The patter of, not so, tiny feet
- Dec 9, 2016
- 2 min read
We are plagued by rats. We first noticed their calling cards early last month since when we have been trying, and failing, to get rid of them.
The most effective and safest (unless you are a rat that is) way to get rid of them is by trapping. You can either trap them humanely in a cage for relocation or kill them in a back-breaking rat trap. Poisoning is not a good option because of the risk to other animals (and we have a dog) and the likelihood of poisoned rats crawling in between the bales and dying and putrifying there.
I bought a couple of plastic cage traps which can be used:
for trap and release
in conjunction with a rat trap
as a station for poison bait
Mark and Lew who had seen a rat out in the open said that it was BIG. Too BIG to get through the entrance to the trap. Still, we put the traps in place and baited them without setting the trap door to give the rats time to explore and get used to them and... nothing. They didn't even take the scrummy smelling cereal and berry fruit mix we were using to get their attention. It seems that the boys were right and that the rats are too big to get in.
Rats 1 : Us 0
Next we tried a couple of roomy cage traps. Apparently rats love chocolate so I sacrificed some of my dark chocolate to the cause in an unsuccessful attempt to lure them in to the cage. Lew suspects that the cages smell too new. Either that or they prefer milk chocolate.
Rats 2: Us 0
We tried rat traps - also to no avail.
Rats 3: Us 0
The rats have become a serious problem. They are tunnelling, vertically and horizontally, between the straw bales and the rib beams. In places you can see right through the straw bale wall to the exterior.
Mark rams loose straw into any gaps and overnight... the rats remove it.
So in desperation we have resorted to poison. The rats have been taking it for several days now.
A few weeks ago the local evening news reported that there was a rat problem and that resistance to poison is developing in rats. But for now, for us at least, it seems to be working as there was one dead rat outside of the back door yesterday. At least it had the decency to die in the open and not in the bales.
Rats 3 : Us 1
All the while we have deen putting down poison the other traps and cages have been left in place... and they still have not been visited or tripped.
While the poison is down we are chaperoning the dog when she goes into the garden just in case a rat carries any poison outside or a rat dies out in the open.
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