Rodent wars: US city where ground squirrels outnumber people fights back | North Dakota

The Richardson terrestrial squirrel weighs less than one book, measures approximately one foot long and is from the plains of the North.

The little creature is also a fierce tunneler, and he will exasperate the inhabitants of Minot, Dakota of the North, where it ends everywhere vacant lots in the middle of the city, and becoming more abundant in the past two decades.

Now, the fourth city of North Dakota is fighting, but even the guy in the antiparasitic struggle leading the charge recognizes that it will be difficult to turn the trend against the rodent.

A difficult battle

Joshua Herman said that the fight against squirrels is like “a guy standing against a massive storm”.

“If I trample but my neighbor is not, well, we are really going nowhere with that, in the long term,” said Herman.

Land squirrels have been a problem in Minot, a city of almost 50,000 people for at least 20 years, but the problem has endeavored spectacular in recent years, said the superintendent of the department of rue Minot, Kevin Braaten.

We do not know how many squirrels live in Minot, but it probably approaches or even exceeds the population of the city.

“My God, there must be tens of thousands in the region,” said Herman.

City officials, a green place along the winding mouse river surrounded by agricultural land and grassy meadows, know that they cannot get rid of squirrels, but simply hope to cut down the number of rodents.

“I do not see that the population is never to zero,” said Braaten. “I mean, it’s almost impossible by the figures we have.”

In other words, Minot will not be able to get rid of squirrels because animals live in the meadow for centuries. Outside the city, predators such as coyotes, badgers, owls and even snakes love dinner on squirrels. But in residential districts and even in the city center, where little of their predators live, rodents can wander fairly freely.

Greg Gullickson, an awareness biologist of the Department of Game and the Northern Dakota fish, adds that squirrels now have fewer zones of meadows at their disposal and love the mowed places they find in town.

No land is sure

The female squirrels generally give birth to rails of approximately six babies per year, so it is easy to see how their figures can quickly skyrocket.

Herman said he killed 3,500 to 5,000 a year, mainly by putting collaboards and carbon monoxide in the holes and using an air rifle.

“I had calls to the city center, calls in the shopping center, along the highways, here at the airport – really all the parts of the city I made to trap the terrestrial squirrels here in Minot,” said Herman, checking his traps along a building and pelting dirt on holes.

Herman says they damage the aisles, the sidewalks and the lawns; Create trigger dangers with their holes and can house flea disease.

Along an apartment building, the squirrels had dug under a concrete slab and against the foundation. Nearby in a vacant land, the rodents entered and out of the holes.

The terrestrial squirrels near the apartment at the grandson of Pashone dig holes near his door and eat her plants. A squirrel even bypassed his baby door at the door and in her daughter’s clothes in her room.

“It was a bit scary. You don’t know what disease they wear. They are dirty. I have a young girl … I didn’t know if it was going to bite her,” said Grand-Fils.

North of the city, Minot Air Force Base, which shelters bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, fought terrestrial squirrels for years. Earlier this month, the base said it had trapped more than 800 “Dak -rats”, a basic name for rodents.

Base officials refused to comment on the squirrels.

Jared Edwards, director of MINOT public schools, which has three schools on the basis, said that the residential areas of the base and that the tracks are invaded by terrestrial squirrels. He called it “a continuous battle for them for 75 years since the base has been there”.

“I’m not going to exaggerate: they are millions of people,” said Edwards.

In town, three school properties have large populations of terrestrial squirrels, he said. Last year, the school system began to use collas and, for years before, had used poison.

“This is something that you have to follow. It is Mother Nature,” said Edwards, adding that they were probably in the region since the end of the properties.

A cute nuisance

However, not everyone sees squirrels as a pest. Some find the creatures cute and blurred.

Herman said people had sabotaged, stolen or threw his traps. They sometimes confronted him when he shoots terrestrial squirrels with an air rifle, rumbling him for having injured the fauna, he said.

“They get this pretty association, and they are, you know, adorable, but they are a vermin and a pest and dangerous when they are allowed to proliferate,” said Herman.