Pests get what’s coming to them in Wellington

Pests get what’s coming to them in Wellington
 
As a company strongly invested in New Zealand and our many species of pests, we know all about their damaging and destructive behaviour.
 
While most New Zealand pests might fall to traps set out by the Department of Conservation, one Wellington example recently got another kind of surprise, according to a NZ Herald article.
 
Goodnature is a local conservation business in Wellington, and when thieves broke into a company car one night in August, they weren’t expecting to find an incredibly stinky surprise in the back seat.
 
Company director Robbie van Dam had left a box of experimental bottles of oil in the back seat of his car. He believes the burglars spotted the chemical symbols on the side of the box, then broke in hoping to find drug-making materials. Instead, the oils inside were actually extracted from the anal glands of stoats – and were remarkably pungent.
 
Should just one drop of the noxious oil escape one of the bottles, the stench would last for weeks, even in a fresh-air environment.
 
There’s no word on what the thieves did with the box of oils, but van Dam at least got a laugh out of thinking it may have thoroughly ruined the thieves’ plans.
 
The stinky oils are an experiment in attracting pests into self-resetting traps. The idea is to catch and destroy pests such as rats, stoats and possums to help rid New Zealand of its predators. They even smell so bad that Goodnature only works with them at an off-site facility to avoid any potential mishaps that would make working at their usual site almost impossible (as had happened once a couple of years ago).
 
One way or another, a few more of New Zealand’s pests got what was coming to them by a wonderful conservation group! 

Scents are being used to attract pests into traps. Photo credit NZGovt