Not PC but I drilled a few holes at a downward angle on the trunk and put in a single pipette of Roundup in each hole. Both trees were at least 60’ tall if not more. Within three days they were completely defoliated. No runners anywhere. When i tried to cut one down i had runners spring up astrinomical distances from the mother tree.
Is that a raccoon trap ?
I’m not the one you are asking, but yes, that is a trap specifically for coons and possums. The trigger is set off when lifted up in the bottom of the cylinder. Coons and possums can reach down inside for the bait and trigger it when pulling their hands out. I have caught a feral cat before in one, but dogs can’t get caught in them.
I love trapping, and dirt sets are my favorite. Years ago I just gave up on “normal” trapping around here because I was catching tons of dogs and cats instead of foxes and such. There’s just way, way too many dogs and cats allowed to wander all over the place around here. Dog proof coon traps allow me to catch chicken killing persimmon stealing coons and possums aroubd my place without catching any of the neighbors’ dogs that come nosing around.
That’s one change to social norms I’d love to push for but know I’d never have a chance: killing stray/loose cats and dogs. Ideally at a systematic level, where city and county governments have personnel dedicated to eradicating strays and feral populations. All those cats and dogs cause so much damage, it’s a real problem but there’s no way on earth most people would be ok with the county slaughtering “pets” left and right.
I’m with you in the cats department, not the dogs. Because in my experience it’s pets that have gotten loose. The cats live outdoors under zero supervision and the people that do that expect me to clean up their poop. As a habitual barefooted hominid, I’ve stepped in cat poop more than once and i immediately become genocidal towards cats.
If someone’s dog is always outside doing this (I’ve not seen this behavior in years) I would support it under this case. But all the dogs I’ve seen I’ve corralled for my neighbors a couple of times. They also didn’t cause constant damage like the cats do
The most unhinged thing my county does is catch feral cats, spay/neuter them and release them…. Like you’ve done the heavy lifting, finish the set.
Dog proof trap aka paw entrapment trap.
Interesting, I wonder if that’s partly an island thing? We’ve definitely had a lot of issues with dogs. Growing up my parents had a lot of livestock, and loose/feral dogs were one of the big problems we had, especially with the mid-sized animals. Over the years we lost a lot of geese and goats to them. Gruesome deaths too. I can imagine the thought of goat-sized children playing alone in the woods getting ripped up by dogs must have been on my parents’ minds too.
Even had hunting dogs come through and injure our animals a few times. I’d have shot them dead were it not illegal. That’s another one that irks me. Rich boy hunting clubs can let their dogs loose where they’ll immediately go and trespass on your land, harass your animals, and push the deer from your woods, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I disagree regarding dogs. Only time I’ve seen someone seriously mauled by a pet was an elderly neighbor trying to corral an escaped Chow that his wife had brought home without realizing she wasn’t able to control it. Multiple dogs of theirs had escaped several times from their yard and ended up in mine. Statistically, a lot more people die or are seriously injured from dog attacks than cat attacks.
Cats shouldn’t be allowed to roam outside for environmental reasons, but they pose much less risk of bodily harm to people outside toxoplasmosis. I’ll take dug up plants and cat poop over having to worry if I’m gonna get attacked by a dog.
Maybe it’s just the people where I live, but it seems like a lot of dog owners think that if their dog isn’t pooping in a lawn or sidewalk it’s okay then to just leave it.
That sounds awful, but not a situation of a wild roaming dog. Spca is about putting pets in homes by well intended individuals, however they routinely do a disservice. They put problem dogs in the hands of the elderly who will likely be hurt by said dog. They should really be encouraging people to get dogs they can handle and likely putting problem dogs into long term fosters (of capable individuals) or putting them down.
I agree with this, minus the rich of it all. Everyone I know of that hunts with dogs is far from rich.
I do respect land rights and personal property so I don’t like dog hunting when this is likely to occur. But for hunting cats, it’s the only way you can manage their numbers
According to research in the journal Nature Communications cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion small mammals, such as meadow voles and chipmunks [just in the US].
…the staggering number of bird deaths may account for as much as 15 percent of the total bird population
As for dogs, unfortunately I can’t find much about strays vs pets, some sources said like a third of bites are from strays but that strays are way more likely to bite. Regardless:
There were 468 deaths in the United States from being bitten or struck by a dog between 2011 and 2021 inclusive… Ranging from a low of 31 deaths in 2016 to a high of 81 deaths in 2021… Children between the ages of one and four are the most frequent victims, accounting for 29.4% of the fatalities from dog attacks in 2022; those under the age of seventeen accounted for 56.7% of all fatalities that year.
Around 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs every year, resulting in some 800,000 seeking medical treatment.
It is estimated that 15% to 20% of dog bite wounds become infected
About that many people die per year from Tylenol. I don’t work for big dog but at least they perform jobs
Plus cats are just sneaky enough to get away with their kills
Right, it’s always important to keep morbidity numbers in perspective. And Tylenol overdose is no joke, that stuff’s surprisingly dangerous when it comes to acute toxicity.
That being said, the proper role or job of dogs is to be at home, not roaming around. Loose dogs wandering around, especially strays and feral dogs, benefit no one. But they do account for a large proportion of the harm caused by dogs, possibly the majority–especially if you count dogs that just happened to get loose and then attacked someone or something.
For me there’s no hard and fast line between a wild dog and a dog that someone doesn’t keep contained, whether physically and/or through training.
Unless someone’s trying to poison me, I don’t need to worry about ODing on Tylenol. I do need to worry if someone’s dog that’s aggressively posturing is actually going to turn violent and if their owner is going to do something about it.
Back to trees, my least favorite tree that isn’t an invasive species is coast redwood, at least in an urban or suburban setting. You don’t even need one in your yard to be negatively impacted. If your neighbors have one, you might as well give up any hope for a vegetable garden. They’re incredibly thirsty trees, and their roots will find and fill any inch of moist soil around, so even if they don’t shade out your yard, the root competition alone makes it hard to grow anything nearby. And people plant them here without realizing how much water they need or how damaging they are to sidewalks and nearby buildings.
While they are native here, their range was restricted to sites with deep soil and enough fog drip in the summer.
Dude, this is so true. It’s telling that nearly all of their relatives are wetland or riparian trees. Giant sequoia grow along creeks, dawn redwood prefers wet soils, bald cypresses and Chinese swamp cypress are wetland species, Anthrotaxus grow in peat bogs and along water ways…
It’s a pity all those cool Hesperocyparis species didn’t get the attention that redwoods have gotten. Tecate cypress, Siskiyou cypress, Shasta cypress, etc. are all really good looking plants, especially the ones with the crazy colorful exfoliating bark, that are incredibly drought tolerant, well-sized and well-behaved for landscaping, and are native all over California, with some variety or other being suitable almost anywhere. And yet, I’m pretty sure the only member of Hesperocyparis to get any love is Hesperocyparis glabra, which is now widely planted in the southeastern US of all places.
Let the folks in the warmer, wetter areas of the PNW plant redwoods, if they want a nice conifer Californians should be planting their native and extremely rare and endangered cypresses.
I agree, I just haven’t seen that issue ever. Also if you remove pits, rotties and gsd (likely their number is due to police work similar to how that accounts for a large chunk of shooting) then the number is a vanishing number. This isn’t likely due to those dog breeds either, it’s due to the type of people having them not socializing them appropriately and desensitizing them to a variety of issues. I could talk ad nauseam about dog behaviors and how people interact with them. But my point is stats don’t lie but also, all stats lie.
Free chicken feed for the golden eggs if you have them…
i’ve seen traps tear off paws of cats and they are not all feral. i won’t reply anymore i just can’t . but we all have things we can and can’t do. . i hope they are put out of their misery fast .