Subject: [permaculture] Will you help describe this pattern?
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 10:16:33 -0700
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.