Rat trapper extraordinaire..
Last week went to my chain saw shed and opened the door.
Dirty rats jumped all around as i upset there evil little party.
Ok you guys wanna piece of me you came to the wrong shed.
Armed only with old fashioned wood rat traps due to lack of suitable employment at the present time i started my pre emptive strike.
I screwed the wood traps on old fence boards.
To incite the devils i used creamy JIFF as i have personally tested this brand and find it most satisfactory.
Each day for 4 days i have caught a Rat bringing my score up to 4 so far.
I have a fear of Rats and spiders and sometimes dream of DR NO covering me with them to expel secrets.
But i pressed on despite my anxiety.
I know its mean but the trap went so fast on one he was froze in mid lick eyes wide open and i laughed most heartily like a demented serial killer.
Now the decision?.
Should i throw the carcass in mean Mrs Jones yard or mean Mr Smiths front porch?.
Tempting yes,but no sense angering the rat gods so i buried them without a word of scripture to send them on to eternity..
The fellow at the hardware store said glue traps work but that sounds a bit mean to die slow on a glue board.
Well they were 5 bucks and there a one use only so nix snaid that idea..
Have not resorted to poison yet as i dont want them going into holes and stinking things up..
Low teck but effective, I think i will disarm the traps for awhile yet spread the Jiff around for a few days so they throw caution to the winds.
Replies
Are you able to reuse the traps?
I read somewhere that they only work once and then the rats smell or sense something that makes them suspicious. I know that mouse traps can be used over and over again but I never tried to reuse a rat trap.
I reuse the traps but put them out in the rain for a few days to get rid of scent
I had a real problem with rats once, killed over 2 dozen. One time I removed a dead rat from the trap, and reset it. I walked about 20 feet away, then I heard it snap. My thought was the hair trigger didn't hold. So I went back only to find another one dead. It was a good night for rat killing.
You are right about those hair triggers. Some of the Victors seem more sensitive than others and setting them makes me nervous.
Oh yeah, one little tip, I always eat before I set the traps because otherwise the peanut butter and bread in them looks so tempting and........ . LOL
I never had much luck with snap traps. I made that trap "rattus rattus" is in from 1/2" hardware cloth and a sliding aluminum door. It is triggered by a victor trap. (pulls the pin holding up the door)
Glue traps also do a good job. I killed well over a dozen before it was over.You will never control the rats until you plug up the holes and if you poison them it is only a matter of time before you are tearing out walls looking for a dead one. Usually that will be a nest of dead pups.I have figured out rat shot from a .22 does a very good job on these buggers but my wife is still not thrilled with me shooting them in the house. Once we got he house sealed up I don't have any more trouble but it took a while to get all the ones that lived here.
I doubt you will get the neighbor to stop feeding the birds but maybe you can help them make their feeder a little more rat proof. These guys are just squirrels with a bald tail so that is not easy to do.
Being a past "bug man", I can attest that the BEST poison is warfarin, it's an anti coagulant, and the rats and mice will MOSTLY head for a water source to expire.
They bleed out and the smell is less than a bloated trapped rat. We used it in hospital crawls under the kitchens, it got eaten, but hardly ever found the dried up rat carcass. There was a creek and the Delaware river nearby, they headed there.
It goes without saying that poison is a no go if pets are around, they can and will eat the poisoned rat, not the actual bait blocks or pellets.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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If I remember correctly, Warfarin was named after the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (that's where the WARF came from) which funded the research and development of the anticoagulant. Coumadin, I believe, is the same stuff. It has a rather narrow therapeutic range so it has to be monitored closely at least when used in humans.
Yes, Warfarin and Coumadin are the same thing. My sister's father in law was told that, so he refused to take Coumadin ("rat poison") so now he's dead.
I'm not the OP but have had my own experiences. I've tried snap traps, poison, live traps, shooting and even the dog once with varying degrees of success. (The dog caught the rat but he is a hunting dog with a soft mouth so he let it go. He is brutally vicious on socks and underwear though.)
I had never located stinks when using poison and never liked the potential for the poison to cause secondary poisonings (which happened). The live traps were unsuccessful for me although they worked for a neighbour. Shooting might have worked but after several hours reading a book I lost interest. So now I use the victor traps which have been reasonably effective.
Mice go for peanut butter. Rats like meat, a bit of hotdog is a better bait for rats.
I doubt you will make a real dent in them until you plug up all the holes in the shed. The first question is what are they eating? As long as there is food, they will breed up to the food supply.
Are these Norway Rats or Roof Rats (is the tail a lot longer than the body)
This is a roof rat AKA rattus rattus
http://gfretwell.com/wildlife/rattus%20rattus.jpg
The neighbor is feeding birds so i think there hiding in the shed and running over there at night. There roof rats.
bird feeding is really a no no as it also draws raccoons and possums.
And cats.
Got a similar situ here. Rats eating my maters made me quit the garden a few years ago. Told DW I was going to the pound to get a cat, a mean cat. She wondered somewhat emotionally, "But what if the dogs kill the cat?" I said it's an employee; I'll go back to the pound for another one.
So I'm still waiting for her come to the understanding that cats are employees and not pets.
I had a compost pile and they inhabited it. They would poke their heads out of a tunnel and look around. It was kind of cute in a weird way. At first, then not so much.
>poke their heads out of a tunnel and look around<
rats in the pile? sounds good for .22 practice
In the city, that would have to be an air rifle, but it did cross my mind. Air rifle was out of the budget though. Thought about a wrist rocket, but I doubt I would have hit any of em. Plus you have to get em all. I think they ate 5 lbs of rat poison bait, while I was trapping them.I didn't know red birds were attracted to peanut butter, and they must peck pretty hard, it wasn't pretty.
and BIRDS.
had a customer complain about all the birds getting in the soffits and such.
Look around the yard and there was no less than 5 feeders...duh.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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PROUD MEMBER OF THE " I ROCKED WITH REZ" CLUB
there's a story about good with the bad in there... or something about both ends of a stick
Has Peta contacted you yet? I sent in your name....
i've had a roof rat in my kitchen for the past month.
set out the wooden/steel spring trap with cheez-wiz at night. every morning the trip plate was licked clean!
started watching tv with my pellet pistol beside me. busted a couple of caps at the varmint, to no avail.
so i borrowed one of those fancy plastic traps from a friend. the rat wouldn't even go near it.
so i got out the warfarin (great name)- what my friend calls rat crack. was a bit worried about him dying in the walls, but came down yesterday morning, and the little critter was nice enough to be lying right in front of my couch. but he wasn't quite dead. so i put one of those plastic nail tubs over him, made my coffee, and sat down for my morning BT session.
and another of the little beasts goes scurrying across the room!
so more poison last night. which he ate. and i can hear him moving around as i type this. but not for long...
I also have had problems with the trigger plate being licked clean. Now I mash up a small piece of bread with peanut butter (or whatever) and try to mold it around the trigger. That seems to be a more successful approach with mice and rats. Well, successful from my point of view anyway. The rodent's may have a different opinion.
I'm 4 for 4 with pepperoni or bacon grease.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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PROUD MEMBER OF THE " I ROCKED WITH REZ" CLUB
My dear departed granny used bacon rind to trap rats. There's a hole in the trigger with teeth to hold the bait. It's guaranteed that rats cant lick the bacon rind off, they get aggressive and it's lights out.
If you wrap the trigger with sewing thread it holds the bait and they get their teeth could on it.
Just wrap it a good amount and they will have to work harder at it and ....."There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
Thanks, sewing the bait on to the trigger sounds like a good idea.
Sphere and Dam Inspector both suggested using meat which also sounds like something worth trying (thanks guys). I doubt I'll encounter any vegetarian rats. LOL
I may be wrong, but.... I think good peanut butter is one of the best if not "the" best.
Rodents eat grains and nuts. At least in the wild. They forage for them and even store them.
They eat greens as well but the grains and nuts are storable so they are prized.
So when you take a nut like a peanut and grind it up the smell is irresistible to them.
They can smell it from a long way off.
When I bait the trap I just smoosh the peanut butter into the threads and put some on top.
I feed peanuts to squirrels. There are empty peanut shells all around but they can find the one with the nut in it by smell.
The same thing goes for when squirrels bury nuts. They find them again by smell.
I also tweak the triggers on my traps. When i get them I check and see how sensitive the trigger is. If it needs more sensitivity I bend things around.
My triggers are sensitive enough that I have to set them down very carefully.
I don't get clean triggers usually so I only use the thread for tricky like buggers.
"There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
Edited 11/21/2009 7:24 pm by popawheelie
Peanut butter is what I usually use and I too have been known to tweak a trigger from time to time. Right now the only critters I am after are mice. If I have a rat problem in the future perhaps I will try meat in some traps and the PB in the others and then we'll see.
I have had pet rats in the past (not wild stock) and they were keen on any high calorie food. Meat was very popular. I mostly fed them leftovers and pellets so I don't recall giving them any peanut butter (or nuts), although I must have given them used up PB jars. Rats make great pets, cheap, smart and interesting, they do gross lots of people out though.
My dad worked in medical research and brought home Wistar rats for us.
Great pets. They were smart and clean."There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
We occasionally have rats (not mice) in the kitchen - caught two this summer/fall. Just an old house with lots of entry points.
One time before Thanksgiving, DW had the the holiday pies cooling on the (island) range overnight.
Rats ate a good bit of two Kentucky High Day pies (pecan, chocolate, or the bourbon - not sure what they went for). Ignored the pumpkin and pear pies.
Damned sad.
Forrest
I busted a gut laffing one thanksgiving when my first wife had a turkey in the sink soaking. The cat , all 3 lbs of it, had it by the wing and was pulling with all it's might to carry it off.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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I use a battery powered "Rat Zapper." We set it up at our hunting camp and killed eight mice in about an hour. It's humane, neat. We just incinerated the dead ones in our wood stove.
I'll give a second nod of approval for the "Rat Zapper" We had some rats getting into the house - had to get rid of them - the Rat Zapper was the only thing that worked. I'm glad that I found out where they were coming in - haven't had any since - but keeping the Rat Zapper on standby just in case...
"I'm glad that I found out where they were coming in."
Yeah, killing them is all very well and good, but unless you intend to keep going until every rat within a couple of miles is dead, stopping them getting in should be the first priority.
Absolutely, and roof rats mark their trails so the next rat coming along will follow the dead one's path into your house.
The only good thing about that is glue traps work better if you can get them in the path.
You can sometimes see the path as a dark line if you can sight along it. It is just oil from their fur I think. Look up close to walls or along a truss chord.
They also have the charming habit of chewing a hole in attic installed duct work to heat or air condition their nests. My wife found an ice machine on her golf course with a hole chewed in the ice chute for the same reason. There was a nest up against that hole on the machine.They threw the whole machine away over health concerns.BTW if you hate rats, don't hurt the snakes. They are on your side.
Edited 11/22/2009 12:31 am ET by gfretwell
I dunno - the snakes around here are maybe 16" long and skinny. I bet the rats eat them.
One of my neighbors keeps dog food in her car in case she has to evacuate them (don't ask...) and has rats living in the car and on the engine. The go on trips with her and have done an amazing amount of mischief to her belts and hoses.
You would be surprised how big a rat a small snake can eat. Usually it will still have to be in the 2-3' range to take a full grown roof rat but smaller snakes will eat the pups.
I like chunky peanut butter, you can rub the chunks into the trap plate better - they have to gnaw a bit to yard 'em out.The all plastic and the plastic plate traps are #### - my catch ratio is at least 10:1 using the old reliable copper plate Victors. The only time I catch them in the plastic traps is when they stumble into it after a non fatal hit from the Victor. Keep them near wall edges - rats and mice are "tactophilic" - they like to rub up against something all of the time, like a wall. The last time I used bait was 9 years ago, and I remember it like yesterday. False attic over half of my shop, and I couldn't seal it up (peeled cedar logs for rafters meant the soffits were almost impossible to close off). I ripped open and threw a half dozen bags of bait out over all that nice yellow fiberglass - figured they go outside to die. I went on vacation (it was winter). Didn't get into the shop for about three weeks. Went in, cranked up the heat... hmmm... what's that smell? Climbed up the ladder and thought, "Looks pretty clean? Hey, wait a minute, where's all those little blue poops?" Not one to be seen. Who the heck picked up a half dozen bags worth of bait?I finally found 'em. Big Norway rats. The flies led me there. Must have been about 20 of them in a steaming pile. I knew how many by counting the tails. It was like fur soup. I gag just thinking about it... Made me hypersensitive to rat/mice smell. Nowadays I usually smell them a day or two before the traps pick them up. -t
"To incite the devils i used creamy JIFF as i have personally tested this brand and find it most satisfactory."
One question inquiring minds want to have answered: Is your neck still sore? :D
Personally, I can think of an even cheaper, easier method.
First, of course, you clean your shed, to reduce hiding places and remove anything -like bird and grass seed - that might attrace the critters.
Then, near the ground and at opposite ends, you cut a 6" hole in the wall. That's all you need do.
With these friendly openings, the local Community Abatement Technicians (CATs) will add you to their daily rounds. They may be joined by their fellow exterminators, the FEline Replacement Rodent Eliminating Technicians, or FERRETs.
Now, the CATs may be confused, and 'thank' the evil neighbors by placing offerings on their porches.
We had a spring rat infestation around here. Lots of people that never had a problem had rats, Also a city about 300 miles away had a huge rat problem.
Mr Boot's one night this spring was going wierd, he was up in a ceiling opening and shaking and caterwhaling. Next morning he had a nice big dead rat at the bedroom door, and a real mess of blood. must have been a good fight. no problems since.
The local pest officer explained, when the young males leave the nest they seek out a suitable home then go back, pick a female and head to the new home to make more rats.
Spring is the best time to get them while on the move.
Put sunflower seed in the peanut butter and pack around the trigger.
I stuffed coarse steel wool down the underground electrical entrance conduit, that seems to keep the mice#s down
"spreading jiff around to temp them" might be considered entrapment.
Your writing style is similar to that of a Haiku. Very entertaining story.
OK, so you don't like the cat or ferret ideas .... here's my scoop on traps ....
Traps are generally one-shot items, though sometimes you can get a few uses out of the spring-loaded ones.
The glue traps with the thick, rubbery layer of glue are fabulous, but must remain above 40 degrees for the glue to be really sticky. Colder than that, and you are pretty much limited to the spring traps.
As for bait, the trick is to make the bait stick to the trigger. I would often use contact cement to hold a peanut or Hershey's kiss -usually one of each - in place. Mice really love chocolate too!
I had good luck in my storage locker with one of those ultra-sound devices.
Food is not the only attractant. A warm nest is also a real mouse magnet. Hence, I have had them nest in my hot-tub, and the fiberglass insulation in my shed.
As for poisons, I've lost both a dog and a cat to eating poisoned mice. If you think a dead mouse in the wall stinks, wait until a German Shepherd crawls under your footings and passes away.
How to tell if you have mice? Cats hanging around is usually a hint ...
I like to use chemical weapons in rat wars. Most pool supply places will have powdered chlorine in 8 oz. packages. DON"T USE THIS INSIDE YOUR HOUSE
It works well around foundations and out buildings, find there holes and put maybe 2 tbl. spoons worth well into the hole. It will outgas for several hours if the hole is damp.
Its pretty safe around pets and other animals, because they won't go any where near it.
A 22 with birdshot and a flashlight used to be alot of fun when the FFA had pest hunts when I was young.
An empty barrel makes a good rat trap, lean a board they can clime up against it and put some dog food, cat food or peanut butter in the bottom. They jump in but can't jump back out.
Don't plan on keeping a roof rat in a barrel. I had one jump straight up out of a 30 gallon trash can. My wife was holding the can and got it back under him before he came down but he was clearing the top of the can by 6-8".
She was not a happy camper when I got back with my .22 pistol to shoot him.