California Condor Eben McMillan 27 January 1964 Ben Easley told me today that kangaroo rats are not much of a problem in Kern County, only on a few occasions has it been necessary to make a special project of poisoning kangaroo rats. Last year his force oversaw an operation where kangaroo rat poisoning was done by airplane. This took place in the summer time on a half section of land to the southwest of the Rancheria area about five miles. Mr. Easley tried to set about three pounds of poison scattered on each acre of land. We stretched a 20 (Twenty) foot square canvas on the ground and as the plane flew over it dropped about three kernels of whole grain barley on this canvas. He and his crew watched this poisoned area for three mornings following the application by plane, two mornings immediately following the application and the third morning of inspection came after two days at a weekend separated the inspection dates. He said that no scavenger or predatory birds were noted in this area on any of the three inspection trips following the application of the poison, nor did they find many dead rats. Easley thought 3000 numbers of rats had been killed with the poison but that nocturnal scavengers removed them by daylight. Strychnine poison was used in this rat poisoning project. I forgot to enter our seeing and photographing the parts of forty (40) adult sheep that were hanging on a barbed wire fence to the south of the road on the Woody Famosa roadway about one mile east of highway 65. No carcasses could be seen in the area.