On Mar 12, 4:31*am, "Doug" wrote:
On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:03:07 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:



I got at least one RAT in my house. Right now its eating my dogs food.
Its a well fed healthy looking rat running between my bedroom and the
kitchen with the dogs food and water.......

my dogs appear RATher frightened. they have wedged my girl friend on
the sofa perhaps for protection?

I guess I will go trap shopping in the morning.....

this although humorous kinda unnerves me, i may sleep somewhere else
tonight..........

no this isnt a joke.........

Like others have said, remove any foods from the floor, draws, shelves
that are open or easy to chew thru. * Set several traps in out of
sight places (less lit) and maybe do some poison (???). * I hesitate
on the poison tho because you don't want them to die inside the house
especially in the wall or attic due to the lingering smell. *I think
there are poisons that take a while to work and maybe these are the
kind you want. *On the otherhand, the traps may be good enough. * We
once had a baby rat in our finished basement (funny story to this but
I won't go into it) and we left several traps on some hidden shelfs)
and we had left for that weekend (normal plans) and when we came home
that weekend, sure enough one trap had one dead baby rat. * We lived
in a 4 plex and apparently the baby rat came thru the top of the
concrete wall so we plugged that hole with steel wool. *They don't
chew thru steel wool so problem went away. * At the time we lived
about 4 or 5 houses away from a diner and I know they had rats in the
back where the dumpsters were kept (NYC).

rats are near sighted, follow their paths they've scented, usually
along walls etc

to find paths use a black light, the urine stains glow.

A rat exterminator once bragged to me that he caught rats all the time
using snap traps WITHOUT bait, just by knowing where to put them and
leaned them up against the walls, so the critters would 'bump' into
them.

Heard that food production facilities that are NOT allowed to use
poisons routinely place bowls of coca cola out for the rats, Since
rats have no belching mechanism, they die from CO2 rupturing their
insides. So, in the morning the food producer employees would simply
go around and scoop up the dead rats gathered around the soda bowls.
haven't verified, but makes a great story.