Some readers will remember our rat infestation saga from a couple of
months ago:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....bb727 b1db4ae.
Fortunately the rat I whacked behind the fridge was the last one that
time around - but our cat still keeps catching them (mostly dead, but
one got away while we were away on holiday and settled under the
kitchen units again - just trapped that one). We and our neighbours
are being left live or dead rats daily and they still keep coming.

I wrote a short request for help in our community newsletter and had a
reply from someone two streets away who had an even worse problem than
ours and eventually traced it (after 5 years) to a broken sewer that
the utility company is expecting to fix in the next few weeks.
However, this is probably too far away to be the source of our
infestation.

When we had a pest control contractor in a couple of months ago he had
a good look round our garden and what he could see of neighbouring
properties and concluded that there was no sign of any nests or rat
runs on our property. Has anyone in the group any wisdom to offer
about finding the root cause of such a large rat population?

Dave N. wrote:
Some readers will remember our rat infestation saga from a couple of
months ago:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....bb727 b1db4ae.
Fortunately the rat I whacked behind the fridge was the last one that
time around - but our cat still keeps catching them (mostly dead, but
one got away while we were away on holiday and settled under the
kitchen units again - just trapped that one). We and our neighbours
are being left live or dead rats daily and they still keep coming.

I wrote a short request for help in our community newsletter and had a
reply from someone two streets away who had an even worse problem than
ours and eventually traced it (after 5 years) to a broken sewer that
the utility company is expecting to fix in the next few weeks.
However, this is probably too far away to be the source of our
infestation.

When we had a pest control contractor in a couple of months ago he had
a good look round our garden and what he could see of neighbouring
properties and concluded that there was no sign of any nests or rat
runs on our property. Has anyone in the group any wisdom to offer
about finding the root cause of such a large rat population?


Rats occur where there is rat-food.

Access to almost anywhere is no problem to a rat. They may nest under
sheds or logs or pretty much anywhere.

Look for someone who has an outside compost that they are throwing food
scraps onto.

My wife will keep doing this and wonders why the cats keep killing rats.

You house SHOULD be rodent proof however. Mind you if you have cat
flaps, they make good rat flaps as well..

Rats like the poor, are always with us.


They live alongside us mostly invisibly. I only see them here on very
rare occasions, but the cats bring in a few, and at this time of year
with apples falling off the trees, them and the badgers take the lot .

Thanks for the replies so far.

The cat flap is magnetic and we set it to out-only at night. The pest
control contractor looked at our house and neighbouring houses as far
as he could and concluded that there were no obvious holes above
ground that rats could get through or signs of rat activity in our
garden.

I got a sewer map of the street from the council - it turns out that
the surface water drain goes under our neighbour's house and the sewer
runs under the party wall between ours and theirs from the shared
sewer at the back of the houses to the street. However, the evidence
so far is that our cat is catching rats elsewhere and bringing them
back (our neighbours used to feed a hedgehog on the patio until rats
started eating the food - they think they saw the rats coming from the
far end of the garden).

Our neighbour has just put down a bait box in his garden - if we can
find any sign of which way the rats are coming from (apart from in the
cat's mouth) we will probably do the same. In the meantime we are
using traps and bait trays under the kitchen units, which are
inaccessible to the cat. The bait has been eaten sporadically, and
the traps had their first success last night (they didn't kill any
back in July - this time a sunflower seed/honey mix worked the first
time I set them). As far as I know there was only the one rat in our
kitchen this time (medium sized, about 30cm end-to-end including tail)
- no doubt we'll find out soon enough whether my guess was correct!

Huge wrote:
On 2008-10-06, Dave N. wrote:

The bait has been eaten sporadically, and
the traps had their first success last night (they didn't kill any
back in July - this time a sunflower seed/honey mix worked the first
time I set them)

I find peanut butter works well.

burnt sausages is what the guy on life of grime used, he said it was the
bees knees of bait, meat pies is what the nutters used when shooting
rats down by the river on another TV program, but you had to remember
tie them to a stake first to prevent the rats running of with them
before you had time to dispatch them
--
Kevin R
Reply address works

"Dave N." wrote in message
...
Thanks for the replies so far.
snip

Similar problem here is dealt with using a squirrel trap, a dog biscuit on a
cable tie dangling from the top of the wire inside and vanilla essence on
the biscuit.

5 this month so far, all released elsewhere near a river, 6 miles away.

I don't kill 'em I just "Rehome" 'em ;-)

On Tue, 7 Oct 2008 17:11:21 +0100, "RW" wrote:


"Dave N." wrote in message
...
Thanks for the replies so far.
snip

Similar problem here is dealt with using a squirrel trap, a dog biscuit on a
cable tie dangling from the top of the wire inside and vanilla essence on
the biscuit.

5 this month so far, all released elsewhere near a river, 6 miles away.

I don't kill 'em I just "Rehome" 'em ;-)

Good on you...

--
Frank Erskine

Many thanks for the suggestions.

Back to the original request...while we've been doing quite well at
trapping and killing the rats when we get them, we still don't have
much idea of where such a large number of rats are originating from.
I managed to get a rough plan of the sewers in the street from the
council - we have one under the party wall between us and next door,
but no evidence so far that the rats are coming from under our
floors. In fact the sewer doesn't actually go under our kitchen,
which is where we have been seeing all the rats, and the pest control
contractor is pretty confident that the house and floors are unlikely
to be penetrated by rats and therefore it's the cat that's bringing
them in from outside (the number of savaged dead rats we are getting
points to this as well).

Is there anything else we can do apart from ask the neighbours to look
for nests and burrows in their gardens? Or are there any cleverer
techniques?

Suggestions welcome!

Dave.