Last Sunday, Bowen Islanders floated their questions on skunks, rats and other critters by pest control expert Carl Nielsen at Collins Hall. Skunks, and how to deal with them, dominated a good part of the conversation. Neilson said he has been coming to Bowen to deal with local pests almost monthly for 40 years, and his observation confirmed the belief that they are relative newcomers to the island, as well as theories about how they got here.
Bowen Island’s Manager of Parks and Environment, Bonny Brokenshire, was in attendance and mentioned that she is currently working on a report on the local skunk problem for the Municipality. From her research, she said it appears that skunks have been on-island since roughly 2006. She went on to ask Neilson whether it could be true that pest control specialists from off-island dropped skunks off here on Bowen.
“I contacted several pest control companies on the mainland,” said Brokenshire. “And they told me that it is possible that someone saw their employees releasing skunks on Bowen Island, but only if the pest control specialist captured a skunk on Blue Water for example, and released it at Hood Point.”
Neilson said that pest control specialist may well be responsible for bringing skunks to Bowen Island.
“There used to be some pretty strong rules about where you could release them,” he said. “But I figure, some pest control worker was probably looking to release a few skunks and not go too far out of his way, and didn’t have direct instructions from a supervisor about where they should be released.”
Neilson says that lately, most of his business on Bowen Island involves dealing with rats, and he has only been called over once to deal with a skunk.
Bowen Island Pest Facts:
- skunks are great mousers, better than cats, says Carl Nielson. They won’t attack adult rats, but they will destroy rats nests and eat the babies.
- on Bowen, we have Norway Rats. These are often mistaken for black rats because of their colour, but they have longer tails. Norway rats can jump up to a height of five feet.
- if you capture a live mouse and want to relocate it, know that you don’t have to relocate it very far from their house as mice rarely stray more than 30 feet from where they are born
Carl Neilson on rat poison:
Outdoor rat poisons available in Canada have an embittering agent in them, which makes the substance unpalatable to creatures other than rats. These poisons have also been shown to have no secondary poisoning, so are not dangerous to other animals that might eat a poisoned rat. Rat poisons purchased in the US do not have this assurance. Indoor rat poisons are not safe for animals up the food chain. “If a rat ingests indoor poison and then goes out for a drink of water and is eaten by an eagle, the eagle will die,” says Nielson.
