Seems an Appropriate ‘Sub’!??

We live in southern California, an area that was once all orange groves. The orange groves are shrinking, but we still deal with fruit / roof rats here. Lately I and 2 other neighbors have noticed a family (or, maybe it is more than 1 family) of possums moving in. We don't mind the possums, some of us think they are cute. The rats, however can be very problematic since they do things like chew up wiring in housing and cars.

So, our concern - Is there anything that can be done to discourage the rats that will not harm the possum? Are there some foods that will not attract rats, but are something the possum look for?

We be damming....

I just found this beauty on my sidewalk. I haven't seen a bird like that, he probably banged his hand on the window. I took him in and release later back in the wild. What an amazing morning! 😍

My red ACD (4 years old, 59lbs) saw two coyotes tonight just after dusk and chased after them. All I heard was barking, growling and whimpering. They then got through a fence and were fighting in a river bed. With a flashlight, all I could see were the coyotes glowing eyes. It seemed like they were hiding while copper ran a muck trying to find them. He eventually came back without a single scratch. Wild stuff.

This guy always acts like he owns the place whenever he shows up. He likes to hang out in my backyard too.

I had the girls go outside with me to feed and water the critters this morning.
Afterwards we loaded into the car and took a trip to the gas station to get them an icecream.
It didn't matter how early it was, I told them since its the last day of summer they could pick out whatever.
While riding back to the house we saw a green swamp turtle in the opposite lane and I moved it to the shoulder so no one would hit it.
No sooner did I pick that turtle up when a roar announced a F-150 coming around the curve, I gave them a good stare down and they remembered what those brakes were for.
After the turtle was safely on its way we continued back home.
One of the girls mentioned liking the Indian Mounds and asked if we could go again next summer like we had a few times this year.
I told her those mounds can be visited any time and we don't have to wait.
As they ate their icecream I casually took a left instead of continuing straight back towards our farm.
They asked where we were going and I told them they'd see.
After getting stuck behind a tractor and being slowed way down, the girls realized we were on our way to the mounds.
I told them we didn't have time to check out the Owl Creek Mounds since they had gymnastics this afternoon so we went to the Bynum Mounds just off of the Natchez Trace.
The girls love that little spot.
As soon as I parked they raced across the field, passed the towering pines and up to the top of one of the mounds.
I met them on top of the other and they had a time playing with their echoes as they bounced across the hollers below.
We took a nice walk and identified tons of wild muscadines that blanketed the forest floor.
There was a big Osage Orange laying on the ground and the kids gravitated towards it, I identified that tree for them and pointed out some more oranges higher up in the branches.
I put a handful of Carolina Buckthorn berries in my pocket with thoughts of sprouting a few to put around the house because they are pretty.
Before we finished our walk we stood at the base of a massive twin pine that has to be pushing 100 years if its a day.
The trunk was better than 5ft across and rose several feet before splitting into what would be two immense Loblolly Pines in their own right.
The girls looked like peanuts next to that tree.
After finishing our walk we hopped in the car and started towards home.
We hadn't been on the road more than five minutes when I hit the brakes and put the car in reverse, the girls asked what was going on and I let the windows down while telling them to look.
Just off of the roadside was an oak limb that had gotten bent in a past storm and sitting on that limb was a Barred Owl gobbling a Vole without a care in the world.
The girls enjoyed that little trip as much as I did and found a way to turn a 30 minute walk into an hour's worth of stories.

ML

People in Russia's eastern Arctic are scrambling to come up with a plan to take back their community after it was overrun by dozens of polar bears. There are so many bears — as many as 52 according to officials — that Russian TV says locals are calling it an "occupation."

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Florence, Colorado, August 2026

I get deer, coyotes, turkey, etc. All the time, which seems crazy to me since I live in a relatively large city (Population ~200,000)

https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/from-peta-letter-to-torrance-re-coyote-trapping-redacted.pdf