Image: Pine marten in a live trap.
Round XX goes to us in the pine marten battle. May the war be over …
We’d kind of hoped that the pine marten had decided to leave on its own, but we baited the live trap and set it up under the house. Three days with canned sardines as a bait (one of the suggested baits) – no luck. The mice liked it, and licked the sardine can clean, but the marten wasn’t interested in either the sardines or the mice.
Ken cut a pepperoni sausage in half, tied it into the back of the trap, and in the middle of the night – clang! Trap was triggered and one live, albeit pissed off, marten was waiting for us in the morning.
The marten’s kind of a cute fellow, not very big, despite its rather large presence around our house. However, it definitely had the weasel attitude. It never made a sound, until you got close to the trap, then it growled ferociously. Sort of like the mouse challenging the elephant. Ken offered it the other half of the pepperoni stick, which it happily accepted, growling all the while, and then chewed and munched contentedly for a time. This seemed to relax the little fellow, because he rolled up into a ball and fell asleep while Ken and I discussed the logistics of marten relocation.
Ultimately, we decided to take the marten on a wee trip about four miles down the inlet in the Awen, across the inlet from us and several river crossings away. We are hoping that this is far enough to deter the homing instinct and give us some piece until we get our soffits installed. Apparently, once the weather gets nice, martens lose their interest in cohabiting with people, so with any luck, this will be the last of the marten wars until next winter, and by then we will be martenized.
Good for you guys. We do something similar with our packrats, only ours come is a series each spring and fall. One year we gave up at 13 relocated. For a while we only took them about a kilometre away to a sandy beach around the point. Easy for us to land for the release, but after reading online, easy for the packrat to run back home. We aren’t sure if we relocated 13 packrats or one packrat 13 times. We now take them across the lake to Goat Island. It’s still only a kilometre away, but the whole distance requires swimming. They are cute little guys with their puffy tails, but they can destroy my garden and pots overnight. – Margy
Funny thing about rodents….they aren’t fun. According to what I read, mice rarely venture further than a 25 foot radius from their nest. So that means that if you have mice near your house and you dispose of them, you still have hundreds nearby and they will eventually reproduce to close that 25 foot hole in the mouse-a-sphere you recently created. We have no mice. Worked hard at keeping them OUT. But half a kilometer from us, there is evidence of some. Many, actually. So, does that mean that in a few mouse generations, we will have multiple Micky visitors? I hope not. Blood will be spilled. Karma will be outraged. Dave-the-beastkiller will be unleashed. It’ll get ugly.