Rat patrol (not the TV show)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m in the midst of a rat experience. There is at least one family of rats living in my neighbor’s yard, but regularly venturing into mine. They are not really causing any trouble for me - they are in the far corner of the yard - but they are unwelcome. I even see them in broad daylight.

I had a bird feeder in that corner, but no longer. The birds will have to fend for themselves.

Anyway, I am not at all into killing things. I have a live trap, which I set, and which worked. I caught one of the fellas. I packed up the cage and transported the squeaking vermin to a local wooded area to release him. It was in a fairly secluded area, I popped open his cage, and he scurried into the woods.

I’ve since learned that, in doing so, I have broken the law. I also did not, apparently, do the rat any favors. It is a bad idea to transport live rats for several public health reasons, not to mention that the critter as an extremely low chance of surviving in their new environment.

Which leads me to where I’m at today. My city’s website advises live trapping and humane euthanasia. You can buy a little rodent gas chamber for around $80, you can buy an electric zapper trap, or you can drown the little guy. I chose drowning.

So I just murdered my first rat. He is currently in the trap, at the bottom of a water-filled plastic tub. I feel a little bad about it, but I do believe this is the humane way to address my problem.

Later today I will fish him out and dispose of the body, then reset the trap.

I imagine the water is filled with rat nastiness. Not sure how I feel about just dumping it in the yard.

Anyone face a similar rat or other critter problem? What was your approach?

mmm

2

I would hate to have to do what you had to do.

No judgment meant. More like sympathy for both you and Ben.

3

I disposed of the drowned rat. Sorry, buddy.

And I’ve re-thought my strategy. Rule number one in rat prevention is to remove their food source. This I did by stopping feeding the birds.

But then, what did I do? Put out a new food source. It is bait for a trap, I know, but it is still a new food source. This seems counter-productive.

So my new approach is to just wait and see. I did not re-set the trap. I suspect that, with no snacks available, they’ll have no reason to visit my yard.

Time will tell.

mmm

4

Other than crowding where their nest is, or curiosity, or looking for food even if you don’t provide any.

But you won’t be luring them.

5

Yeah, all valid points. I read that, if you see them in the daytime, it is due to overcrowding of the nest.

mmm

6

We have a similar problem with groundhogs. We have a huge wraparound deck, and they’ve built a warren under it with several openings at various spots around the deck.

We had heard that groundhogs digging holes under structures is destructive and generally not good. So I would catch them in a big live trap and drive them 5 miles to a wooded area (the minimum distance so they can’t find their way back). Like the OP says, killing them would actually be legal but relocating was not. But how do you kill Punxsutawney Phil? Even if I had been game to do so, my wife wouldn’t have let me.

So I relocated 4 groundhogs that way. It’s kind of a nerve-wracking process. Groundhogs are fairly timid, docile creatures, but they will try very hard to break out of the trap. I have a Jeep, so no trunk. If Phil does break out while I’m driving, I have a freaked out groundhog loose in the vehicle interior with me. None escaped, fortunately, but unfortunately, plenty of poop did escape from them. And those wire traps do not contain it, so I quickly learned to put old towels or sheets underneath the trap.

But, here’s the thing— there were too many groundhogs, and only one of me. Relocating 4 of them did not put a dent in the local population. And for all I know, the ones I relocated did find their way back. So we adopted a clever strategy of just ignoring the problem. Live and let live. Hopefully our deck does not eventually collapse into a sinkhole created by the maze of groundhog tunnels.

7

This is exactly why I put my rat, still in the trap, inside a sealed plastic tub for his trip to the woods.

mmm

8

Do not leave food out? (“If they can’t feed, they can’t breed”.) In my experience, rats will chew through anything, including concrete, except metal.

I usually walk a couple of blocks and release them in the park. I would not even bother trying to murder a rat: besides, you know, murder, you are not going to make a sizeable dent in the massive rat population. I guess it is more the feral cats that do for them, plus the city always tries poisoning their burrows.

9

I thought of that, but the groundhog trap is pretty large. Even those big plastic storage tubs would probably have been too small.

As I mentioned above, I’d drive the groundhogs I was relocating 5 miles away, because I learned that is the minimum distance so they can’t find their way back. Rats are probably just as smart as groundhogs, if not more so. A couple blocks is nothing. All you were doing was giving your rats some exercise, I’m guessing.

10

This is one argument for feral cats, I guess, since they seem to be pretty nearly as intractable as rats in terms of getting rid of them once they get established. Our city does trap/fix/release, which I gather is no longer the ideal approved treatment method for feral cats. The lady off of one of the corners of our back yard feeds the local feral cats (she doesn’t leave food out, so doesn’t attract other pests, the cats know when to stop by to get their food), and some of them are fixed and some are not. On the whole, I’d rather have cats around than rats.

11

We’ve got gophers (technically Richardson’s Ground Squirrels). They’re kind of cute, but they chew everything and poop everywhere. They love our rock wall. It’s kind of a lost cause, but between our younger dog and my .22 we keep them to a minimum. Had a bald eagle take one off our lawn about 20 feet away a few weeks ago!

12

If we are talking about organized anti-rodent programs, like in Chicago, New York, etc., then they sterilize (“fix”) the cats and also register caretakers and provide them with resources. Correlation is not causation, but apparently Chicago was the rattiest city in the U.S. for 10 years in a row but are now finally behind L.A. In New York, if I am not mistaken, bodega cats are legal now (but even when they were considered a health code violation, they were still ubiquitous as they are considered better than a rodent infestation).

13

But then you need some feral dogs to chase away the feral cats.

And now I have a “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” earworm going.

mmm

14

You would have to do a calculation, but if the goal is to “treat” the population so that it decreases, or at least does not increase, you have to consistently fix more than a certain percentage of all the cats, and that percentage will not be 50%, more like 80%.

In any case, no legitimate city or other organization is dumping unsterilized feral cats on your street.

15

No thank you. I can chase the cats away from my back yard just by stepping out the back door. And dogs have no way to get into our fenced yard.

I wasn’t, but it sounds like a good idea in general. My city isn’t that organized, in fact the program is run by SPCA rather than the city animal shelter. They will try to trap feral cats (I had a thread about my experience with that, they were kind of hopeless) or they will take in ferals that citizens have trapped in a humane trap, fix them, clip their ears for identification, then release them back to their neighborhood, and that’s it. No follow-up or provision for cat support.

I only remember, when I did my thread about trapping cats for fixing and releasing, it came out that the trap/fix/release method does not work to reduce feral cat populations, and that the only method that does work is large-scale euthanasia.

I never said, nor meant to imply, that this was happening. I don’t know where the non-sterilized feral cats came from, I suspect they were dumped by former owners who got tired of them.

edited to add: this seems to have turned into a hijack, if it’s not over now we should probably establish a separate thread for feral cats.

16

I have a fantastic exterminator who solved a serious rat problem for me a few years ago. This month, armies of rats have invaded the whole neighborhood, including inside my decrepit 80-year-old garage which has numerous small worn-away openings, along the bottom and roofline. He advised me that I needed to first spray along the inside perimeter and any areas of nesting materials with disinfectant, carefully clean out all the debris. Then, 1) spray with peppermint oil (cheap on Amazon, comes in gallon jug with a sprayer) inside and outside along the perimeter, and then 2) sprinkle cayenne pepper (also cheap on Amazon) along the perimeter. Rats hate both. Birds don’t care about hot pepper. The peppermint oil smells delightful, and I haven’t had any incursions or sightings since I started using this.

If I were you, I’d apply cayenne and peppermint oil around the perimeter of your property, around the base of your house, and anywhere else you want to keep the rats away from.

Also, if you have any branches abutting or overhanging your roofline, cut them away.

Reportedly, you can add cayenne pepper to bird feed and it’ll keep the rats and squirrels away, but I haven’t tried it yet.

ETA: good luck!

17

If it matters, I am fine with the hijack.

Rats, cats, whatever; discuss away.

mmm

18

Interesting input about peppermint and cayenne pepper. I’ve used peppermint in previous years and it seemed to have zero effect, other than making my property smell like a giant Life-Saver.

Before I took the bird feeder down, I doused the seed with a liquid cayenne concoction specifically manufactured and sold as a bird-friendly rodent repellent. It did work to keep the squirrels out of the feeder while not hampering bird visitation.

When I started seeing the rats, I poured this concoction in the area near the fence from where the rats arrive. I then sat back and watched. Alas, Mr. Rat didn’t care; he walked right over the cayenne to get to the fallen seed.

I also think one would have to re-apply any such applications pretty frequently; one rain and it’s all gone.

mmm

19

Well, yeah. It only takes as long as it takes you to stroll around the yard.

I think the pepper powder is more invasive and obstrusive (being particulate) and therefore more effective.

20

I know you’re not into killing them, but my solution when I had about a dozen squirrels living in my roof was to use a pellet rifle. Fortunately/sadly I shot the first one through the hip. So he made a lot of noise while I pumped up the rifle again and finished him off. This was on our patio, which had eaves from the roof on three sides. The remaining squirrels got a good look at his end, and they all moved out that night. So I only had to shoot one squirrel!