Hi all, I'm speaking of killing rats here, the vermin (not big-block) kind. I'm looking for the post from a while ago about eliminating rats from your property. Many of you had clever and fool-proof ways of killing rats. I have a dog, and have been cautiously using poison, but it's not working fast enough for me and I hate to have to keep baby-sitting the dog everytime she has to go out. I remember a post involving a 5-gal bucket and some anti-freeze, I'd like to hear more about that one...as well as any other ideas. If anyone can point me to the link or show me pics of ones you've built, it would be greatly appreciated. I should add: this is OUTSIDE of the garage...they built a nest under a shed attached to the garage and seem to walk around the perimeter of the garage at night. Did find one dead on in the garage last fall...still don't know how he got in... Also, I am NOT going to buy a cat.
I just left the car running for 20 min with the garage door down and it seems to have got rid of mine..... My brother was saying an empty drum with something ediable in the bottom is good they will get in (leave a good jump off point) but then be trapped......
PurplePickup made the bucket with the beer can smeared with peanut butter spinner thingy in the middle. He posted it on the RRT years ago and I copied and pasted here months ago. Since then the RRT has switched servers and I can't seem to find it in their search function. I'll PM George and inform him of this post. I'm sure he has a copy of that post, he keeps everything
god damn i have a pet rat( hes on my shoulder right now) he likes to eat kitten food like mad!! and penut butter i would suggest some penut butter soaked in anti freeze but dont let your dog get near it!! just put it out one night before bed then i bet u wont have them there vermin no mo! or ill come over and catch em for pets!!! Bryan
Buy/Beg/Borrow/Steal a .22 and sit on your roof at night for a few nights in a row. Get rid of rats and have fun doing it! Hell, id do it for ya if I was close and didnt hate even looking at them good luck
most cats these days couldn't catch their tail !!!!! the fussy bloody things might catch but they won't kill diddly, when we were kids we had a proper country cat, killed a weasel when he was about 15.
Try the old fashion rat traps with the spring load arm. I also use glue traps. Never make physical contact with the rats as they are quite dirty, Rabies, fleas and all sorts of bad shit.. I have a friend who has a snake in his barn. Good Luck
I use the green pellet bait that you can get in bulk pakaging at the Home Depot. Rats eat it and then take it back to the nest. Those suckers just dry up after a couple of days! If that doesn't work...can you say Maine Coon cat?
If you know where the nest is, and can get to the entrance, light off a hiway flare and stick it in the hole, covering the hole to keep the fumes in. Make sure there isn't another exit they can get out of. If they are gone when you light the flare, the sulphur will keep them from going in. If they are in when you do it, the sulphur will kill them. If the shed is far enough away, you won't notice the smell if they were in... This is an old trick that I used on a skunk family under the porch... Mutt
Anybody have a good way to git rid of moles??? (the under-the-ground kind) I have the largest mole sanctuary in Northwest Indiana and want to get rid of them! (sorry for the hijack)
Okay, a little more background... First, NO CATS. Period. Second, I live in a neighborhood...in metro Detroit...about 15 feet from 5 different neighbors...so I can't sit on my roof with a shotgun.... Third, The shed they seem to be burrowing under is attached to my garage...which also houses the '51 Merc project. The last thing I want to do is light a flare and stick it under my shed (made of wood - by the way) to force the rats out (good idea though)...I tried holding the garden hose in there...nothing happened. Fourth, I have a dog who uses the backyard (fenced) as her bathroom...and consequently shares the area the rats are running around in, so I have to have a way to get rid of them that won't harm her. I have an area coordined-off so that she can't get to, that's where I plan to set a trap. I have killed 5 to date, 3 last year (big FAT ones that would probably scare a cat...and two small mice-looking ones this year.) The little f*cker I saw tonight was about a 3 pounder...scurried along the garage...then the driveway/grassline...then the wall of the house...and then out to the side yard beyond the fence and past my dog's reach. So I know I haven't got the ones I'm after...yet Keep the ideas coming!
After reading about your neighborhood situation, I would defintiely be looking around to find where these rodents are gettin' fed. I found that one of my neighbors loves all of God's little furry creatures and puts food out daily to make sure they are all fed well... You may not have one of these types in your neighborhood, but I would bet that someone has a lot of garbage or fruit trees that these rats are thriving on...get rid of the food and you get rid of the problem. BTW I have pets too, when I set out the rat bait I put it high on the fence or under something heavy where the rats can get to it but the dog can't. Even if the dog ate the dead rat there wouldn't be enough poison in the rat to effect the dog. Good luck...
[ QUOTE ] I have a dog, and have been cautiously using poison, but it's not working fast enough for me and I hate to have to keep baby-sitting the dog everytime she has to go out. I remember a post involving a 5-gal bucket and some anti-freeze, I'd like to hear more about that one... [/ QUOTE ] and a 5-gal bucket of antifreeze wont poison your dog how..? Creepy
Build a RatRod! Maybe they'll steal it and leave town... You can use a pipe to put the flare in, and a fan to blow the smoke into the hole, keeping the fuse away from the wood. The sulphur in the smoke clings to the dirt. It lasts for years to keep vermin out of the nest. I got the info from the SPCA. Mutt
Thanks Charlie, The nighbors next door I believe began the problem last year, when the started putting out poison and alerted me to it...they used to keep their trash in the far corner of their yard, and weren't good about taking it out every week- I never had a problem until then...now they (the rats) found a home in my yard Royal Oak has recently come under fire for having a huge rat population which was spawned on last year with the destruction of an old warehouse that was suposedly harboring all these little bastards...when they tore down the warehouse, the rats fanned out into the surrounding neighborhoods. They went so far as to have inspectors from the city going door-to-door and going in our backyards to look for evidence of rats or places where they would hide. They even had a week-long throw-out-anything-you-want-to, (to which I basically threw out a whole car (no questions asked) and they took ANYTHING (rare around here). All this, combined with the strange disappearance of my neighbor's rat killing cat have created a bit of a problem for me. I also found out that rats eat dog shit for food. I have a dog, and so does EVERY one of my surrounding neighbors. So if that's true, they'll have a never-ending supply of food. But in the mean time, the rats decided that my shed was a great burrowing/nesting place and now I'm stuck. My OTHER option is to cut the floor out of my shed, and concrete it up/put in steel anti-burroing plates to keep them from going under it. That obviously involves a weekend worth of work and time and money, which I'd rather not do...but it's looking like I'll have to. I mean, once I get rid of the current nest, whats to say another one won't come along and take up root in their former house? It's a pain, and what got me is finding rat droppings on the engines of the cars in my drive that do more sitting than driving. I'm worried about the chewing on wires...or worse...living/pissing/shitting in the cars! Now it's personal!
The cats around here get the moles. We have some pretty exotic ferral cats around here due to some "bredder" losing some kinda lynx. The rat trap, use a five gallon bucket with about 1/2 gallon of antifreeze in the bottom. cut a 2 - 3 inch dia. hole in the lid. lean a peice of wood against it, like a ramp. rats love antifreeze. they will jump right in, drink their fill,then drown in the mess. You can trap quite a few rats as they don't learn very quickly. You the throw the whole thing out and build a new trap if needed.
Creepy: The bucket and antifreeze will be in a place she (my dog)can't get to, between the garage, and a fence...where I've seen the rats. Calm down!
I guess this is a good reason why Livonia insist on rat walls for not only garages but sheds as well.
Ok, take a piece of substansial drainage pipe, wer'e talkin 4-5" in width and drill a couple of holes in one end to put a bar through. The bar should be loose. Weld a "door" to this bar that will act as a hinge. Then, put a small metal block on the side of the door nearest the end. That way, it opens only one direction. Then, weld a "lid" on the other end of the pipe. Throw some food or summat in there and let the rats fill up the ol pipe. Then, every garbage day, empty the pipe! -Crew
Just be careful, that if you feed the rats something poisonous....that once they die, that the dog doesn't EAT them. Although Charlie doesn't seem to think that the rats would have ingested enough to hurt your dog...maybe true...but I personally wouldn't want to find out
I've used the high wall bucket/trashcan to catch mice in the garage, works real well. I also like the comfirmed kill rather than setting out poison and thinking you may have killed them. If you set spring type rat traps outside cover them so birds don't get a broken neck going for the peanut butter. Been there, done that.
When we had a big rat problem at work a few years back,I called the county guy about control.He laughed about using cats to control them,told me stories about cat killing rats.Then he told me that with steady food,and no predators,they would keep growing bigger and bigger.If you use spring traps,make sure you fasten them to something.I lost 3 in one night at work,never did find them.Guess the smart little bastards drug them off,still stuck in them.If you use one of those drop down door trap,make sure it's big enough.We had rats going in to eat the bait,tripping the trap,but backing out,cause they were so damn big,half their ass was still outside when they tripped it.
[ QUOTE ] PurplePickup made the bucket with the beer can smeared with peanut butter spinner thingy in the middle. He posted it on the RRT years ago and I copied and pasted here months ago. Since then the RRT has switched servers and I can't seem to find it in their search function. I'll PM George and inform him of this post. I'm sure he has a copy of that post, he keeps everything [/ QUOTE ] to catch packrats around here I used a trick like is described by hotrodladycruzer use a 5 gallon pail 1/4-1/2 filled with water and get a pop or beer can, (really anything shiny will do) run a piece of wire thru it so it spins, attach it over the pail, smeering peanut butter over it and when the filthy rat goes for the peanut butter he can't grab it cause the can spins and dumps him into the water and drowns it I don't know how it would work on them regular rats since they know how to swim don't they? maybe a bigger bucket! we recently had a flying squirrel take up residence in the wall of the house and I tried driving him out by drilling holes in the walls and pumping that expanding foam in but he just ate his way back in so finally one night trying to get to sleep listening to this little turd in the wall I went and fetched in the drill and a 1/4" bit hogged some more holes in the wall and using the tip off a wd40 can I swapped it with the top of a fresh can of gloss black tremclad spray paint and pumped the wall full of them fumes and he ain't been back since that was 3 weeks ago now
A little bit of everything works good. Get a pellet gun...quiet and effective. If you have a .22, pull the bullet out of the shell and fill it with wax. Very quiet and will go right through the bastards, but not through walls... Tack down the sticky traps on some plywood. If you catch something that doesnt belong, mineral oil releases the glue. Snap traps nailed down...And move stuff around, they like gettin comfy..you keep disrupting shit, they'll go down the road. You have to go all out on these fuckers, they will eat the wires off all your cars, shit, piss and breed everywhere. You poison them, they die in the walls of your house and STINK... Go catch you a big ass Corn snake and let it loose in your yard. Thank GOD for the snakes here, even the rattlers...they do the job well. I have them stealing the dead mice out of the snap traps...
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