Quit using poison after my rescue Terrier mix damned near died. 1200 bucks and 13 years later she's still fine. I now use spring loaded traps under a milk crate so the birds don't get killed by the traps. For bait I use hard salami. The rodents can't get it off the trap and I can use the same piece over again in most cases. I've had the damn critters lick peanut butter of the trap without setting it off.
I use traditional 'snap traps' - but also bought an electronic safe-kill trap from Victor that uses batteries and an electric shock to kill them. It was not cheap, but it communicates to my iPhone and lets me know when I have "a kill". I just returned back to Ohio and the mice had gotten into my garage over the Winter. I've killed 5 of them in the last week - 3 with the electronic trap.
Glad your pup made it. A buddy of mine poisoned his rats and ended up killing about every dog and cat on the street where he lives. He had to replace a lot of animals and make some tough apologies. We just got back from a 10 day vaca in New England. Those feral cats looked well fed when we got home. A few hearts and feathers lying about though. The lady next door put up a nice bird feeder, the ferals line up at the bottom like it was a Taco Bell.
My brother went to my barn the other day and opened the door to a two and a half foot massasauga rattlesnake. I wondered why there was never any mice in there! Lol. Getcha one of those!
"Some of my best friends are snakes..." (WC Fields) Best 'mouser' we ever had was our baby feral cat, raised from 4 days old (!) where his mother took the rest of the litter, left him behind. He was laying in an oil puddle under the next-door neighbor's OT Pontiac, looked almost dead. Wife Joey and I gave him a bath in DAWN detergent, began feeding him canned mother cat milk, from Tractor supply! I fed him every 4 hours, he slept the rest. Murphy was black, with one (1) white whisker, left side. I never saw a better mouser. 3 years old, Some dirty rat cat-napped him. Love to get my hands on 'em.
I just had a few buddies in my outside storage bins (one of them was that old style NAP transport with the two flaps, NO MORE). So first thing is having stuff in bins that click closed (like the black and yellow HD ones). Have the bins above the ground like on shelf. Don't have anything like cloth or leaves nearby they can use to make a new home. The barn cat is the best solution. Go in with a leaf blower and blow out all the dust one a month or so. Also if you have a parts pile long enough that you dont use them, time to go to the swapmeet to make some beer money.
Having nothing edible in your shop is just a fallacy. Rats come in anyway for somewhere warm and dry. Chew the 2x4 base board away between the corrugated iron wall cladding to get in . The eat plastic and chew wires . I had a bucket of rat bait hanging on a wire , the little buggers must have jumped across on to the bucket and chewed on the lid in one shed. Have bait stations around every building . Have one bait station inside the hot rod shed, but am thinking now that’s a mistake and will move it out of the shed , so as not to encourage them in . In our daily driver they chewed a hole through the plastic on the firewall behind the plastic glove box. Another time they got in to the same car and chewed the seat belts. Now ya can’t call that food. Had a dead stench in the workshop , couldn’t find it after cleaning the entire shed. Months later found a dried up rat in the valley under the three carb intake on my sons Y block.
For all who dont know. Keep Hydrogen Peroxide handy for your loved critters. Any thoughts they ingested any kind of poison get some down their throats. Had it happen a couple monthes ago. Our Cocker Spaniel got a pack of Orbit gum. It contains something that will shut their kidneys down. A small syringe full shot down her throat and within 30 seconds that pack of gum was in the bottom of the bath tub. My vet is the one who told me about that trick
Which end does it come out of Wonder if it works on people ... twice in the last few years I've had some bad chicken and I could not make myself spew. I have a nasty gag reflex and was jamming a finger down my throat ... I gag but then my throat just slams shut and nothing comes out. Hmmmm .... time to Google Absolute best mouse trap I've used so far has been a regular snap RAT trap, using meat for bait, but the key is to use some tiny/thin "craft type" wire to fasten the bait to the trap. They can't lick off the bait or slide off the bait so ... one tug at the securely fastened bait and it's LIGHTS OUT. I don't have chipmunks in the area so I set the trap up under my deck. I have caught no birds, bunnies, squirrel's, cats, or snakes, just mice or rats in the rat trap. Strange but it just works. I built a really cool mouse trap that I had been using and had been thrilled with the success I was having (although it was somewhat troublesome to load/arm) then I saw a rat on my property . After buying a snap rat trap and catching many mice in it before catching the rat, I retired my homemade mouse trap and now use rat traps exclusively.
I had a big problem with rats at my previous home about 30 years ago. I would sit in my dining room and pop em in the head with my rifle (22 shorts) when they would stick their nose out from between the cabinets or crawl along the counter. A lot more fun than any trap! It was kind of like a target shoot at the Carnival. I did have to patch a few holes in the walls when I moved.
Now there's a movie I would actually go and sit in a movie theater with a bunch of a-holes on their cell phones to see.
I'm a sucker for gadgets. We had a mouse problem in our new home we couldn't seem to get control of. Traps, poison, etc. One late night I watching TV and an ad came on for those plug in ultra sonic pest control thingies. I thought what the hell I bought the 1/2 dozen best deal plugged them in around the house on both floors and either they're hiding or they're gone but I see no more rodents?
I did put a bucket trap in there over the winter too, and today was my first time in there this spring. Eight dead mice in the bucket. And three foot tall grass I forgot I'm supposed to be mowing.....
For the traps I had a lot of the little devils eat whatever was on them and not even a thank you for the meal. I started putting the peanut butter into little pouches I made with a coffee filter with a piece of thread tieing it closed. Now they have to work at it which gets them every time just about. Some of these traps today don't trip easy enough. My sister's car sits in a carport near woods and hasn't found anything that keeps them out of the car yet. So watching this thread to see what suggestions there are myself.
Believe this or not it’s up to you , I lived it . I worked with a nutty SOB , that would catch , skin and eat “field rats “ ! He ask me one day if I’d like to try one . My answer “ you get near me the second chapter in my killing spree is going to begin with you 1st “! He would heat up rocks at home in the fire place for heat on his way to work . He made a good wage , no need to live this way , he was just a person with a hole in the marble sack .
I had rats one spring. The house next door had the property cleared and the rats needed new homes. I had them in my gas grill cabinet and of course the garage. The side door was poorly fitted and they got in. I used those big Victor traps baited with peanut butter and nailed a few big ones. I had a couple snared in glue traps. Those I nailed to scrap lumber or else they walked off with the trap.
Around here, the mice kind of come and go in cycles. 3 years ago, they were doing really well, hopefully they're still on the downswing. Meanwhile, I have 3 cats here, and there probably isn't a mouse alive in a half mile radius.
A full grown rat can fit trough a hole the size of your thumb. Years ago when I was doing a kitchen/house remodel I had a hole in the floor where a 1/2" gas pipe was before I relocated it. I watched a full grown rat go down the hole without even slowing down. Of course this was a SoCal roof rat so it might not apply to a big ass NY sewer rat.
The Jalopy Journal
