drmargaret

The next door neighbor told me the rat nest was up in the tree on my side of the fence. Having never seen a rat nest I had no idea what to look for so I had her point the thing out to me. I’m glad she did because I would never have been able to spot it on my own. For the last several months the dogs must have thought I was an idiot. I’ve been asking them to go get the rats and they have been running back to the tree. Not knowing what the nest looked like I missed it.

There was about a six foot pile of branches and leaves in the center of the tree mainly on my side going up to the middle of the trunk. It just looked like dead branches and some trapped leaf debris. It wasn’t until I started pulling away at the pile that i pulled down what must have been a rat condo. There were about five or six separate bark lined nests amist the leaves. The condos were all empty. The rats were long gone. The dogs were very excited about the nest debris though. Some of it was made up of dried pomegranets and they eat those out on the deck in the sun. The rats had been encroaching on their treat supply. Actually they rats had been encroaching on everyone’s treat supply. They ate everyone’s crops all spring at everyone’s house. I finally had enough when they got up and set up house keeping in the attic and called the pest control company. They blocked access to the house with foam. They set out traps. The dogs caught a couple of them.
The neighbor got rid of a nest behind her waterfall. The other neighbor got rid of a nest in her attic. I’m the last to get a nest so far. There are still tomatoes on the vine, so this may be the last of them. It’s late in the season. We’re close to the mountains. They should retreat back up for the fall and winter and be back to have their young again in the spring next year.

This was the worst year in terms of loss of fruits and vegetables. Both my neighbor and I lost almost everything we planted. Only a few root crops survived. Usually there are only a rat or two and it’s not much of a problem. They scurry along the phone lines, and they don’t set up shop eating up everything they can find. Usually the big problem is ants, bees and wasps and some invasive grasses that choke out the plants I want. The grasses got so bad a decade ago the entire yard was taken back down to soil and replanted from scratch and then everything came back slowly. The insects came back. The invasive plants blew in. Now it’s not quite the jungle it was but it’s close.

I’ve watched all the nature programs to know that ants are helpful. I used to have a pet rat. I don’t have anything against the animals, insects or bugs that live outside in or around the garden. Some of them are helpful. Others compete with me for the food I’m trying to grow there. I don’t personally use insecticides. I try to grow organic crops and manage by planting companion plants. The dogs are part of the system and keep the yard free of moles, voles, squirels, racoons, lizards, snakes, and mice. They don’t have free run of the garden otherwise they too would eat the fruits and vegetables. The rats outsmarted the system. They used the wall and the tree to jump over the ground and directly into the garden and only had a few feet of open ground where the dogs might come into contact with them. Most of the time they were safe in the garden or safe in the tree. By building the nest on my side of the tree the cats didn’t come on my side of the yard and the rats had safe haven. Now they have moved on.

Rats are a very intelligent animal species. Our pet rat lived about 3 years. She was very sweet. She used to toss liver treats out of her cage to our old dog Zoey. Zoey liked her. She’d watch her run all over the cage until she got to the top and then toss out a liver treat. My niece used to walk around the house with the rat on her head. Just to be safe we never let the rat and Zoey be alone. So the rat lived to old age as did Zoey. Rats can get through very small holes. They fit through holes as small as one inch in diameter. So the rat lived in a hampster habitat with lots of additions. She seemed very happy and it was a fairly large enclosure. I had wanted my niece to get a hampster, but my niece wanted the hampster with the long tail and that was how we ended up with the pet rat. I ended up with the rat when my niece moved back with my sister and couldn’t take it with her. So I had the rat for about about a year and a half. Towards the end she was so sick she had to be fed with an eye dropper the cancer was so wide spread. She hung on for a long time and just kept fighting to stay alive. Eventually she had seizures that finally claimed her. We buried her in the backyard under a stepping stone. In the spring the next year rats would come to the stone and eat their berries or seeds. It always seemed fitting. Now though with the yard so overrun with rats, its too much. Maybe next year it will go back to normal with just a single rat or two. Maybe next year when the dogs go running out to the tree I’ll go there to look for the rats.

Psychology gets involved with dasasters. You can go to the American Psychological Association web site and get information on coping with disasters, normal responses to disasters, how to help with the most recent disaster if you are a professional or how to help your child cope. I’m not going to reiterate any of that information here. The Red Cross has similar information as well.

I’m going to talk about how when bad things happen people want to know why it happened. They want to know who didn’t predict in advance that the bad thing was going to happen and keep it from happening. Frequently they want to know who will be responsible for making sure everything will get made as back to normal as possible. I live in California, in an area where there are earthquakes. There is a fault line under my garage. No one knew there was a fault line under my garage. I had no idea either until the Northridge earthquake brought it rudely to my attention. My house survived with minor damage.

Earthquakes happen because the earth rotates. It’s the same reason hurricanes happen. As temperatures of the earth get warmer there will be more hurricanes. In history, there have been big earthquakes and big hurricanes. I was alive for the big hurricane that hit New Orleans previously–Betsy. I remember the Sylmar, CA earthquake. But people don’t remember these things. They rebuilt New Orleans previously and rebuilt the collapsed 5 and 14 freeways from the earthquakes. There were lots of complaints about how slowly everything took to make things get back to normal. Some people published books and magazines showing how damaged everything was. There were waiting lines and lots of questions for officials who never seemed to have answers quickly enough. For the people it was a frustrating experience.

During hurricane Betsy and the Sylmar, CA earthquake there was looting. I don’t remember lots of media coverage of that, but I do remember hearing about it as a child. It was scary hearing that word following the Watts riots, the other big disaster in Los Angeles I had been exposed to. There were lines for food, and shelter, and to get basic supplies.

During the Northridge earthquake, the apartment building 2 blocks away and within vision from my house in a direct line from my garage, collapsed. People in 1/3 of the building were homeless and set up a tent city in a lot. People in the other 2/3 were able to get supplies. People worked together to help one another. FEMA was tied up with Northridge, where a large shopping center had collapsed, a 3 story apartment building had collapsed killing people and lots of home had damage. No one in my city had any illusions that FEMA would be coming to help soon. The estimates were that they would be coming in weeks maybe months and that the help would be for the basics only–food, clothing, and shelter. I was expecting no help from FEMA but I filled out the forms. I moved out of my home for several weeks because basic services like electricity and running water weren’t available and the smell of gas was noticible in the early hours following the earthquake. I was prepared. I had a plan. I’d been in major earthquakes before. I left the city on surface streets. I drove 30 miles away. I got to a hotel prior to lots of people coming from my city. They came hours later with dogs, cats and children in tow seeking shelter.

I decided to stay and make repairs to my house. I looked at other homes in the area and read geological surveys on new homes. The area has lots of fault lines. I can’t blame anyone for the earthquake. I can’t blame anyone for any future earthquake. Hurricanes will happen. I’m responsible for making a decision to live in my house now, knowing there is a fault line here under my garage. I have earthquake insurance. After hurricane Betsy in the 1960s, everyone knew that if New Orleans got hit by a large hurricane that the city would be flooded. It was a matter of time before it happened. When, not if, California gets hit by an 8.0 or larger earthquake, there will be significant devastation. It will take a long time to fix the infrastructure. FEMA will arrive. It will never feel fast enough for the people involved to assess what is wrong, or to fix the problems. There may be looting. There may be explosions and continuing problems. People will die due to the slow process.

The more that people can plan in advance for the basic disasters…fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and cope in the early stages, the better they will do for themselves. The more people sit around and wait for help with no plan it is going to be more of a problem. So what I have been telling people is to look at what happened and use what happened to formulate your own personal disaster plan. What do you need to do? What do you need to think about? Do you need to make plans for animals? Do you need to make plans for disabled people? What are your plans to have food, water and shelter available? Are you going to have to wait for the government to assist you? How will you get word to your family that you are safe if you are separated? Do you have a family disaster plan? If you are answering those questions no, then you need to put a plan together to fix those answers to the best you can.