Pest Problem

[kthor]

anyone know if Rats or Snakes are a problem in hawaii ?

thinking of getting a vacation home in hawaii by next year .. Snakes scares me lol

Thanks

[1stwahine]

anyone know if Rats or Snakes are a problem in hawaii ?

thinking of getting a vacation home in hawaii by next year .. Snakes scares me lol

Thanks

Here's an excellent article by Charles Memminger who writes Honolulu Lite!
http://starbulletin.com/2000/01/24/features/memminger.html

"1. Everything in Hawaii is either eating or being eaten. That includes your house. A house is simply a very expensive piece of termite food. Termites live underground until breeding time, when they swarm out into the night sky to make hoochie-koochie in numbers that would make Alfred Hitchcock freak out. Don't panic; they don't bite. They are attracted to light, so if you turn off yours, they'll go to your neighbors' houses.

2. We don't have snakes in Hawaii. We do have mongooses. A mongoose is like a 2-foot-long rat with a long nose and sharp teeth. They were brought to Hawaii to kill rats, but the two species apparently made a deal to leave each other alone. Now we have both mongooses and rats, so their deal worked out pretty well.

3. There are two types of rats in Hawaii: the kind that live in your house and the kind that live in your garage. They eat anything (See: Parrot, above). We once found a rat hanging by his teeth in the back of our clothes dryer. He apparently electrocuted himself while lunching on a hot wire. The only way to deal with a rat is to trap it. The snap traps are effective, but kind of gruesome. (Nothing like waking up to a smashed rat head in your kitchen.) The live cage traps work, but then you have to deal with the rascals later. I usually blindfold them, take them on a long ride and let them out in a desolate area. They'll try to follow you home, so drive real fast after you dump them."

Auntie Lynn

btw: Have you ever seen a Ginger Rat?
http://www.auntiepupule.com/blog/index.php?id=392

[acousticlady]

Ants! I hate ants. If you leave a crumb out on the counter you'll have a swarm.

[kthor]

lol that's a great article ...

Im used to big rats - remember those suckers when I was a kid in the Philippines.

Thanks for that link