We’ve just discovered, in the last couple of days, that some rats (Rats! Rats! F-ing rats with…aw, forget it) have moved into our attic, and maybe even down some walls.
So I’m wondering, has anyone ever used those sonic repeller as seen on TV thingies? If so, have they worked?
I’d so very much like it if the rats would leave.
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Has anyone ever wondered how they say the early bird gets the worm? Well yeah that’s true, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Wil’s rat dilemma
Someone call the pied piper
Cheese fans everywhere
Don’t worry about killing them, you need to worry about finding them after they are dead. Have you smelled a dead rat before? You will want to take an axe to your house just to find and remove the smell. Good Luck!
I’ve never encountered rats in walls before. How did they get there ? I think you should call in some professional and have him go through the house from top to bottom eradicating the vermin as he crosses them.
You can never truly “like” a rat. They’d eat your eyes while you slept, if you let them.
Enough’s enough Wil. Stand and fight!!!
LOL – I’m sorry Wil… I rarely stop by your site (no offense… single mom of two here… I spend so little time on my ass I forget I have one sometimes).
I’m not laughing at your rats, but, DAYUM! 101 comments!!!!! I think that’s the most I’ve ever seen on a blog 🙂
Anyway… sorry about your rats. Good luck getting rid of them.
k… I take that back… after scrolling down and seeing 28-freakin’-4 comments. LOL!
Hey Rachel,
You must have had a rescued Wistar rat, lucky you and lucky rat! I think they were bred to be good for experimenting on, easy to handle and all that so they usually make lovely pets. Maybe because they are relieved.
Wouldn’t fancy their wilder cousins staying in my walls though.
Wil, where I stay (Scotland) you can hire people who have good ratters (usually a Jack Russell type dog) and they get rid of the rats. At least it’s more instant than poison. But it is kind of disturbing to see some little Eddie lookalike throwing rats around with an obvious look of murderous glee on their face, even though I know thats what terriers were bred for.
I used to be a Falconer and we carried out pest control on seagulls and pigeons. Occassionally you would startle a rat and your hawk would be on it quicksmart.
But I guess you couldn’t fit a bird of prey between your walls!
I’ve got a sunbeam noisemaker. It worked to chase out the mice that were coming into our 1920’s or earlier apartment building.
Traps help, too.
roymeo
I gots three cats that will kill the rats for cheese.
Since you’re hearing them in the attic, they might not be rats, but squirrels. Are there trees close to the house? (I’ve had this problem.)
Take a look at the building structure and see if you can spot the place where the critters come in (where the din is loudest should be a clue). Hire a carpenter & have him/her wait for mid morning (when the squirrels have left for the day) and close up the opening. (You may also wish to trim branches that come close to the roof.) -Anyway, squirrels come ‘home,’ can’t get in, move on and nobody has to die!
Good luck & best wishes.
Card – Lab Rats
Color: Black
Card Type : Sorcery
Rarity : Common
Card Text :
Buyback 4
(You may pay an additional 4 when you play this spell. If you do, put it into your hand instead of your graveyard as part of the spell
Completely off topic:
I don’t know what made me think this (maybe all of the talk about rats) but I think that Wil should let Berman know that he’d like to play a cardassian if they make an appearance on Enterprise. (It’s been rumoured… hey, you never know!)
Wil has got the right type of physique to play a cardassian.
With the actors who played Odo & Neelix both coming back to play villians, it might be a good opportunity to keep his foot in the trek door.
I don’t know what made me think that.
ESpark… that made me laugh.
Wil are you sure they are rats and not TRIBBLE’S?
Just put Spudnuts and Roughy up there!
Seriously trap and release (where?) work best.
lol
I’d stay away from poisons as long as possible, and start by addressing this issue: If there hasn’t been rats before, why’s there rats now?
What’s changed?
If the invasion is a result of conditions for some reason suddenly becoming more rat-friendly than they’ve been before, just making them less favourable might solve the problem or at least help in doing so.
If they no longer have prerequisities for what it takes to live happy rat life, they’ll most likely pack their bags and move into better neighbourhood.
Cats rule, rats drool…
Find where they’re getting in and seal it. Set traps for the remaining ones and kill them. You’ll probably need a pro at least to identify where they’re coming in, then kill them yourself. It’s cheaper. Poisons leave open the possibility of them dying and ending up somewhere where you can’t get them. I’ve had roof rats as well and this is the only way to deal with it. We had one die in the walls and believe me, you don’t want to deal with that.
First of all, are you sure they are rats? If they are squirrels or raccoons you can drive them out with several ammonia (same effect as sulphur dioxide has on us) soaked rags nailed to the rafters ( works within 48 hours) and then seal the entrance with polyurethane foam and metal lathing.
If it is indeed rats ( there would have had to have been something to attract them to your area in the first place like no garbage pick up for a while or an unclean food processing operation has opened in your area or some one has recently demolished a really old building etc)and you don’t want to go the exterminator route there are a few options that you can try:
(1) you can buy humane traps from Home Depot ( or rent them from the local SPCA)just be sure to release your catch far away from your house or they’ll just come right back in
(2) borrow a barn cat from a local farm
(3) get some ferrets ( a natural enemy of rats)
(4) use warfarin in combination with CocaCola — it actually does work quite well — put out a few small dishes of warfarin in your attic ( where your pets can’t get at it) and nearby locate a couple of pieplates filled to the brim with room temperature CocaCola. Warfarin is both an anticoagulant and a diuretic and makes the vermin extremely thirsty. When they ingest the CocaCola they die quite rapidly because their digestive tract has no method of expelling the gas from the carbonation. Rats you see can’t burp and they rupture internally. The only problem with this method is that SOMEBODY has to pick up the dead rats!
Finally, in my opinion, glue traps are cruel because of the paroxysms the victims will go through to try to escape (including biting off a leg).
John McGregor
I’m afraid there is no scientific evidence that any of those sonic devices work. I wished they did because we could have used them at our last house, a farmhouse in Illinois. Your best bet is to get a decent pest control company, check references, or at the very least the cat from Mousehunt.
I’m afraid there is no scientific evidence that any of those sonic devices work. I wished they did because we could have used them at our last house, a farmhouse in Illinois. Your best bet is to get a decent pest control company, check references, or at the very least the cat from Mousehunt.
> my first response was “R.O.U.S’s!”
>(10 points for this one kiddies).
Rodents Of Unusual Size? Frankly, I don’t believe they exist.
My advice to Wil: just wait for the popping sound…
Hope I’m wrong, but when my little sister moved into her place she thought she had rats, turns out it was bats.
Ferrets is illegal in California
Come to think of it, rats should be too.
I once lived in a house with a guy who had a bunch of rats in a glass tank. He stopped feeding them. I can still remember in the middle of the night…. the sounds of them ganging up on the weakest one… the horrble death squeaks!!!
And then there was one…. it died alone…
HELL NO, i wasnt gonna feed em… then it woulda been MY responsibility and my expense and… oh well it was a long time ago….
Ahh The Silence of The Rats
o/~ Ben the two of us need look no more… o/~
*sigh*
Cats. Cats is the best thing for rats. And then to get rid of the cats, ya get dogs. After the dogs, ya gets wolves, and then horses. Wolves don’t like horses.
Seriously though, my cats catch about two rats a week, and we have zilcho problems.
Forget the cats, and the “humane” traps and the poison. I had a rat infestation, and the best cure is old fashioned snap traps. Cats won’t always catch them, “humane” traps are a poor trap, and as you were warned; the poison is pretty bad. I can also tell you glue traps are worse, nothing worse than a live rat in a trap. Yes they die, but a pair of rats can breed several hundred, in a matter of months. But more importantly, why are they there? Someone has cut down a tree, plowed a field, or torn down a structure they lived in. Something drove them there, i.e.; too much rain, too little rain, no food, loss of home. Cruel though it may seem, the old fashioned trap works best, and won’t poison anyone. Also, fumigation is a BAD choice, if you kill them with gas, they’ll die where they are, and trust me, the smell is worse than the rats. They don’t live where you see them, so put traps behind the washer, refridgerator, in the attic, under the dishwasher, and most importantly DON’T leave pet water and food out over night, it’s a rat buffet.
perhaps this will help:
http://www.stupidinternet.org/mouse.html
heh
Hey Wil,
Always been a cat person. Only time I had a rat was when I didn’t have a cat. Now I have 4 cats and haven’t seen hide nor hair of any rodent. You could get a couple cats….
I tried one of those sonic things…the sound is actually audible (to humans), and quite annoying…and it does NOT work! Just ask the rat that died in my ceiling.
My suggestion? Get a ball python….bout a 5 footer should do it. He’ll eat them, and after catching a few, the others will take off for more peaceful digs.
Call an exterminator – do it today. Those sonic thingies are a waste of money…
Gail-yeah…I would defintely lean towards the red-eyed white lab-type rats. More domesticated as it were. After a semester of running him through the “deprivation/reward” thing in a behavioral psych course…I figured the least I could do was bust him out of the lab into a life of luxury 😉
However…the rats my aunt had in HER attic in Brooklyn were a little less touchy-feely.
I had a squirrel try to make a nest in my car engine two years ago. It *sucked*.
You know, as long as you have rodents in your home you ought to be prepared for the worst, right? http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hanta/hps/index.htm
Tears are streaming down my face;
“- if you get the cat- Make sure He’s a Fat Horny Cat so he will either kill them by either sitting on them or fucking the hell out of them-
-Warning watchout that you don’t put the glue traps where the cat my stick his head in them- aww hell let’m it might be fun to watch th cat run around the house with the damn box glued to his head- it was loads of fun at my old house when my cat got stuck w/her back foot in one– clunk, clunk, clunk, as she walked by us as if to say – “Don’t fucking say a word!” –”
hahahaha
Rats mean you have a warm dry attic with some form of food supply, this is good.
Unfortuantly whilst Rats are generally clean they are still disease ridden vermin who will cause disease and make a general nuicance of themselves.
As noted the sonic repllars aren’t so great but do work a little.
The best advice I can give is call in a professional exterminator who will also ensure that once the rats are gone no new ones will follow them.
The sonic thingies aren’t too helpful, and they will bother your pets. Go with the professionals…rats are extremely difficult to get rid of, very brazen, and potentially dangerous. They have been known to bite children.
I had a rat invasion at a crappy walk-up apartment I used to live in. The fuckers were absolutely fearless, strolling around the kitchen in full daylight, staring down mere humans such as myself…my advice is to kill, kill, KILL and KILL FAST!
Good luck!
Wil,
The answer is golf…Get in the attic and work on your swing. And clubbing the little buggers to death will make you feel good too.
wil–
i don’t know if you will listen to this, but if you and your wife or whoever else wants them to leave find out the reason why you have the rats (is there food accessible, for example) and then do something about that, then try speaking to the rats about it, and make a truce– if you don’t leave food about, they don’t come into your house. explain, negotiate about how it disturbs you, but use nice language because they’re really sensitive. i mean, if you’re in someone else’s house and they’re using bad language to get rid of you, you wouldn’t appreciate that and do more things to irritate them, wouldn’t you? anyway– a friend of mine did this with ants, i do it with bugs all the time (hope their native language is english ^-^;;) and it works like a charm.
don’t laugh, i’m serious. i hate all this animal cruelty going around because people don’t like them in the house. or because they think they’re annoying. i have little brothers back at home (study abroad now) and they’re annoying but i’ve managed not to kill them when they get into my stuff and leave their shit behind.
^-^ have a sparkly day, and good luck,
katelynne
Mr. Wheaton (SIR!),
Now that I think of it, we used to have rats and bats in the barn before we had umpty-bijillion barn cats to keep them in check….
Until my brother and I bought pellet guns.
How’s Your aim?
I thought that I was the greatest mouse killer EVER! I bought one of those things, plugged it in, and all of a sudden, I stopped finding droppings. A year later, we are packing up all of our stuff because we were moving. In my basement and under my work bench, I found A WHOLE BUNCH OF MUMMIFIED MOUSE CARCASSES! Aparently, my wife knew that thing was a piece of crap and put poison out in the basement. I guess she forgot to tell me to look for victims of her wrath so I never saw them untill packing time. The woman that we sold our house to turned out to be a real bitch. I wish that I had hid all of thoes little things in other places in the house for her to find.
Nice!
bleh was reading the comments… and i dont have rats (my uncle does, and i recommended him to your site)….
just have to say that i used to own two outdoor cats. they killed and ate a lot of rats, moles, and mice not to mention at least two dozen birds and at least two chipmunks.
but, you get all these dead carcasses lying around your yard and on your porch and such. the oldest one loved coming into the house with half of a mouse. teehee.
my oldest cat, the one that’s still around, is an indoor cat and she’s really fat (hey it rhymes). i think she sat on a mouse once.
Rats? You have many, many rats?
Damn…I knew I left those somewhere…
-Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Kill the rats? Are you CRAZY? Soon they’ll become human-sized and kill us all!!! (only the ones that were mean to them… and I’ll become the rat king… even though I’m not a rat, or a guy)
Ya know, one time there was this dead rat hidden behind my dresser. I didn’t even know about it until i moved. It was pretty raunch.
TRUE STORY!
Those Sonic Repellers only make ONE thing go away. We bought one to try to drive the Cave Crickets out of our basement. They stayed. They invited their friends.
What went away? $19.95 from my wallet. That’s what. Don’t waste your time.
Hire an Exterminator. Somebody like Christopher Walken in Mouse Hunt.
Good Luck.
Yes, the sonic repellers do work, but if you have any dogs or cats, or a migran for that matter, they can be a bit annoying (by annoying I mean the cats run wild, the dogs bark their heads off, and your head feels like you had a jauvalin shoved through it)!
Be very careful setting out the bait if you use poisons. Keep a record of the location of each and every one, and pick them all up after the job is done. Warn visitors (especially those with children) while the bait is set out.
You’re dealing with deadly, accessible poison. If the kids or animals can move around, forget image, be responsible.
I hope this isn’t too late, but I lost a favorite dog to rat poison at a relative’s house. They had set out the bait months ago and didn’t tell me. I visited with my pet, and he ate at least one of the baits. Within a few days he was dead. During the agonizing period up to his death neither the vet nor I had any idea what was wrong. He went from a completely healthy 3 year old to dead of total renal failure in 5 days. His blood chemistry had gone all to hell. It was only afterwards that I was able to piece together what had happened.
First off , rats can;t give you rabies..they have a dry bite…..
I do admire rats and have kept several as pets. But i have a wild rat problem in my new house. ( just one of the many gifts left to me by the previous owners) I dont wish to fumigate as i do keep rats and other small animals as pets.. Poison is a no no, i have smelt dead mice from that already and i dont wish to go through the whole heave ho with a rat. So its humanetraps or failing that rat traps.The humane traps are very expensive. So I’ve come up with a few home-made ideas.. Get a very high bucket ( australian outdoor bins are a good size) balance a ruler across the top with food on the other end.. Make sure the rat can walk onto the ruler and when he reaches the food the whole lot falls into the bin.. another idea is to use an old cage ( if you still have the one from the dearly deceased Polly) String up the door and place some food inside the cage ontop of the string.. Rat grabs food, string is released , door closes.. ( not as simple as it sounds though and dam those buggers can be fast or they have already figured how to open up the door again)
I can’t believe some of you people would use glue traps as an alternative. Do you seriously know how cruel and inhumane these traps are? Not only that their feet get stuck, but the rat can fall on their stomach or head, thus gluing their bodies with the board. This results in agonzing fear for the rat, and the pain it has to go through for trying to escape (there have been instances of rats biting their own limbs and trying to pull their bodies from the glue to escape). It’s not a pretty sight… bits of flesh and een a eyeball hanging of the rat? Accompained by its squeaks of terror? Seriously, who would consider such a trap? It’s imhumane and cruel.
If you want to get rid of rats, use snap traps or get a cat or terrier. Maybe even catch and release the rat. Poision can be used, but not only it takes a few days for the rat to die by internal bleeding (and is yet another cruel method), but the poisioned carcass could be swallowed by your pet, or native wildlife. You could use a gun, and shoot the animal in the head. I’m all for humane methods, but I am disgusted to see the applause for glue traps. I’d love to see you people encounter a rat in a glue trap (with its limbs torn off and its eye out of the socket)… for this instance put me off glue traps altogether, as I once thought it was a good method to remove rats. But I was ignorant back then… so please don’t make the smae mistake. All animals deserve a humane death, and if you think otherwise, you’re simply fucked up in the head. No ifs and buts.
Wil, I have the same problem. I have been trying to get a local feed store to order me some of the “Pied Piper” live animal traps. The smallest they make is 6″ x 6″ x 16″ but they really work great. I bought the larger size last spring because we had a problem with Raccoons. Since April to now (Dec.) I have caught 25 raccoons, 15 possums and at least 30 squirrels but the rats are too small and sqeeze between the bars. I believe the smaller model 100 will work great if I can ever get one. But, since rats can be a serious problem I have been setting snap traps and poison for now. Lowes and Walmart sell both. I generally prefer to catch animals alive and relocate them but considering I really hate rats and cannot afford to wait for the live trap…well..you get the picture. Anyway, I recommend the Pied Piper live animal trap model 100 if you can find one. Otherwise, make a trip to lowe’s or call an exterminator. I have never tried the sonic repeller thingies because I have too many pets that would not like them. Hope this helps. Relly hated it when you left Star Trek. Thought you were great.
I too have a rodent problem (in betwen the first and second floors of my house). Not wishing to have a problem with decomposing critters, I have found a product I will possibly/probably use. It is supposedly humane, non-toxic, odorless to humans and effective in a short amount of time – would you believe powdered fox and bobcat urine? The idea is to trick your unwanted guests into thinking that a predator has taken up residence near by. Then close off the entrance openings before they try to return. Here is their website so that you can make your own decision: http://www.critter-repellent.com/rat_repellent.htm#benefits. Good luck I hope this helps for your sake and for mine.
GET A RAT SNAKE. THEY ARE NOT POISONIOUS TO HUMANS AND EAT RATS DEAD OR ALIVE.
tHE SNAKE DOESN’T GROW THAT BIG EITHER SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT A “BOA” SIZED SNAKE IN YOUR HOUSE.