Rats

Cats should be kept indoors.  All felines are obligate hunters and cats will hunt even when they are not hungry.  With apologies to Geico, hunting is what they do.  An article in Nature Communications estimates that in the U.S. free-roaming domestic cats kill a minimum of 1.3 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals a year, with a possible maximum more than three times that high. Overall the scourge of wildlife, the domestic cat is the largest single anthropogenic threat to birds and mammals, killing more than cars, poisons, wind turbines and any other human-created dangers.   In Florida, domestic cats are known to prey on at least a dozen endangered species, including the rice rat, Key Largo cotton mouse, green sea turtle, roseate tern and Florida scrub-jay.

Vernon. Photo by Craig Walters.

That said, we have four indoor-outdoor cats here at Itchy Dog Farm.  With our doors wide open most of the year, dogs, cats and chickens wander in and out at will.  We're lucky the pony is gated in the pasture.  Happily only one of our cats can hunt his way out of a paper bag, and even more happily, he has no interest in feathered things.  Vernon is an orange tabby, a rectangular cat, long and lean and big-headed. No fluffy furball,  he spends most of his day perched on the highest platform of the cat tree looking down on his kingdom.  At night he is the slayer of rodents.  We know, because he brings them home and leaves their parts in the bathtub.

Pocket gopher.  Photo by Wayne Lynch.

Most commonly Vernon delivers rat parts.  Rats are attracted to the chicken palace by spilled feed and scratch and are probably easy targets.  I admit I am not fond of rats and the more I find in the bathtub the happier I am.  Occasionally he brings us a mole or a pocket gopher.  Pocket gophers are ugly little critters with huge orange teeth out of a sci fi movie and long claws on their paws for digging. They spend most of their lives underground, making tunnels that mess up your yard and are a hazard in the pasture.  As they dig, they push soil out of the tunnel to create mounds of loose dirt, the tell-tale sign of resident pocket gophers.  You see them all over Alachua County.

Despite my lack of love for vermin, I like giant rodents as much as anyone.  I really wanted there to be a giant rat of Sumatra and was disappointed to learn the largest Indonesian rat, the mountain giant Sunda rat, only averages a pound.  Chinese bamboo rats are more like it.  They grow 20 inches long and when fattened for market can weigh up to 9 pounds.  (Fun fact: rat meat costs twice as much as beef in China.)  The Gambian pouched rat, wide-spread in sub-Saharan Africa, averages only about 3 pounds but can grow as large as the bamboo rat. Two interesting things about Gambian pouched rats: they can be trained to detect land mines, and they can be found in Florida (of course).

If something is weird and invasive, chances are good that sooner or later it will end up breeding in Florida.  Gambian pouched rats were brought to the Florida Keys by a captive breeder. Eight escaped and established a colony on Grassy Key.  Authorities haven't been able to exterminate them and it is feared they will reach the mainland and wreak havoc with native ecosystems.

Capybara.

My own county is home to a colony of about 60 wild capybara, believed to have originated when the rodents escaped from a research facility near Gainesville.  A pair of juveniles also escaped from the Jacksonville Zoo in 2001 and so far as we know are still on the lam.  Capybara are right out of Monty Python -- they look like 100 pound guinea pigs.  They are semi-aquatic, breed only in water, and are native to South America, where they are raised for food.  Their extinct ancestor, Neochoerus, roamed Florida in the Pleistocene.  Very similar to today's capys, they grew up to 250 pounds.

The largest rodent ever was Josephoartigasia monesi who lived from 4 to 2 million years ago.  These guys were to capybara what capys are to guinea pigs.  They weighed a ton, were as big as buffalo, and had enormous incisors they used like elephant tusks.  Josephoartigasia was a successful wetland herbivore who probably succumbed to climate change. If they existed today they would no doubt be breeding in Florida.