An owl can eat over 1,000 rodents in a year. If you poison the rodents, you poison the owl. And almost every raptor in the US is already being poisoned.
A 2020 Tufts Wildlife Clinic study found that 100% of the red-tailed hawks they tested were positive for anticoagulant rodenticides. Every single bird.
A follow-up study of 46 hawks, owls, foxes, and coyotes from a Massachusetts rehab center between 2022 and 2024 found the same thing: 100% had been poisoned.
Rat poison works by preventing blood clotting. The rodent doesn't die immediately. It bleeds internally for days, becomes lethargic and easy to catch, and gets eaten by something hungry. The poison moves up the food web in their gut, their liver, their carcass. A single bait box can take out an owl, a hawk, a fox, even a bobcat.
The pests you're worried about (mice, rats, voles) are the same pests an owl can take 1,000 of in a year, for free, forever, if you let her.
Use snap traps indoors only away from pets. Seal the entry points and lock food away. Put up an owl box. Keep cats inside (they get poisoned eating poisoned rodents too).
Rat poison sales need to drop to zero.
@Pirat_Nation What's hilarious is that Dragon Age, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, and Fable all had romance systems like BG3. It's not new, it's not revolutionary
@PokeMarr Honestly sounds fucked but I've been thinking about getting a slingshot and just eating the starlings and house sparrows in my area. The starlings showed up a year ago, started out with a handful now there's too many out competing the other native species
@tutueme @Azrael_5555 @BhadeliaMD Unfortunately COVID wasn't anything new by the time we got a variant. COVID has been around for years, animals usually got COVID which is why you could find dog vaccines for a COVID, cow vaccines, ect.
@lemoncholia__ Gurl idk why but I'm falling apart over here! Thankfully I'm ready to take myself out before I use a cane, they don't usually make them short enough for me anyways
@wynavira Kill the past, marry the ghost, it keeps returning may as well make peace with that, and fuck the wound that won't heal, what else am I to do with a new hole