Oh, Rats! City Pests in the Garden By Brett, Eddie, and Paul

At our school we are thinking about making a garden. One of the things we have to think about is how to keep pests out of the garden. We were really interested in rats. We wanted to know what attracts rats to a garden and how to keep rats out of a garden.

The first thing we did was make a survey to find out what people in our neighborhood knew about rats. We asked them about what conditions make rats happy, how rats affect a garden, and what people can do to keep rats out of a garden. We learned that rats like food and trash. Some people said we should build a fence to keep rats out of the garden.

We also read books to learn more about rats. We read in a book that it's not the plants that attract rats but trash like soda bottles and gum near the garden. We also learned that there are some things rats don't like, like coyote urine and some plants that can be used to keep rats away.

We also went outside and walked around our school and neighborhood and made a list of things that would attract rats. Some of the things we found were:

soda cans potato chip bags

juice bottles gum

old newspapers food scraps

candy wrappers dog poop

To keep rats out of the garden, we are going to ask people in our neighborhood to help us clean up the trash. We will also put up a fence around the garden with signs that say, "No littering!" and tell people about our garden. We would like to organize cleaning days to help keep the trash cleaned up.

Once the garden is planted we will check the plants to see if rats are bothering them. We could try some of the other ideas if we need to. Next year we could also investigate other animals that affect gardens.