Climbing rat

[Alwayslearning22]

I’ve a burrow full of rats in my garden that love to climb 8’feet walls pretty amazing to see. 
 

anyway I want them gone. Pest control put down poison did not help. 
 

I’m putting down my own traps. I purchased the “Black Cat Rat Trap”

beast it is.  Anyone any tips on putting traps down? Should they be in boxes?

[JohnMo]

I was over run with vermin, used bait stations, first year got though loads of bait, now bearly any.

[Onoff]

PCP airgun with a red dot sight 

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

PCP airgun with a red dot sight 

Cocker spaniel. 
 

Mine has seen 2 big bastards off in my back garden. Feckin things are rife everywhere tbh. Running across the roads early evening, largely because lazy twats keep them fed. 
 

Neighbours with open compost heaps and allotments don’t help.

[Nickfromwales]

Seagulls need a massive cull too. Had 2 of my kids food out of their hands, and a whole pasty literally as I was about to pop it in the pie hole. Just heard a whoosh and a flap and the damn huge thing was sat on the floor in front of me trying to polish off a steak bake in one gulp. 
 

Queue one angry Welsh plumbers right foot and off it went sideways. 
 

Cut my sons thumb open and took an entire Big Mac off him.

 

In Asda a few weeks back I had my shopping loose in a trolley and a mate stopped to chat. He said to look behind me, where another flying rat was ripping my shopping apart. It grabbed a 2x 12 slice pack of bacon and attempted lift off. Just before I got to strangle it, off it flew. 
 

The beak had gone through the plastic packaging and right through 10 slices of bacon, ffs.

 

These types of vermin are rife and something needs doing. 

[SteamyTea]

47 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Seagulls need a massive cull

They had one a couple of years back. Bird flu killed about 90% of them down here.

As much as I dislike them, it was really quite tragic and changed the seaside atmosphere a lot.

 

We currently have a rat problem, caused by the nursery not disposing of food in the food waste bins and nappies in the general waste. Every morning I am now cleaning up after the 'feastings'.

[Spinny]

 

Parsons Terrier - ours died last year 😢- we sometimes took him down to an agricultural show where you could sometimes see farmers with 3 or 4 of them tied up and raring to go - using them for ratting on the farm.

[ToughButterCup]

3 hours ago, Alwayslearning22 said:

 Anyone any tips.

 

Rats are worthy, interesting enemies.

 

There is no one answer to the challenges they pose.  They are neophobic, resilient, cautious, observant, shy.

We live next to a pig farm, an Alpaca herd, and keep chickens ourselves. I deliberately leave part of our plot wild to promote the passage of Great Crested Newts across our land.

 

Rat heaven therefore.

 

Here is just some of the damage they  have caused us :

 

They inserted themselves in our roof, just above our bed head, gnawed away for hours at a time and caused many hundreds of pounds worth of damage = plenty of space for their gnashers - there's  300mm + of insulation . Got to the stage where I was up a scaffold, at night barefoot , freezing my coccyx off  in my jim-jams hammering on the cladding with a spare scaff pole asking SWMBO (who was indoors in bed)   whether the little fooker had decided to give the gnashing a rest. 

No ! Still at it.

Well - like Mutley- , that made me mad. 

 

Our neighbours wife told me the following day that at the time she walked past (unseen by me) my wedding tackle was on display: because the light from our bedroom window  shone on  my exposed legs and waist area - but not my upper body.

Apparently she couldn't help but look up from the road below where she was walking the dog because '... the night was  so still and clear and ; you were making such a noise...'

What fuss over a little thing like that - it was freezing after all. Phhhh.

 

Anyway back to being mad as Hell. 

 

I decided to 

• get a farm-cat from our local dairy farmer - so a Tomcat called Eric ( shoulda called him Fang ) arrives and now  brings us one dead rat a month to our back door . Our other Tomcat  couldn't give a rats arse about them
• buy a decent thermal imager : that gives a really good feel for the number of active rats in the area (many many more than I would have guessed)
• add digital IR sights to my air rifle and an IR illuminator ( rats eyes  always reflect well - I never shoot them unless I have a clear head-shot)
• avoid poison because it makes our cats unwell
• now and then block up rat holes and drop dry ice in the one left-over hole ( the  resultant  CO2  puts them to sleep) 
• double the metal vermin guarding in our cladding - (makes little or no difference rats will eat through it anyway)
• join the local air-rifle club and rediscover my enjoyment of shooting
• now and then leave a trail camera running near our chicken pen - evidence helps plan a shoot
• sleepless night ? Get up and pop into the hide near their burrows
• practice shooting other rats in the local dairy farms ( many more than we have - five or six a night is common )
• sit quietly with the thermal imager only and watch for rat activity: didn't know we now have two hedgehogs and the bats  are back 
• every now and then use our flame gun to warm the entrance of their bigger runs : that always gets a reaction
• ask the local rat pack to pay us a visit once a year

 

I think they know we don't like them. And yet I do.