I'm getting the occasional rat in the attic at the moment (already
found one dead one a week ago). Bloody thing decides to scamper around
in the early hours, so wakes the dogs up who wake me up.

I don't want to use poison or traps for various reasons, so what's a
good rat repellent that is effective ?

It's a large attic (property is a bungalow) and it's probably getting
in under the eaves so would be hard to block off all possible
entrances.

Are the various ultrasonic devices that are about any good ?

I've also read that pepper or human hair is a good natural deterrent -
any truth in that?

Ta

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 11:59:23 GMT, galaxi wrote:

I don't want to use poison or traps for various reasons

AFAIK, if you have rats you are obliged to.

--
Nigel M

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 11:59:23 GMT, galaxi wrote:

I don't want to use poison or traps for various reasons, so what's a
good rat repellent that is effective ?

Hungry cat? Make more noise than the rat at night though.

Are the various ultrasonic devices that are about any good ?

I don't think so. We have a couple of those devices, we still got rats
in once and the annual autumnal invasion of mice still happens.

I don't like poison but with rats I don't think you have much choice.
Rats are very wary animals and trapping isn't easy. All we got was an
inch or so of tail, the rat gnawed it off to escape, they'll do the
same for a leg...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

In article ,
galaxi wrote:
It's a large attic (property is a bungalow) and it's probably getting
in under the eaves so would be hard to block off all possible
entrances.

Why? You can get wire mesh designed for the job.

--
*You! Off my planet!

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 14:00:42 +0000 (GMT), Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 11:59:23 GMT, galaxi wrote:

I don't want to use poison or traps for various reasons, so what's a
good rat repellent that is effective ?

Hungry cat? Make more noise than the rat at night though.

Are the various ultrasonic devices that are about any good ?

I don't think so. We have a couple of those devices, we still got rats
in once and the annual autumnal invasion of mice still happens.

I don't like poison but with rats I don't think you have much choice.
Rats are very wary animals and trapping isn't easy. All we got was an
inch or so of tail, the rat gnawed it off to escape, they'll do the
same for a leg...

Rats follow food. Removce food, rats will move on.

Owain wrote:
galaxi wrote:

I'm getting the occasional rat in the attic at the moment (already
found one dead one a week ago). Bloody thing decides to scamper around
in the early hours, so wakes the dogs up who wake me up.
I don't want to use poison or traps for various reasons, so what's a
good rat repellent that is effective ?


Put dog in attic.

That was my thought, as well.

--
Howard Neil

Waking you up in the night is the least of your worries - it's when
they start chewing your wiring that have to worry - for some reason,
they love chewing wiring.

Maybe someone should come up with some special poison wiring.

In article . com,
says...
Waking you up in the night is the least of your worries - it's when
they start chewing your wiring that have to worry - for some reason,
they love chewing wiring.

Maybe someone should come up with some special poison wiring.


Better still, hook it up to the mains ...

On 12 Dec 2005 15:17:52 -0800, "xscope"
wrote:

for some reason, they love chewing wiring.

The plasticisers in PVC are similar to oestrogen (to rats' sense of
smell). Rats just think you have horny female ratty wiring.

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:19:01 +0000, Andy Dingley wrote:

Rats just think you have horny female ratty wiring.

So they eat it?

--
Nigel M

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:49:35 +0000, Nigel Molesworth
wrote:

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:19:01 +0000, Andy Dingley wrote:

Rats just think you have horny female ratty wiring.

So they eat it?

Oral sex, innit.

--
Frank Erskine

"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:49:35 +0000, Nigel Molesworth
wrote:

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:19:01 +0000, Andy Dingley wrote:

Rats just think you have horny female ratty wiring.

So they eat it?

Oral sex, innit.

--
Frank Erskine

I bought a house to do up a few years ago and there was wiring was
underneath the suspended ground floor for the ground floor sockets etc. We
knew there were rats under the floor which turned out to be a broken drain /
sewer outside the back of the house and they had tunnelled through or
underneath the solid concrete kitchen floor extension to the underfloor
cavity area of the main part of the house.... we could frequently hear
them running around under the floor....
one day when I had a friend round discussing works, there was a fairly loud
bang directly under the lounge floor where we were standing and we heard
bits of "shrapnel" flying around under the floor. It turned out that a live
ring main had been chewed through and blown ratty apart - we found bits of
rat head and wiring some weeks later....

Eventually, all wiring was removed from under the floor - the incoming water
was sleeved with steel pipe to above floor level, the house re-wired with
all wiring fed from the ceiling downwards to the sockets with no underfloor
wiring apart from the incoming SWA main feed.....

Nick