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I have always done humane trapping, mostly feral cats in the last few years; but with such as raccoons it is tempting to do otherwise; they are truly destructive and they reproduce prolifically like illegal aliens!

Years ago my neighbor across the road, about 1/4 mile from me, tore his milk barn down. The rats ran to hide under my house. They ate the flexible duct work out and one got in the house. My husband shot it, in the house. We got the duct work replaced with the hard shell type and exterminated the rats.

Now my daughter and SIL have goats. Rats were going after the goat food and killed several of her baby chicks. They spent several evenings, after dark, outside shooting rats. The rats decided to move to safer quarters and started digging dens near my big dog fence. The old dogs killed some, but I bought a smaller live trap. They weren’t relocated. They were shot in the trap. Feral cats got some of them. I also tossed some bricks of poison under the house to get the rest.

I don’t tolerate rats.

For rats I created my own dead fall traps; nothing humane about that: it crushes them! In my ‘shop’ shed I put out poison baits; I don’t know what happened to the rats and I don’t care; they are gone! ¯\_🤨_/¯

A few years ago I was living in a converted barn. After a couple of years I started having rat problems inside the house. Seems they had chewed a small hole in the bottom of the dog food bag and were living high.

I put out those little poison balls and they kept disappearing so I thought I'd quit seeing rats. Nope. I bought more and put them out. No joy. I asked the guy at the store what was going on, was this stuff garbage or what. He said they are carting the balls out and storing them.

So I came up with a plan. I bought the bricks of poison that have a hole down the length of the brick. I attached a stiff wire to a heavy base. The wire was mounted vertically and I could put 4 or 5 of the bricks on it so they had to eat it there or leave it. Took a few days till I had no more rats.