Report from Durango Colorado

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A few small but useful things come to mind right now. Here's an idea for goat raisers: The critters are impossible to fence but easy to tether. Use a long steel cable staked at each end (this is oil and gas well country and used cable is cheap and plentiful at junkyards). The goat should wear a short chain with a snap hook, which you attach to a steel ring that can slide the entire length of the staked line. To move the animal to an adjacent area, simply shift one end of the cable.

How about a super mousetrap? Use a five-gallon bucket or any open-top container with straight sides 18 inches or more high. A 55-gallon oil drum, with the upper end removed, works fine if you have room for it. Wet a piece of heavy wrapping paper and stretch it across the top of the open container. Secure it with string or elastic until it's completely dry. Then use a razor blade to make two crosscuts at right angles to each other through the center of the circle. End the slits about two inches from the edge. Bait the trap with dabs of peanut butter or soft cheese placed near the center, or hang the food on a string several inches above the middle of the paper cover.

If you're using a bucket or other short container, the bottom should be covered with an inch or two of oil or molasses so the critters which fall in can't get up enough momentum to jump out. Oil works better for continuous use, and you may want to stretch the paper on a separate hoop so you can remove it to get your "catch" out of the barrel. The 55gallon drum with two or three inches of oil in the bottom is the best trap for rats.

In case of problems with rats or ground squirrels or gophers or muskrats burrowing around your foundations or walls, pack the holes full of coarsely crushed glass. They won't dig through that stuff but you can't dig in it much either, so don't use it in the garden or flowerbed.

If the crows or blackbirds are getting your newly planted corn or peas or whatever, try making cones out of old fashioned sticky flypaper. They should be about eight inches long for crows, smaller for blackbirds. Bury the

traps in the earth point down, open end even with the surface of the ground. Put a kernel of corn or a few wheat grains way down in the bottom of each cone and scatter more around the hole for bait. When the crow tries to get the seed, he comes up wearing the flypaper on his head. Thus blinded, he won't fly and is easy to capture or shoot however you're inclined. After you've caught a few you'll probably have to quit for a while or try a new location. Those birds are smart and soon figure out any scheme to trap them.

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