In NYC we have mice in apartments and rats in the subway. Out here in LA, they've got rats in their homes (sometimes). Since our arrival on Saturday, the kitchen has been visited nightly by a visitor that eats, chews up Ursula's pacifiers and leaves large sh*ts on the counter top.
We haven't seen it, but we know it's big...
SKGR's mom says this has happened a few times in the last few years, and that for 25 years before that it had never happened. Why? The local hardware store said rats move whenever there is construction going on (there's a big new condo block going up on the near corner) and that they are drawn to homes with nice fruit trees and lush planting. Bingo. That this house (BTW we're in Studio City).
So yesterday we bought a Havaheart trap and set it out. None of us slept as we waited to hear the snap of the cage from the kitchen. We put peanut butter and good, smelly cheese inside.
Nothing happened.
Oh, yes, we were visited again and this time our friend ate up a flower and sh*t again on the floor, but avoided the trap. We're trying again tonight and can't wait to show you a picture when we finally catch him.
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Has anyone tried the sonic 'scarers'? I haven't but thought about it when we had mice. However, a visiting cat did the trick.
Ya' need a kitty!!!! A very *big* kitty....
If you really want to entice him, try meat or fish. Rats are omnivores and go nuts for anything meat because it's fat-dense and energy-dense food. A chicken wing can work wonders
Pooh! No good! I had a heck of a time with a squirrel in my ceiling awhile back. I did all kinds of internet searching to see what kind of bait to leave out. In general, they said something that gives off a strong, often sweet odor (apples, peanut butter, etc). But the squirrel held out for the good stuff; I finally caught the little stinker with Entenmann's Plain Cake Donuts.
you wanna hear something crazy? ok, i'm in ohio so i don't know what the laws are for you, but here if you capture an animal in your house or something you can't take it out to the woods & free it b/c it's "relocation". the dnr is perfectly fine w/ it if you snap it's neck, poison it, or have it on that sticky glue crap, but relocation is punishable by a fine.
they actually expect you to call animal control!!! is that not INSANE?
Good luck! I've also had mice (and 1 rat!) problem. It took me a while to finally realize that it was not my dog devouring his fancy food, but it was mice. Basically I was feeding these mice super nutritional gourmet pet food. Grrr!I've caught many of them, but it's still an ongoing problem. My new year's resolution is to find the hole allowing these mice to come in and to plug it with metal mesh or something that the mice can't bite through.
If you live in a house in LA and have rat visitors, I would totally go to the source and have your house rat-proved by a professional. The exterminator came and pulled up all the holes. Voila! No more ratties.
I had a pet rat when I was in high school. The things love meat. My rat would take your finger off to get to a piece of salami.
Rats have evolved to love the same foods we do. If you think something is tasty, odds are rats do, too. Bait the trap with something that smells good from a distance. Bacon would probably do the trick.
Definitely find the hole(s) and plug them with spray foam or metal mesh. Otherwise you just keep having to trap & catch them or poison them when they get in- eeks!
Spray foam helps alot- and hell, borrow a neighbor's cat for an evening... that does the trick like no trap- and no clean up if you're lucky!
We sealed our squirrel hole with this "stuff" http://www.oldhouseweb.com/stories/Detailed/13182.shtml
We also boarded up around it. I bet Great Stuff & metal mesh would work really well together.
You may also want to take some time to search for the rat's nest. The chances of there being baby rats is pretty good and you want to catch them before they get old enough to join in the food search.
I would also second calling someone -- everyone in our office here (who has a house, lucky people...) is in love with Rat Busters -- (310) 397-8275. They do a really good job and I think they warranty the work too? Can't recall because it was about a year ago but they were really great.
Ok. So I had a rat in my house once. It ate bananas on my counter, crapped EVERYWHERE, ate carpet trying to get under a door. I found out I had a rat in the first place because I awoke in the middle of the night to it nesting under my bed. Awful, right?
Well, I bought the fancy, most expensive traps. I put out the peanut butter. 3 or four days, and nothing. Once it even set the trap closed but still wasnt caught. The other time, it took the cheese, and didnt get caught.
So i called an exterminator.
And you know what they did? Set out one of the classic, Tom & Jerry wooden traps. And the thing was caught that night.
Those things have been around forever because they work.
And dont be so sure on the size of your rat. I was convinced by the amount of damage I had more than one. Turns out it was only one, and it was a BABY. the size of a mouse.
Steel wool works to plug up the holes, they hate it, I know from experience because I had a former landlord I'll only call the Rat Queen (because she wasn't living in the building she didn't care that we were dealing with rats, yes, I reported her to the county repeatedly and moved).
Overall, consider yourself lucky you're not subject to possums, my cats regularly brought them in and I had to not only get one out of the range broiler but relocate it. Then have the range disconnected, hauled off, and sanitized. ICK.