I discovered that I have a rodent problem in my garage, I found a first aid kit, a paddle jacket and two life jackets destroyed by some sort of rodent. I am really upset, and also fearful of other damage the little buggers can do. currently I am irrationally angry and want to use something on the scale of an atom bomb, but i dont have one available and it could upset the neighbors. What ways are available to catch and kill my furry enemies. There is no food items in the garage. but lots of expensive paddling gear. Thoughts?
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Replies
Ive had good luck with the glue traps, not the ones from home depot, but the bigger ones from a pest control place. I did a lot of work for McDonalds once and thats what they were using.
I am unsure the size of the rodents will glue traps work on mice and rats?
yes, Ive caught tiny field mice and rats probably 10 inches long. They usually die pretty quick, suffocate i guess.
Another rodent that causes similar problems is squirells.
Excellence is its own reward!
Chipmunks and pack rats too.
Should he be told about the mole thread..
The search function worked...
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=29935.1
It isn't nuclear... but just this side of it..
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
Edited 11/1/2003 10:38:46 PM ET by IMERC
hmmm. My pointer/dalmation mix hates squirrells... maybe I can give him some kind of device and let him loose.... wait a second, no opposable thumbs!
I am going to try and find glue traps on sunday and spread them out.... should I do floors and shelves? what kind of spacing should I use? (at this point I would buy a ton of them just to get even.)
You can get the stuff by the gallon too and spread it on cardboard. Never tried it myself though. Saw a guy on tv make a huge cardboard glue trap and put a candy bar in the middle to lure it on. Some show about rats in new york, it was pretty good.
How many little kids did he catch ?
Had a mouse in the house and tied a glue trap. All I caught was the cat. A really upset feline. Had to wait for the cat to get the mouse which he eventually did.
I have used both the spring traps, and the glue.
If you are going to use spring traps, peanut butter is best. It sticks better, and all that licking means they will be more likely to spring the trap.
But I have had much better success by using glue traps and a chunk of white bread. Nothing else seems to attract a rat as quickly as fresh white bread.
Either trap gets set parrallel to the wall, and right up against it. With the glue trap, set the chunk of bread closer to the wall. But not right up against the side of the glue trap.
When I lived in Texas, I had just moved into a rental house. The toilet was about to fall through the floor, so I removed the toilet, and took out enough of the floor to get past the rot. Then replaced all of it correctly.
Meantime, rats invaded the inside of the house. Always went for the bag of bread first and foremost.
Woke up at about 3 am one morning. Clack clack clack clack. Clack clack clack clack. Clack clack clack clack.
Crept into the kitchen to see what it was. Come around the corner slowly, and saw a huge rat stuck in the glue trap.
It saw me at about the same time.
Started screaming.
The rat, that is.
Man, the sound of a rat screaming is SOME freaky sound.
It was doing flip flops with that glue trap stuck to it, and getting more stuck, the more it struggled. I could have just tossed it out into the trash and let it die there, but decided to take mercy on it and put it out of it's misery instead. Used a steel vacuum wand as a club.
Just kept hitting and hitting. Wanting that screaming to stop...
Stupidity has saved a great deal of men from insanity.
Quittin' Time
Luka-
You better keep your eye out for the ASPCA swat team. A few years ago up here in the NE the ASPCA brought a " crulety against animals" charges on a fellow for beating a rat to death to with a blunt insturment while the rat was caught in his trap. True story.Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. chinese proverb
Whuf.
That was more than 20 years ago. Down in Texas, to boot.
So, the ASPCA thinks it would have been less cruel to throw the rat and trap in the trash, and just let it die of starvation ?
So, who won the case ?
Stupidity has saved a great deal of men from insanity.
Quittin' Time
I don't know who won the case or even if it ever made it to trial. It was a "newsy" item up here for a while though.Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. chinese proverb
In California you need to buy trapping licence to deal with mice and rats. Or so I am told.
Fred,
I heard it was cincinnati that required a hunting license for rodents. It was on an emailed list of "fun facts" so consider the source before passing it on.
Karl
Plot thickens, I cleaned out the garage (which is a 2 door, detached unit) and discovered a large soup can sized hole in both of the back corners of the garage.
Quick bit of background, the garage is on a concrete slab, with asphalt on two sides, and dirt on one side and the back, the holes are through dirt.....
I filled in the holes, but am not sure how to keep my favorite new furry friends out. It looks like they came through the wood above the sill plate.... now what? Oh I did find a cool trap online, the bellabs t-rex
http://www.belllabs.com/cgi/products.cgi?op=p&nm=dometrex
I also found a place that has a walk in and get electrocuted trap, I still am not sure if I am dealling with rats or squirrels, so I am going to get a big mechanical trap. I have a dog and a 17 month old so I am going to hold off on the poisions,.....
>> I still am not sure if I am dealling with rats or squirrels ...
Who cares. Naked tails vs. furry tails is the only difference. It's not like there's any shortage of squirrels.
A friend of mine asked about squirrel poison at the hardware store. The answer was, "Well, sir, it's against the law to poison squirrels in PG County, but if you have a rat problem, we do have some fine rat poison available."
yup, at this point I want what ever rodent dead.
Luka
You don't have any footage of that by chance?
I'm willing to pay a nominal fee of course.
Of course not.
That screaming was the weirdest thing I had ever heard, aside from when my dog caught a rabbit. It is something that I would rather forget.
I got the rabbit from the dog before she had done any apparent damage. The rabbit seemed to be perfectly fine, and did not go on screaming. But died in my hands there, within a few minutes. Apparently of shock.
Stupidity has saved a great deal of men from insanity.
Quittin' Time
Go to the local farmer's coop and rent a cage trap for squirrels, if you think it's rats or something that big. Use peanut butter for bait. The chunky kind, of course....
Then turn them loose near the local MacDonalds and do the world a favour, LOL!!
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Then turn them loose near the local MacDonalds and do the world a favour
What and suppliment bottom line?
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
Now you know why I only order the fish-burger when I'm stuck and have to eat a Mac Do....
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Do tell, what rivers do you float?? I happen to be in Prescott AZ. How many cats do you have?, well, get two more. Sorry to here about your loss. Jim J
We use poison pellets, careful that pets and kids can't get to them, in barns, garage and machinery. Buy them at the feed store.
In houses (we get a few a year, mostly in the fall) we use spring traps with squeeze cheese or cold cuts, behind furniture so pets can't get to them. For sale at the grocery stores. Rapidly terminal for the offenders.;-)
With poison use the slow acting kind. Peprepared for it to die in an unaccessible spot. (the smell)
With traps set them in clusters of several mouse and rat sizes together. Peanut butter is good bait.
If you bag the offending rodent move the traps to another part of the garage and take the trap that did the deed out of service for a while. Where there is on there are many.
The site and trap where the rodent met it's demise will be scented by the expired rodent and be picked up on by others. They will then avoid the traps and area.
Use both...
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
As a side note I was doing repair work for a customer
The damage was caused by squirrels
He was told at a place called "critter ritters" to use a container(that wicks the
smell )with fox piss hanging
from his house. I thought it was crazy but it really works.
Fill some old socks with moth balls and hang them where the mice like to congregate. That will repel everything........or use a cat. My shop cat keeps the place clean of varmits and it's in the woods.
Also if you have a lot of bugs hanging around (like in a basement) put a few toads down there. Did that once and the toads got so fat on bugs they could hardly hop.
my dog got beat up by one too many cats, and now tries to kill any he sees (he really is a nice dog though) so getting a cat will not work. glue traps and spring traps though sound like fun. I am going to make my garage a less friendly place for rodents.
PS. I am out in Jersey and mainly do northeast rivers, lehigh, tohickon, mongaup, kennebec, penobscot and dead, although I will be doing the grand next august! (oh yeah)
Put your soft goods in those big plastic containers; the one with the lids that seal tight. I've lost a lot of stuff to critters, ski ropes, sails, life vests......gets expensive after a while.
eric
Or big metal trash cans...our pet rats love to chew plastic...
Jen
Squirrels are rats with public relations ability! The big spring traps do both of them in- they don't discriminate between fancy and scaly tails...
Around here some rodents carry Hanta virus and several people a year die from it. A few months ago a 16 year old boy that had been cleaning a barn died. Doctors now are aware of this and normally can save people, if they come in soon enough, before the lungs get full of fluids. They also carry leptospirosis, so be sure your dog/cat are vaccinated for it so they and so you won't get it if exposed.
Rodents also carry fleas and your pets may get them, so protect them with a good flea product, like the ones you put between their shoulder blades once a month or so. Ask your vet about what you have in your area and don't forget rabies.
If you use dogs/cats for rodent control, you have to manage them also.
Keeping rodents out of structures is important. Don't know how it is where you are but be careful around the areas they live in and handling the ones you catch.
cats keeps every varment away but if not than use "warfrin" (sp?) throw bags.
Its basically oatmeal laced with poison.
Rats and mice are smart....they send out the young first to test the foods left around...if the foods don't kill them then they go and eat it. Warfrin takes about three days to kill the rats or mice so the older rats think its ok to eat.problem is..as Luka said....they go into the walls or where ever looking for water and die and stink in there.
Rat traps are the best and quickest......Cats are by far superior in keeping mice and rats away.
Poisons are a last resort IMHO.....Personally I'd never use poison unless it was a really futile situation!
Be a rat (JAmes Cagney?)
andy
My life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
I once had a family of mice invade my garage. When they got wise to the snap traps I put out some of the heavy duty glue boards. The next day I had the sticky situation of killing a thouroughly glued down, but very much alive, baby rattler with his jaws firmly locked around a dead mouse.
Now that's an effective rodent trap!
Kevin Halliburton
"I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity." - I.M. Pei -
dont know if this was covered but as winter closes in there is a tendency for those little buggers to hide under cover sheets i.e. over stationary tools and those pest defecate and urinate under the cover on the tool cast iron table top and pit the surface , enough that after weekly polishings and scrubbed w/400-500 grit paper w/wd40 there still there so i got a cat and put it in the shop and that put a end of that so far .....but i think the cat wants a cat so the journey continues.......
On the peanut butter thing ,I had little mickeys that would lick the trigger cleaner than when it came out of the package. Solved that by pushing a rasin into the curl and smearing it with peanut butter for the long distance lure effect. Snapped the necks of every one of those little mice as they tried to pull the rasin out of the trap.
---"...but i think the cat wants a cat ..."---
Not really. Cats are solitary animals and many that brought another cat to live with the first one found out that it took long time for them to like each other, sometimes years, or never.
Only time they "like each other" is for a few minutes during courtship and "like" is not really the word there.
There are some good friendships between cats but they are not very common. Mostly it is a standoff.
We have had up to three house cats at once, of very different ages and they looked past each other as others were not there.
In the tack room we use a piece of tin to cover any entry holes. If the hole is small enough, a can lid does it. License plates are good for that too.
I cant get a cat, I am allergic (I do the stop breathing trick), and my dog really hates cats. (he got popped in the nose by a cat and the cat drew blood, and then he became a cat hater...)
I did put my scary rat traps in 8 inch aluminum duct pipe, so if the dirty rats go in, they are not coming out.
I do have some random license plates and a huge hunk of scrap plexiglass to use on the holes too!
Best luck I ever had with pair of cats was to get two brothers from the same litter, got along really well minus some of the lonely behavior, (and later paranoid) displayed by solitary kittens remoived from a friendly litter.
Had them neutered at the same time. Still got along famously. Unfortunately, one succumbed to a car on the road nearby, but the other has turned out to be the best behaved cat I've ever had in a liftime of all kinds of cats.
I guess the obvious question is can you seal any openings that are allowing the critters in your garage in the first place? Rats come inside at night foraging for food. They usually travel along walls and always travel the same routes. I had a problem in my house with rats getting into vents that had tons of holes from added electrical conduits poking through them. When I remodeled, I put all the conduits in the walls where they belong and replaced all the crawl space vents and I haven't had a critter in since.
If you can't seal off the openings (and mice can get in small openings), I've used the sticky traps and the spring traps with equal success. You'll need large sticky traps, unless they are small mice. Same with the traps - get the big ones. Use peanut butter as has been suggested - put the trap perpendicular to a traveled wall - you'll know where by the droppings. I prefer these sorts of traps because you are certain you got one. Poison may work, but if they die, most times you never really know unless they die in your walls. Then you don't want to know. And don't handle the traps with your bare hands - use gloves. Someone told me they can smell human scent and avoid the traps. Don't know if that's true - maybe giving the rats too much credit.
If you use the sticky traps, put them along the walls parallel to the route they travel. It is kind of unsettling at first when you trap them this way - they sort of flop around trying to unstick themselves.