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["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Jack Russell terrriers have a reputation for being incredibly hyper,
something useful in a varmint dog.  Feists and rat terriers are closely
related, and crosses of these dogs would be good.  They aren't very big, but
I have read of kids digging out woodchucks to see feists fight them.  We
have two "varmint
dogs", one a half blue heeler half border collie who spent her first 6 years
pretty hyper and did a good job on her own keeping rabbits, deer and
chipmunks out of the garden.  We have been blessed not to have many
woodchucks around our property, but Madra who weighs 45 lbs, killed one
once, a great big one that she shook to death.  The younger dog is  probably
half rat terrier
with some blue heeler, she is the digger.  What I notice is that she digs a
lot, but seldom do I see her catch any of the moles or voles she digs for.
By contrast, we have a fat neutered male cat about 11 years old who loves to
eat.  He appears to be totally indolent, but I see him pretty often with
voles that I think were easier to catch because of the disturbed territory
created by the digging.  His specialty is baby rabbits, which he lies in
wait for, and for weeks each spring he dines on them instead of catfood.
Took us a good while to figure this out, my husband would be so puzzled when
catfood consumption would plummet, and we'd feel  the cat to see if he was
losing weight.
    On the subject of snakes, we have plenty here in TN.  I notice that they
like a
compost pile or pile of leaves to lay their eggs in.  I never have been
lucky enough to find unhatched eggs to observe, but find the empty shells
when I go to use my compost piles.  The problem with snakes is that they
don't work in winter, when voles are doing so much damage, and they are slow
to get started in spring, so that the voles are making a fast population
increase when they aren't moving.  Now, skunks supposedly adore nests of
baby mice and voles, and they have worked our garden for them some years in
the very early spring.  (The skunks live across a large field from us, in a
sinkhole)
     Black rat snakes have been a major irritation for me as they
prefer to eat chicken eggs in the summer.  One summer we made the mistake of
hauling off 4 great big rat snakes that we caught, had a terrible time with
mice both indoors and out that autumn and winter. In the last two years we
have moved the chickens
to the far end of the garden, and all the rat snakes I catch I bring, uh,
well,... we are living in a school bus so I bring them in and turn them
loose.  My husband has gotten kind of used to the idea, and they never stick
around long, but they seem to clean out all the mice before they leave..
With no chickens to provide for them, they do a much much better job at
rodent control.  True, they do go for bird nests, but we still have plenty
of birds.  Actually, too many of one kind of bird...  I heard a lot of
racket one summer's day and saw a black racer fall out of a tree last summer
with a baby cardinal in it's mouth.  I was very pleased as we have a lot of
"welfare cardinals" who live on chicken feed and our crowder pea crop.