The truth about... You Char Kway

Among all the baits I've heard of: banana, papaya, jackfruit, salted fish, peanut butter on bread and cuttlefish, I had thought they were interesting enough. Little did I know that deep fried dough sticks (you char kway) can work marvelously as well!

All thanks to Benjamin Lee who advised this bait and recommended reading Richard Corlett's paper on Rodent diversity in a highly degraded tropical landscape: Hong Kong, South China.

On 21st Feb 08 evening, Audrey and I went out to put the mammal traps and I tried 3 traps: 1 at the Acacia plot near KE VII Hall, 2 at the simpoh air plot near S2. The one at the Acacia plot was fixed with banana while the 2 at the simpoh air plot was fixed with you char kway.

The next day, Audrey and Alicia shouted for me 5 meters away just to say that I had a rat one of the traps at the simpoh air plot, while the one fixed up with banana did not get anything. I am guessing the fried dough sticks are nice smelling and can be noticed from afar.

The inquisitive rat.

Check out the short tail (Kelvin said its probably bitten off by something).

The next thing I did was to weigh the rat, measure its length and its tail before setting it loose again. My first hand experience with a rat. An adjective for it would be - curious. It was just sniffing at our hands and was not frightened or agitated. When released, it did not even run off immediately, just hopped off slowly as Alicia made a last attempt to hold it in her hands.


Weight of the trap without rat. This rat weighed 200g.

Reference:
Kylie P.S. Chung, Richard T. Corlett, Rodent diversity in a highly degraded tropical landscape: Hong Kong, South China., Biodiversity and Conservation (2006).