Ambushes, conscripts and amphibious assault: The guerilla war in Sydney’s backyard

She’s trying to coax its occupant into a small canvas bag, but the captive clings doggedly to the coconut husk lining the metal trap.“I’m dying,” Wauchope gasps after a minute, red-cheeked and blinking stars. “Thank god I play the trumpet.”A native rat, or bogul, caught as part of the project to populate urban bushland.Jeremy PiperFinally, her target tumbles into the sack: a native bush rat, called a bogul in Dharug. Marsupial mice and pygmy possums followed – species which now pollinate the area’s critically endangered banksia scrub – and the bush rat’s supremacy has ended black rat attacks on native bird nests.AdvertisementNow the commanders of the Sydney rat war are seeking new lands to liberate.