permaculture

[Alan Post <alanpost@sunflowerriver.org>]

This year I've been dealing with rats in my barnyard.  I'm not
looking for help dealing with that problem: I'm trying to articulate
the pattern I'm seeing within the rubric of permaculture.

The specific scenario:

I have a pest[1] (brown rats) that have taken up residence in my
barn.  I have used traps as a control[2], and I've recently taken
to hunting them too.  As I've hunted them, I noticed that they've
used the barnyard environment in a way I hadn't considered/been
aware of.  Building paths and finding routes.  Many of these paths
emerged because of design decisions I'd made: they favor walls,
narrow passages, and dark places.

I'm working to introduce more barriers[3] to prevent access to
areas I'd rather they not be in.  But this feels underwhelming as
a description of what is happening at the system-level.

In the permaculture rubric, what am I doing?  What pattern is this?
What phrase describes this activity?  Again, not looking for advice
on rats: I'm looking for hooks I can use to describe these
interactions and help model the patterns.

Thank you!

-Alan

1: http://sunflowerriver.org/wiki/Pest
2: http://sunflowerriver.org/wiki/Control
3: http://sunflowerriver.org/wiki/Barrier
-- 
.i ma'a lo bradi cu penmi gi'e du