Posted by Cathy
on January 28, 2009, 10:27 am, in reply to "Interesting !!!"
The company I work for, in the past had a contract with the DoD to maintain all the military housing in San Diego. Most of the military housing is located off base in neighborhoods throughout the county. One large sect of housing named "Murphy Canyon Housing" is located in an area surrounded by steep unimnproved canyons. The residents of Murphy Canyon complained to the Navy that coyotes were in the canyon, the howling bothered them and they could see the animals and it "scared" them. The Navy took it upon itself to remove the coyote population from the canyons. After the coyotes were gone, the housing was overrun with huge Norway rats. The contract we had with the Navy did not include control of rodents. We tried to inform the residents to not leave 40 pound bags of dog food on their patios and to put the lids on their trash cans, but most of the residents would not follow any type of sanitation request. I remember informing several residents that since they had the coyotes removed, which were the natural predators of the rats, there was nothing anyone could do since the balance of nature was artifically altered. Our grounds guys who had to maintain a 15 ft wide fire break around the entire site would occasionally find rattle snakes close to the housing, but I made them sling the snakes on the end of a shovel back into the canyon. At least there were still snakes to catch a few rats.
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