I have a rat problem. There may be more than one but the one I've seen (twice) is about ten inches long, head to butt, with a tail as big as my index finger. I affectionately call him "Basil".
The whole problem started a couple of months ago when, being sick of the air resistance when I put the liner in my plastic (Rubbermaid) garbage can, I cut 1.5" diameter holes around the base. It solved the resistance problem but then we noted that the liner had been torn in places and food spread around. The garbage bin(s) is kept in an enclosed garbage room but the door's not too good and I noticed that the bottom near the hinge had been chewed away making a nice little (big?) hole. Then we noticed droppings leading out to the street. Oh, oh!
So being the frugal type I headed off to the exterminator supply house where the very busy owner (it seems lots of people have similar problems) sold me a packet of green "cake" with instructions to break it into inch or so chunks and leave them around the garbage bins. He warned that it might take a couple of applications. O...K...I'll go along with this for a while.
I did what he suggested four times and each time the chunks disappeared totally. The rat loves them! Tonight I encountered him just finishing off his last meal of green "poison". Seemed very spry to me and quite fat. He might have to enlarge his entry passage.
My wife, ever the pacifist, demanded why I didn't take a baseball bat to him. "Any real man would have done so," was her argument. I contemplated a visit to the emergency room with rat bites and even if successful the nauseating blood-and-guts-everywhere clean up problem and decided that she should find a "real man" because I clearly wasn't it.
The dog, a terrier supposedly adept at fighting rodents, has difficulty even noticing a cat standing beside the back door so passing the problem to him is likely to be futile. Further the vet charges more than the human emergency room if (likely) he gets bitten.
Since there's no "real man" available she threatens to call in our suburban-living gun-nut son and his NRA-approved shotgun. I'm sure he'd welcome the opportunity to display his skills but the local police have this thing about "shots fired".
My less violent approach would be to upgrade the poison but it has occurred to me that perhaps "nanny" has severely restricted the use of such and the green "cake" is a might-give-him-a-slight-headache remedy. Where's the arsenic?
Does anyone have any input on the poison situation or other (reasonable and non-destructive) suggestions on how I might get rid of Basil and his (probably) friends permanently?
-- Patrick Riley