100 million year head start and the latter closer to a billion. Good luck engineering something reliable to fight them!  ???

 

[JohnRoberts]

The WNV outbreak this year is not in my back yard like it was a couple years ago (thank you) . This time TX and other counties in MS are getting hit harder.

I pay attention to dead birds on the road shoulder while I jog, since they are evidence of WNV activity, I have only seen one small song bird (not the type they are looking for) recently. Back when WNV was active near me it was mostly dead blue jays and dead wood peckers, the kind of birds that they are looking for showing up dead.

An interesting tidbit about mosquitoes, apparently they are sensitive to polarized light and home in on the type of light reflected off of standing water to identify where to lay their eggs.  So a mosquito trap might involve polarized light, while the best form of abatement is to remove all the standing water possible, and maybe dose what you can't with oil based anti larval treatments, like in roadside ditches where water collects and you can't dry it out.

JR

 

[Kingston]

An interesting tidbit about mosquitoes, apparently they are sensitive to polarized light and home in on the type of light reflected off of standing water to identify where to lay their eggs.  So a mosquito trap might involve polarized light, while the best form of abatement is to remove all the standing water possible, and maybe dose what you can't with oil based anti larval treatments, like in roadside ditches where water collects and you can't dry it out.

I've seen some convincing arguments on these new carbon dioxide based traps. Despite the steep price they are getting increasingly popular in this country where people spend most of their summers on their lakeside cottages. The device attracts mosquitoes with CO2 and they'll come in such large numbers it fills a whole plastic bag in a month. If someone wants dried up mosquitoes by the kilogram, I can probably arrange a hook up. There are some environmental factors you have to take in account, like wind. There have been cases where mosquitoes are gone from the opposite shore of the lake, with little effect on the owners property.

This trap does nothing to the spawning ponds of course and there aren't any reports on long term effects on mosquito populations. But it works remarkably well within a very large area around the unit.

 

[MagnetoSound]

There is a horrible smell in my workshop. I am pretty sure a rodent has died in there, it is really awful. I will have to pull out the workbench and the filing cabinet to investigate. I only hope it is above the floorboards as there is laminated flooring laid over them and I will have to empty the room completely to lift the floor.

On the up side, the workshop has become very cluttered of late and this problem has given me the extra incentive needed to have a good clear-out and tidy up in there.

This is only the second time I have noticed anything like this in the 8 years I've been living here, so I count myself lucky in that respect. Plenty of cats in the neighbourhood.