Trapping

How grateful we are to Geoff and Carol Swailes, and the terrific team of trap makers who hosted some small groups of Enviro Leaders and shared their expertise and skills with us.  They showed us what types of timber we would need to build the boxes for the DOC 150 traps we had bought with our grant money and then how to cut the timber to the correct lengths and sizes.  Assembling the boxes was a bit challenging but incredibly rewarding.  We were incredibly proud of what we were able to achieve with this support!

It was a lovely clear day as we headed up to the local QEII block to see if the traps that we had made, and those that we had purchased would work.  Armed with our DOC150s, trapinators, some peanut butter, eggs and a whole lot of enthusiasm we set them in the bush, hoping for a great result when we returned.  As we laid them out, we developed a whole lot more appreciation for those who do this on a much larger scale... those traps are a bit heavy and awkward to carry!  It was a terrific afternoon out learning in the fresh air and we are very grateful for the opportunity!

With our fingers and our eyes crossed we headed back up to see what we had caught.  It had been a fortnight and we were hopeful that there had been some success.  We found a few cheeky possums in our possum traps, but were interested to see that there  were no stoats in our box traps.  We spent some time pondering why this may be and concluded that maybe our lure wasn't alluring enough to attract them in, or that there were plenty of mice to feast on due to the beech seed mast this year.