I used to feed stale bread to the outside birds.My neighbors dad,who lived at the house part time after retiring to Pa,,,told me it was no good for the birds. So for the last 5 years I have bought wild bird seed,..A year or so ago my neighbor told me I needed to stop feeding them as they pooped on his 50 thousand dollar truck.I told him to F off...Months later I got a warning from town saying I can only feed them with a bird feeder,...I got one,,,,Then he told me not to feed them more than once a day.At 63,with a bad hip,I fed them if I happened to see it empty whenever that was.I got a ticket from town saying the food that falls to the ground as they eat,is illegal.,,,How can people be so mean?

It is much easier to spray with water. I keep a spray nozzle on the hose and I can pick it up and spray a stream a good distance. Farther than you could spray with a water gun. I yell at them at the same time. It really does work. I have always fed the birds and I have more cats than you can count because the shelter asks me sometimes to take cats that have been neutered but there for so long and no one adopted them. They help out with my cat food and vet bills for them. They also vaccinate them for me. I know a lot of people are convinced that all outside cats catch birds. They don't. But, the ones that do....are very determined. There used to be a snake here that hid in the sunflower seed hulls under the feeder and caught birds that came down to the ground to eat them. I saw him eat a cardinal and a dove. I didn't kill the snake....because I don't do that...but even though I hated that he did it, I understand that is nature and what snakes do. Still, I wouldn't want my cats to kill birds, because they are well fed. Almost every morning I find a little dead mouse that "someone" killed. They don't eat them. I don't put out poison, and I have no near neighbors so I give it to one of the possums. It's a treat for them. What I hate more than anything is the cats killing lizards. They will just about all do that. Still, there are lots of lizards here and lots of geckos, which must have come from some other place because they aren't native to this area. I guess the eggs came in on plants or something. They lay the cutest little eggs. White, and look like tiny little chicken eggs.

Oh my gosh, Pal, how unbelievable that they would chew through that concrete! It makes me shudder just thinking about it. And those being rats, not mice. Thank goodness you knew what to do. Busy: Yellowjackets are scary, as they can be so aggressive. Oakley, I would have done the exact same thing! Mdln: that can is what we used. I bought it at Home Depot for $8.95, which is expensive. I was glad to get something engineered to work for rodents, though, so I wasn't' arguing the price that day (LOL). But, this stuff is injected into holes via a long, plastic tube. It hardens fairly quickly, which is good for the hole, but makes the tube unusable soon after. So, have a game plan before you start and fill everything quickly. Wet paper towels, a sturdy paper plate and a metal spatula to smooth out the foam worked best for us. I had to use Goof Off to get it off of the spatula, though. Tibbie: I'm kind of concerned, as I pick up our new furkid on Wednesday afternoon, which is just 2 days from now. I need to make sure nothing harmful such as mousetraps, etc. (we don't use poisons) are around for him to get into. P.S. I'll try to post pics of my new boy on Thursday.

I had a similar experience that caused me to rethink the use of poisons outside. When gardening in SoCal, I had a severe problem with ground squirrels. There was a major burrow complex about 1000' feet away. Once the squirrels discovered the garden, they began digging bolt holes nearby, and were causing a lot of damage in the garden. This was on a military base, so I couldn't use an air rifle. The bolt holes were shallow, so for awhile, I would just place expanded metal over the holes, and drown whatever squirrels were in them. But the nearby colony was large & the damage grew to be intolerable; so I decided to bait the colony. It worked - too well. The next day, the surrounding field was littered with dozens of dead squirrels! There were hawks nesting nearby, so in a panic, I canvased the entire field to pick up & bury the carcasses before the hawks could find them. (Not something to be done casually, since ground squirrels in San Diego can carry bubonic plague.) :-0 That incident left a lasting impression on me, I have never since used poison outdoors. Where I live now, a family of Cooper's hawks have been nesting in my treeline for over 10 years, and I am determined to be a responsible steward.