I thought I was the only person with a rat problem. I posted this on another board Aug. 28 of last year:
Every year as fall approaches, I get inundated with packrats. Over the years I’ve learned it’s best to leave an opening for them, because if I don’t, they make them. They’ll chew right through siding and plywood. At least with an existing entryway I can monitor their activity and don’t have to suffer new holes.
Some of them are pretty damn smart, and you can never tell what might interest them as bait in a trap.
I noticed the first one a couple weeks ago when I inadvertently left a green pepper out overnight. It was half gone in the morning, so I immediately knew I’d been invaded early this year.
Since this one obviously likes green peppers, I set out my trapline with peppers as bait. He must have gotten his fill the first night because he just ignored the bait in succeeding raids. I’ve had past success with peanut butter, soap, fish heads, fried potatoes, raw potatoes along with a bunch of other items, and tried them all with no luck.
Finally resorted to D-Con. Put out a new box every night four nights in a row and it didn’t seem to have any effect on him. Last night I heard him trying to haul the box of poison home with him, then…SNAP! Little bugger couldn’t see where he was going with the box of poison in his mouth and bumbled into one of my rat traps!
Generally the traps are pretty lethal and I give them a couple minutes to do their job before disposing of them. I checked on him and though he looked dead, couldn’t really see how he was caught. Poked him a couple times with my foot, then just decided to wait awhile. Soon as I left, I could hear him struggling. Bastard was playing dead! A new tactic in my experience, he turned out to just be caught by one leg.
Don’t know if you’ve ever looked at a packrats teeth, but they look pretty impressive to me and I don’t really want to see how much damage they can do to me. I’m trying to think how I can finish this, short of blowing a hole in my bathroom floor with the 12 gauge when I think, “toilet!” I grabbed the farthest end of the trap from his teeth and swung him into the toilet. I’ve got one of those old toilets with the full five gallon flush, so the bowl holds a fair amount of water. I tried holding him under with the trap, but he wasn’t having any of that and in the ensuing struggle, managed to pull his leg free from the trap. He was quick, but I was quicker. I slammed the lid of the toilet down before he managed to claw his way up my arm to my juggler.
So, now I’m in real trouble. Even though those five gallon flushers will do a heroic job of getting stubborn things down, there was no way in hell that packrat was going to fit down the pipe. I cracked the lid a bit to check on things and he was sitting there on his little wood raft, when he sprung at the tiny view crack. Lucky I didn’t smash my nose when I slammed the lid down again.
I’ve only got one bathroom, and I know I’m going to be wanting to use it in the morning, so I have two choices. Either try to kill the bastard off or rig up some sort of remote lid lifter and let him go. Really, I knew it came down to only one choice because if I let him go, I’d never be able to sleep soundly again, waiting for him to extract revenge in some ugly way.
Thought about the shotgun again, but then I saw the plumbers helper sitting right there. I knew I had to be lightning fast, but fortunately, the adrenaline had kicked in and I was successful in getting him with the first plunge. I waited the appropriate amount of time, but when I relaxed the plunger a bit, discovered that he’d managed to find some breathing space in that plunger, so I had to re plunge and waited about 20 minutes.
I left him in there overnight (with the lid down, just in case) so I could give him an appropriate burial in the morning so the chickens wouldn’t eat him and all the poison he’d consumed. So this morning I carefully opened the lid to find that I was indeed successful and fished his body and raft out for disposal.
Just before I started this thread, I heard another packrat come through the hole in the bathroom. I think his brother is looking for him! I’m scared, real scared!