I managed to use painter's blue tape around the scapes in the closest garden bed that I was noticing missing pods. Unfortunately, it has started storming here, so I am unable to cut all those scapes yet to add to a vase of water to ripen. I will do that if this storm stops today or tonight. It is pouring down rain with lightning, so I am not going to attempt collecting the pods until the rain subsides.
Here is my 3-tiered daylily bed:
This is a close-up of the blue "flags" on each scape with the code for the plant:
Typically, a mother rat will panic and come back later to look for her babies. Hopefully she will find the 2 escapees and move them somewhere else. (Hopefully NOT elsewhere in my backyard!) And I sure hope she finds the others and just moves them all outside my backyard fence.
When I was cleaning out the nest, I found more pods (some still had seeds inside) and paper clips. The paper clips were still attached to the pods. So I collected those seeds and will label all of them as "unknown" seeds. I kept seeds from each pod together and will grow out a couple of each to determine what plant it may have come from. Or at least figure a possibility. But they will just be unknown parentage seedlings. I never did find the nylon bag. Which makes me wonder if there is more than 1 mother rat somewhere in my yard with more babies. (sigh)
