Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Rats
Yes. They’re back. But not cute ones like these:
No, we’re infested with the great fat brown ones, Rattus norvegicus. They’re nice enough as pets, but you don’t want them in your attic, pooping and pissing everywhere and making more racket than Britney with a quart of tequila. For a while, the smell of cats in our house kept the rats away, but I fear the vermin have figured out that Ash and Mist are softies. They’re not hardened rodent-killers like our poor, ill-fated Faithful. Moth-killers, maybe. Provided the moth doesn’t put up much fight.
They kept my son up last night with their carousing. It’s like the dorms all over again, except rats don’t listen to the Kinks at top volume or guzzle their own bong water. Jake devised a method of eradication as novel as it was ineffective: he repeatedly banged on the ceiling with his didgeridoo. And this afternoon, Karen took a stab at Novel Eviction* Techniques by burning a stick of agarbathi incense in the crawlspace.
At least now, the house smells nice.
It could be worse.
Once, while honeymooning in Europe, we walked past a Parisian exterminator’s storefront. That skillful fellow must have been a taxidermist, too, because he had filled his window with the posed remains of his most fearsome captures. Those buggers were huge. Mount a saddle on ’em huge. Yee-haw!
We don’t have pack animals in our attic yet, but I believe in being proactive. So in that spirit, I set out on the internet to learn what I could about potential solutions to our rat problem.
The first thing I learned: I need a terrier.
Rat baiting involved placing a terrier dog in a pit with 100 or so rats. A keeper measured the time until the last rat was killed, and men would place bets on how long it took the terrier dog to kill all the rats.
Cool! You mean I might even make some money off this venture? But failing that, I could always try to trap the little mothers. I discovered that my habit of using peanut butter for bait might be failing because my rats want a more varied diet. According to Robert Sullivan, author of the definitive Rats, proper baits include “Hershey Bars, nuts, anchovies, shrimp and beer.” Mmmm. Shrimp with Mole Poblano. Wouldn’t you know it? I have a dozen five-inch-long gourmets crapping up my attic.
What else could I do? Kill them with d-Con. Scare them away with a powder made from fox and bobcat urine. Now, that sounds like a good idea.
There is no magic spray or device that you can use to make them go away. Some people try to sell predator urine, such as coyote or fox urine to get rid of mice, but that doesn’t work. They also try to sell ultrasonic sound emitters. These devices are worthless at eliminating rats. Some old wive’s tales recommend the use of mothballs or ammonia-soaked rags to make them leave, but I’ve been to countless homes where these techniques failed – biologists know that these attempts won’t work. The ONE AND ONLY WAY to take care of your problem is with trapping and removal of the animals.
That website? “Professional Wildlife Removal,” which gives me some clue as to their bias.
You know, I was going to close with, “Is it obvious? I got nothing tonight.” But that’s not true.
I got rats.
D.
*Speaking of Novel Eviction, the agent rejections are coming in fast and furious. From my first set of queries, I’ve had 6/7 rejections. Waiting on #7. I’ve sent out another three queries, and yes, yes, YES, I know I need to send out several more.
Well, I don’t know about rats, but I do know that the old wive’s tales and other assorted Internet advice on getting rid of a groundhog are completely ineffective. So, I’d wager the same probably holds true for the same source of advice on getting rid of rats, especially since I imagine the average rat is smarter than the average groundhog.
If they were in a shed, I’d suggest burning sulfur, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea to do that in your attic.
Oddly enough, since we got ferrets, the possums have been far less active. Supposedly the smell keeps them away.
But you’ve got ferrets already.
We’ve had rats. We laid baits for them in the ceiling (the stuff.. “Ratsack”… that is unfortunately also irresistable to cats and dogs and causes haemoraging) and after a while, they were gone.
And if you’ll excuse a second, later comment … that reminds me:
“SQUEAK”
Has the Death of rats ever featured as other than a bit player in a Discworld novel?
Move.
We had rats when I was a kid and I swore I would never, EVER live in a house with rat vermin again. I’d have the for-sale sign up before you’d finished writing this post.
we have squirrels at my house. they somehow get into the wall of my brother’s room and try to get out but they can’t climb up so you hear them scritch-scratch and then THUMP when they fall. and they squeek. and then they die. and we have no idea how they get in. wtf.
Rats are really hard to get rid of.
On my aunt’s horse farm we had ample supplies of grain which the rats always managed to get into. (You can’t put seventy 100# bags of grain in one of those cute rat-proof bins. Unless you buy seventy rat-proof bins. eeek.)
For many years the cat population kept them in control, but then one year we neutered all the cats we could find and found homes for the pensioners. We were then left with about twenty adorable kittens who had no clue how to kill or eat rats. What a disaster.
That year we put out baited traps in the grain room every night. Every morning all the traps would be sprung and all the bait eaten. We started a joke that the rats had a demented cousin George they would bring along on their raids. “Here George, just put your head on this spring.” SNAP! “Great! Next one, George.”
We get mice infestations ever year, and sometimes rats show up to eat the mousie bodies caught in the traps. Yuck.
THe only thing that we’ve found that works is traps, checking and resetting the traps twice daily, blocking all entrances, traps near the air vents, and checking all traps twice daily. Did I mention checking and resetting the traps?
Pain in the ass.
Call an exterminator. Terminix or Orkin or some such outfit. Terminix costs us $80/month, but they have a guarantee on pest removal, so you can bug them over and over again until the problem is fixed. Good luck.
What about turning Zappa and Nameless loose up there? You know they’d have fun …
We decided on glue traps. I baited them with Nestle’s milk chocolate chips and bits of chocolate chip cookies. No squealing yet.
If we turned the ferrets loose up there, we might never see them again. Judging from what happened last night (Zappa disappeared into our closet and only reappeared this morning . . . leading to the memorable quote from Karen, “Zappa came out of the closet this morning!”), I don’t think siccing the ferrets on our rats is such a good idea.
Tam, we aren’t moving . . . not in THIS housing market.
Suisan, we had an exterminator service. They claimed to be catching rats, but we never saw any drop-off in our attic noise. Great racket for the exterminators. I understand they don’t call themselves “exterminators” anymore in recognition of the absurdity of the idea of ever exterminating rats. They’re animal control experts, or some such.
Oh…EEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUWW.
We have them in the backyard. The pest-control people are helping, but I suspect we’re going to have to have baited traps forever.
So we put the sticky traps up in the crawlspace and attic, baited with chocolate chip cookies. The little bastards made off with the cookies and left us poop for presents. I have proceeded to plan two — poison.
You don’t need to bait sticky traps. But you do have to put them all over the place, right up against the wall. And you have to go under the crawl space more than once a day to change them out.
I’ve never had any success with rat sized sticky traps, unless I’m going after spiders under the couch. The rats are too strong to get stuck.
Old fashioned spring traps (don’t need to bait them usually, just put them in the corner of the wall and floor where they’ll run over them) and poison are the way to go.
Just be on the lookout for Ben!
When we had rats in our attic, my son in law and his buddies went up there with blow guns and darts! LOL Seriously! it was pretty hilarious, but they got them. Also the best traps we’ve found are the big clip/clamp type traps. No bait, or a tiny dab of peanut butter way back in the hinge. Or live traps and then drown the fuckers.
Poor you! We never had rats in our house in N.E., but we did get voles and chipmunks sneaking in and stealing the dog’s food. That stopped once we sealed up the cracks in the house’s foundation. Was fun to watch them pop out from under the sink and stuff big chunks of Purina in their cheeks and run off again. The dog, a miniture poodle, would just watch.
Terriers are awesome dogs. But they’ll go for your ferrets as well as rats. Will be interesting to rain them to know the difference. Jack Russell terriers are your best bet. Have the ferrets around them from young so they know them as friends.
Good luck!
We killed Rat-o with a snap trap. They are rather social animals and large so they usually go for the peanut butter in the snap. Sometimes they just get stuck in the glue traps and flop, or so sayeth my friends. I didn’t want to see that scene. It was still bad seeing Rat-o with his neck broken. He was cute.
I’d love to have a Jack Russell terrier. The family is dead set against a dog . . . but a puppy? Surely that’s not the same thing! 🙂
Rats are cute, and I would use those live trap thingies if I could be sure the rats wouldn’t come right back in. Although I guess I could transport them miles away and release them.
To the one storing 70 100# bags of grain with rat problems. Try to get a grain tank and have bulk grain delivered by the nearest feed mill. We’ve saved a stunning amount of money over the past 15 years both through saved gas and that grain is cheaper in bulk. Pests can’t eat our grain and it stays clean and dry all year. We just stick a bucket under the cleanout door and it pours right in.
You might want to get or borrow an additional cat that is a good mouser. We’ve got some that even bring home rabbits! By getting all food out of their way, and letting cats roam where they will, we don’t have any trouble except skunks. Cats apparently don’t eat skunks. Can’t blame them, really.
SQUEAK
Love terry pratchett, and the Death of Rats rules!