I got at least one RAT in my house. Right now its eating my dogs food. Its a well fed healthy looking rat running between my bedroom and the kitchen with the dogs food and water.......
my dogs appear RATher frightened. they have wedged my girl friend on the sofa perhaps for protection?
I guess I will go trap shopping in the morning.....
this although humorous kinda unnerves me, i may sleep somewhere else tonight..........
no this isnt a joke.........
Hi, Where are you located? You have rat? None here, only mice. Province of Alberta is officially rat free since '60s. We killed them all. We have official rat patrol costing millions a year.
got a .22 ?
I think most people have had mice in the house, especially rural people, but if I had a rat in the house, I'd be sleeping at a friends house, or in my car, or anywhere but in that house. Rats are disgusting, not to mention they can bite and carry diseases. Set traps, provide poison, or just call an exterminator. In all honesty, I'd rather have a wolf or bear in the house than a goddamn rat. I absolutely hate rats.
And maybe the right dog (like a rat terrier) will kill a rat, but cats wont touch them. They just eat mice.
PS. If you use poison, please keep your dog outdoors or somewhere else. Dogs and cats will eat the poison too.
Oh yea, there must be a hole for the rats to come in, find it, and nail tin over it.
Good luck.... you need it!!!!
The first thing Billy the Exterminator will tell you is to put away the dog food.
If you saw one, there are probably others. I'd have a half dozen traps set around.
Good luck.
For the same reason we have prisons even though the crime rate is down.
Like others have said, remove any foods from the floor, draws, shelves that are open or easy to chew thru. Set several traps in out of sight places (less lit) and maybe do some poison (???). I hesitate on the poison tho because you don't want them to die inside the house especially in the wall or attic due to the lingering smell. I think there are poisons that take a while to work and maybe these are the kind you want. On the otherhand, the traps may be good enough. We once had a baby rat in our finished basement (funny story to this but I won't go into it) and we left several traps on some hidden shelfs) and we had left for that weekend (normal plans) and when we came home that weekend, sure enough one trap had one dead baby rat. We lived in a 4 plex and apparently the baby rat came thru the top of the concrete wall so we plugged that hole with steel wool. They don't chew thru steel wool so problem went away. At the time we lived about 4 or 5 houses away from a diner and I know they had rats in the back where the dumpsters were kept (NYC).
rats are near sighted, follow their paths they've scented, usually along walls etc
to find paths use a black light, the urine stains glow.
A rat exterminator once bragged to me that he caught rats all the time using snap traps WITHOUT bait, just by knowing where to put them and leaned them up against the walls, so the critters would 'bump' into them.
Heard that food production facilities that are NOT allowed to use poisons routinely place bowls of coca cola out for the rats, Since rats have no belching mechanism, they die from CO2 rupturing their insides. So, in the morning the food producer employees would simply go around and scoop up the dead rats gathered around the soda bowls. haven't verified, but makes a great story.
Victor traps, new each use, peanut butter, out of pet reach. Use 2,
3, or even 4 plastic shopping bags to discard.Don't forget, as the temperature of the rat's body drops, fleas abandon, and yep into your dog....and you.Not verified here, either.
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
Heard that food production facilities that are NOT allowed to use poisons routinely place bowls of coca cola out for the rats, Since rats have no belching mechanism, they die from CO2 rupturing their insides. So, in the morning the food producer employees would simply go around and scoop up the dead rats gathered around the soda bowls. haven't verified, but makes a great story.
You know ants won't touch Diet Coke because it contains no sugar but I had a Coca-Cola delivery truck driver tell me that rats love the diet soft drink. I suppose the company must have tested it on rats. ^_^
TDD
I had two in the house once. I used rat poison, which works by causing them to lose the ability to regulate their body heat. So they seek out warm places and die. Like behind the furnace and over the firebox in the fireplace. I had to knock 2 bricks out of the mantel. Don't use poison inside.
More recently I had another one. This time I used a Safer trap baited with peanut butter and oatmeal. It took 2 nights, but I got him.
I once tried to get rid of pests in a warehouse/office I had and the rats/mice ate the ant bait and the ants ate the peanut butter off the rat/mouse traps. The funniest thing you will ever see is a mouse caught in a rat trap, the look on the lifeless face of the mouse is frozen in a horrible grimace because the bar of the big trap has crushed the little rodent's ass. o_O
TDD
The Daring Dufas wrote in news:jjl0bk$h39$1 @dont-email.me:
Rodents also love the taste of warfarin/coumadin, the main active ingredient in rat poison. Because it makes them bleed into their lungs, they run outside to gasp for air and die (I'm told). Of course, warfarin is the main medication against thrombosis via its inhibition of blood clotting.
The OP did not say how many rat traps he had set.
We had them too.
First thing is figure out how they are getting in. In our case it was a soffit screen. Plug up all the holes. Then TRAP them out, don't use poison.
I have had decent luck with glue traps but the most effective was this live trap. I had exactly zero luck with the big Victor traps. They either got the bait without tripping the trap or they tripped it and still got away.
Inside your house, the idea of keeping food away from them is useless. They will find something to eat if they have to chew a hole in a cabinet and eat into a box. You have to tighten up the perimeter and keep them out.
A rat is far more likely to chew a hole to get out than to get in tho.
It's amazing how many poisons are used in medicine. Botox is one that comes to mind. o_O
TDD
The Daring Dufas wrote in news:jjl8q9$7s5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
Yes, it's the dose that does it. A little salt is flavoring, a lot and you're pickled ...
-> kitchen with the dogs food and water.......
Very good points. I would bait the traps with whatever they're eating now, like the dog food. That means keeping the dog out of the areas where the traps are set (duh!) and monitoring them often to try to mitigate the flea hopping problem. I used my X-10 motion detector to alert me when the squirrel that was loose entered the Hav-a-hart trap. Not sure if rats will trigger it although I know that birds do. They constantly fly in and out of the trap when it's outside, eating all the peanut butter.
Collecting the dead rats when they're warm is the only way to avoid the flea issue. I would never use poison on anything larger than a mouse in a home setting. They'll stink God-awful bad if they crawl into some inaccessible cavity to die. Set the traps along the walls where you suspect rat activity. Pellets should be easy to see if the problem is more than one or two rats. Black light may or may not reveal urine stains. Lots of different types of UV lights, not all of them are right for the job.
-- Bobby G.
Here's a method used on farms. Place a 5 gallon bucket half filled with water, where the rats run along the walls. Float some whole oats on top of the water. Put a ramp such as a piece of 2x4 to the top of the pail and secure it so it dont fall off (a couple nails that go into the pail should do). The rat will go up the board, and jump in to get the oats. Then it drowns. This does work. Rats often drown in livestock watering tanks on farms. The oats (or any other feed that will float), encourages them to enter.
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