NFR Rats in the garden

Non-fishing related

Ron McNeal

Sound, Light, and Frequency...............
Forum Supporter
This summer I learned that baby bunnies make a terrible screaming sound when a cat is attacking them.
I can remember being awakened by those screams. They always came from our front porch. 'Twas chilling.......
 

Porter2

Life of the Party
And now we have a golden retriever and he is totally opposite of a tabby cat. 😆

I have done 3 generations of tabby cats since owning homes. Catless last three years. And the cats are not hunters in there last couple to few years… they are couch potatoes. Wanting to be petted and rubbed etc. But I feel when we lose our golden to old age that one is gonna sting a lot longer than those damn cats I have had. I can talk to our golden and he responds in ways a cat can’t. The cats have told me to F’off several times. Not our Golden. He’s my big golden boy. Love him to death.

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Roper

Idiot Savant, still
Forum Supporter
I wanted to do those, but not sure there's anywhere I can put them in the back yard where the chickens or cat won't get to them. I'd have to build a box just for the trip. Not totally against the idea though.
Put them where rats will crawl but others won’t…
 

Kilchis

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
Whatever you decide to do, get to doing it. The clock is running down. When the rains begin, all of the outdoor rodentry are going to be shopping for new warm and dry homes, and your house will do just fine. A resident rat can get amazingly expensive.

We live on a small urban stream. The creek banks are a highway for small critters. Several years ago 4 of our 5 adjoining neighbors had dogs that were out during the day and inside after dark. Each dog had a bowl of kibble to snack on during the day. Once the dogs retired for the evening the night shift went to work. The uneaten kibble drew raccoons, skunks, possums, nutria and rats. Lots of rats. Two got under our house. One of them hopped up onto a gas pipe and followed it to where the pipe passed thru the floor behind the kitchen range. Once in the bright kitchen said rat dove into the first dark sanctuary it saw, a hole in the lower back corner of the appliance. Therein it burrowed thru the glass insulating blanket between the oven wall and the exterior stove panel, became trapped, and perished.

Fast forward a few days. We return from a vacation and find the house……aromatic. The stink is everywhere. Herself decides to pop a roast in the oven while I search for what must be a dead moose judging by the smell. As the roast cooks the unfound putrifying rat lodged against the oven wall heats up and bursts, releasing a cumulonimbus cloud of putrescine that permeates the very metal of the stove components, and seeps throughout the house.

To cut to the end, the new stove is white and cost $1100.

KILL…….THE…….BASTARDS!!!!
 

Old406Kid

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
Gotta be something here that works.:unsure:
 

Xoxo

When they cleared a whole bunch bunch of blackberry bushes around the fences in our community all of a sudden rats started showing up on our two Arlo security cameras for the first time and we had those cameras for over a year.

We hired an exterminator to go under the house and screen off the drain pipe underneath our condo in case it was traveling from the end of the condo where the bushes had been removed. And we bought a wire cage, many of the larger wooden Victor rat traps and another cage that was made of black plastic . We used peanut butter for bait. We put them close to the walls of the house and patio and up above on the fence where we saw them on the video. (One Arlo video showed a rat jumping from the top of the fence into my hanging fuschia basket.)

The wire cage worked but i hated it because the rat was still alive. The black cages never worked at all. But with the the Victor traps we caught 14 of them. (We kept track on our garage wall.) The maintenance folks put up traps that hooked on the fence where the bushes used to be and they told me they caught over 50 total.

We stopped keeping any water in my watering cans on the patio, told everyone not to put dog food out that wasn’t tightly covered. And got rid of the bird feeders. It’s been over a year and a half and while we might still have a rat around I’ve never seen one on either of our two outside Arlos since.

The two rats that were caught in the cage alive is kind of a funny story. I didn’t want to see my husband kill it so i asked him to take it away and kill it. He told me he took it to the park and killed it with his pellet gun. The next time we caught a live rat the pellet gun jammed. So our maintenance friend who was over at the time took the cage and a garbage bag and shovel to kill it at the playground.

It was many months later when we had a little weekend alley party that both my husband and our friend told me that they couldn’t bring themselves to kill it so they just let those rats go.
 

Smith

Steelhead
Whatever you decide to do, get to doing it. The clock is running down. When the rains begin, all of the outdoor rodentry are going to be shopping for new warm and dry homes, and your house will do just fine. A resident rat can get amazingly expensive.

We live on a small urban stream. The creek banks are a highway for small critters. Several years ago 4 of our 5 adjoining neighbors had dogs that were out during the day and inside after dark. Each dog had a bowl of kibble to snack on during the day. Once the dogs retired for the evening the night shift went to work. The uneaten kibble drew raccoons, skunks, possums, nutria and rats. Lots of rats. Two got under our house. One of them hopped up onto a gas pipe and followed it to where the pipe passed thru the floor behind the kitchen range. Once in the bright kitchen said rat dove into the first dark sanctuary it saw, a hole in the lower back corner of the appliance. Therein it burrowed thru the glass insulating blanket between the oven wall and the exterior stove panel, became trapped, and perished.

Fast forward a few days. We return from a vacation and find the house……aromatic. The stink is everywhere. Herself decides to pop a roast in the oven while I search for what must be a dead moose judging by the smell. As the roast cooks the unfound putrifying rat lodged against the oven wall heats up and bursts, releasing a cumulonimbus cloud of putrescine that permeates the very metal of the stove components, and seeps throughout the house.

To cut to the end, the new stove is white and cost $1100.

KILL…….THE…….BASTARDS!!!!
I was laughing loudly while reading this!
 

kerrys

Ignored Member
This summer I learned that baby bunnies make a terrible screaming sound when a cat is attacking them.
We have a lot of rabbits and a couple of great horned owls. When the owls catch a rabbit you can hear the rabbits screaming through the woods as the owls carry them away.
 

Merle

Roy’s cousin
Forum Supporter
We have a lot of rabbits and a couple of great horned owls. When the owls catch a rabbit you can hear the rabbits screaming through the woods as the owls carry them away.
Same here. Our rabbit population goes through boom and bust cycles over the years. Lately we've had a lot of rabbits around and at night (we sleep with a window open) you can definitely hear when one falls prey to an owl, bobcat or coyote.
 

kerrys

Ignored Member
Same here. Our rabbit population goes through boom and bust cycles over the years. Lately we've had a lot of rabbits around and at night (we sleep with a window open) you can definitely hear when one falls prey to an owl, bobcat or coyote.
The coyotes around have a sing along when they make a kill. At times I wonder just how many of them there are. They can get plenty loud sometimes.
 

Tom Butler

Grandpa, Small Stream Fanatic
Forum Supporter
And got rid of the bird feeders.
That made a huge difference in the number of mice that came around at our place. The dog went into squirrel withdrawal however.
 

Josh

Dead in the water
Staff member
Admin
We have a lot of rabbits and a couple of great horned owls. When the owls catch a rabbit you can hear the rabbits screaming through the woods as the owls carry them away.
That sounds like it would be the plot of a horror movie for kids or something.
 

Merle

Roy’s cousin
Forum Supporter
That sounds like it would be the plot of a horror movie for kids or something.
I had the same thought when I read that... immediately pictured a Lord of the Rings sort of scene...
 

Spfd Jason

Smolt
Forum Supporter
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We purchased one of these to help control the ground squirrel and rat issue around the barn and compost pile. Does the trick and hasn't gotten the neighbors chickens yet.
 
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