In article , Mark
writes

"Chris Howard" wrote in message

By the way, you do want to get rid of them - for some reason they love
to chew mains wiring.

So I've heard. I was thinking of getting up into the small roofspace this
saturday with a long cable, the other end would be connected to a 13A plug
socket downstairs. By poking the cable in through the insulation into their
home, I may be able to electrocute a few. I'll just need to be careful not
to touch the live part of the cable myself... Surely this would kill them?

I doubt it would, unless you can get both live & neutral to make contact
(& not touch each other.) The rat is not going to have a very good
connection to earth. They might feel a bit of a tingle but that's about
all.

--
Tim Mitchell