Posted on 08/16/2017 6:24:37 AM PDT by logi_cal869
Neither a joke nor metaphor, I have a rat problem and seek learned wisdom from others who've combatted these cunning creatures.
I have a lone rat (I believe) lurking somewhere in my house. Without regard to the accuracy of that statement or my seeming inability to find its lair, this smart SOB freed itself from a sticky trap and has been Ninja ever since, sometimes not taking my popcorn bait for days (there are NO other food sources other than our occasional lapse in leaving the dog's food out).
Spring traps don't work; it's too smart. Or, to be more accurate, they don't work with the bait I've been using. I prefer not to use poison, as my neighbor has incurred significant expense in tearing into walls to remove decomposing flesh.
I'm hopeful for meritorious advice, as all of my requests to borrow/rent a farm cat have fallen on deaf ears...
We had all our trees trimmed way back from the roof so they had no more access. Took 3 months to get rid of all of them. Apparently our neighborhood was overrun with them. Our pest guy used a bait that makes them slowly bleed out. Our neighbor said he kept seeing them crawl across his back yard and would kill them with a hoe. lol
Haven’t seen one in awhile. Hope it stays that way. I hate the nasty things.
do you mean squirrels as “tree rats”? Or are there really tree rats?
I hate rats. and have alot of trees.
You better get it taken care of quickly because rats reproduce very quickly. Just get a professional to clear it out now, or you are going to have a bigger problem later.
“A female rat can mate as many as 500 times with various males during a six-hour period of receptivity—a state she experiences about 15 times per year. Thus a pair of brown rats can produce as many as 2,000 descendants in a year if left to breed unchecked.”
Is disposal of the rat carcass a problem?
Do you have any pet kibbles? Cat or dog? Get rid of almost all of them. Start feeding your dog or cat wet food only. They have an “msg for small mammals” flavor enhancer in there that rodents can smell for miles. Save a tiny amount and put the nerve poison that most of these exterminators use in the kibbles you kept and get a box trap that exterminators use and put the poisoned kibbles in it and put this on the exterior of your home where you think the rest could get out.
This should work, it’s what the exterminator did here when I heard scuffling in the wall!! (We didn’t use kibbles but there were some in here from a prior dog years ago)
Peanut butter is like crack cocaine for rats and mice.
How do you dispose of used antifreeze?
My daughter has fallen in love with a little gopher we met. He was so tame he cleaned out his home and made huge reconstructions with us sitting there watching him. He was small and very cute. He saw us but seemed unafraid. I despise the rats that get into our homes but this guy was doing his thing in the dried out California soil, so I gave him a lot of credit. Go for it.
Yes, they’re called roof rats.
Our 13-year-old dachshund is not aggressive either. He sleeps most of the time but he walked into the house saw the rat and before we got there it was dead. It was still warm when Mr. Mercat picked it up.
40 years ago we lived in an old farmhouse and in the fall all the field mice wanted to come in. We had a dachsund then too. We also had a cat. Each of them was stationed by a hole waiting for the mice to come in. The cat would catch one and then play with it. In the meantime the dog would catch and kill 4 or 5.
Rats, Huge rats. Almost the size of wharf rats. They call them tree rats because they use the trees, power lines, etc. to get around. They love Cypress trees and will nest in them. We’ve been poisoning them for years. Our neighbor had a row of cypress trees along our shared fence and when it rained it would rain dead rats out of the cypress trees from when we poisoned them. He finally had them all cut down.
Don’t know how but the population got ahead of us this time and they broke into our attic. Had to hire a pest guy to get rid of all of them. He is keeping baited boxes all over our yard now to keep them knocked down.
The electrocution traps work well BUT you have to check on them frequently as a week-old corpse begins to fuse with the trap and its dreck to unglue them. I have had to toss two of them with stuck rats so that defeats the approach. If they add a bluetooth sensor so you know when they discharge that would be great.
I found bread soaked in bacon grease works well. I don’t know of any rodent (or human) who can avoid the smell of bacon grease.
They’re welcome to whatever, as long as they kill off the rats.
They’re also freakishly friendly.
I had one I named Slinky, who used to show up in my bathroom and curl around my ankles while I was doing my nails.
The creep up the lane from me nearly hit my car, swerving to run Slinky over, while he was basking, one morning.
Spun his tires on Slinky’s back and pretty much shredded him.
OMG, I cried.
When a wild snake sees you as a friend, it’s a very special thing.
Yeah, over the years, I tried them all.
Snake did the job nothing else could do.
Cats cannot go in walls where rats hide and most of the time, are unable to get underneath the furniture along the walls, where rats habitually travel when on the move.
At the time, there were a slew of hungry stray cats in my area yet the rat population flourished.
The truth is, if whatever trap doesn’t kill it the first time, there will never be a second chance.
Rats are smart.
Bacon.
“Rats attract snakes. “
That’s the silver lining, to some of us.
:)
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