Rat: feast, drown, bury, retrieve.

Rat: feast, drown, bury, retrieve.

A few weeks ago, we planted beautiful new flowers all over the front yard with some night lighting, including in some large, tall flower pots, planters, etc. It was adorable until...

About a week later, a rat or rats feasted on them. Some just had flowers eaten, while others had roots dug up.

Then, the rat needed a drink to wash all the feast down. There was a large, tall bucket with water in it. The rat drank. The rat fell into the bucket of water. The rat could not get back out because the sides were too slippery. The rat
drowned.

We now have a dead cute but naughty rat.

Rat gets buried about a foot deep near where it dined.

A few days ago, the rat emerged from the grave.

Dead but not eaten. We assume a coyote, dog, or cat dug it up.

We now have a dead, smelly from the start of decomposing dead rat in a flower garden.

We are now thinking of pouring bleach on it, digging about three feet deep, burying it again, and hoping it will not emerge again. Or do we need to build a sealed coffin so it will not reemerge?

A few years ago, rats ate into a locked steel shed used for old file storage. The rats got in through the wood flooring and ate all the papers in the files. We trapped the rats and redid the shed base with concrete.

Previously, rats or other rodents dined on my new Honda Accord's yummy (soy-based) wire harness, which cost $1500 to replace. We have a carport, not a garage.

We did ask a cute squirrel hanging around the next day, but he/she just wiggled its ears and scampered off. Besides tasty soy, which some car makers started using in 2000, rodent teeth are constantly growing, and they need to gnaw on stuff to wear them down. It's a compulsion; they gnaw on anything softer than their teeth.

I now have my rodent army recruited and on duty. I didn't have a cat or friendly guard owl. However, I have two small sonic and flashing light boxes under the hood. Plus, on the side of the car, an electronic predator noise maker that chirps, growls, and other rotating sounds and a bright flashing strobe light next to the front tires (but pointed away from the road). Both only go on at night. No more chewing on wires, but it didn't deter the rat in front of the home from eating the new flowers.

Hopefully, it will not have friends who will come since we have replanted new flowers. This has never happened before when we had various plants in the same places.
 

Ponderling

Lotsa things to think about
Jul 19, 2021
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Mississauga
Warmer climates and rats love it.

I was in Brisbane Australia designing a new road for buses job.
That moved the adjacent freeway around to fit the bus road in.

Well, no agency would agree to sharing commumication ducts.
So we ended up with 5 -75mm ducts in the bottom half of the dividing concrete road barrier.

Then 5 months after that was built we had to issue a new contract to plug up the vacant ducts.
As hordes of rats were using them as thier own version of an expressway.
We had video of teams worth of rats bubbling out of the steel cover pulling gaps in short order.
The gap that we had placed about every 300m in the barrier to act as the duct system pull points.

So next write a specification for bid.
To have contractor stuff a rag tied with a short length of rope into open end of each duct.
Pushed that in about in about 100mm.

That limited the amount of foam needed in the next step.
And made a means to pull the plug out some day to aloow a cable to be pulled into the duct.

Then stuff half of a stainless steel pot scrubbie mesh in the duct in front of the rag wad.
Then expanding insulation foam - isocyanate as I recall- was injected to fill through and encapsulate the mesh.

We did this because a sage old local guy in pest control advised me that rats would not chew through the mesh.
It would cut into their gums if they tried to chew through the foam.
And the foam kept them from nosing the mesh out of their way.

5 weeks of night work later and the plugs were all in place and the rat compliant calls stopped.
 
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I am so happy I live in the city!
Actually I do, in North Phoenix but not downtown and larger than most city lots in the foothills of Lookout Mountain, but all well within the city of Phoenix
 

squeezer

Well-known member
Jan 8, 2010
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Actually I do, in North Phoenix but not downtown and larger than most city lots in the foothills of Lookout Mountain, but all well within the city of Phoenix
We need to send you some of our cold weather and snow as a gesture of good will to keep some of the wild life in check. ;)
 
We need to send you some of our cold weather and snow as a gesture of good will to keep some of the wild life in check. ;)
Heh, I grew up in the Minneapolis area, where -40 F and +32 F felt warm. There was lots of snow to shovel, and we had car heaters to keep the engine from freezing overnight so it would start the next day.

Then we had humid summers with those darn mosquitoes and an occasional tornado. 88 f was as miserable due to humidity vs 115 in Phoneix with maybe 3% humidity in the Summer. I prefer Phoenix since it rarely gets down to freezing, and I stay in a conditioned home most of the time with a business home office. Other than the weather Minneapolis very nice city. I went to the Univ Of MN, etc. but I will take Phoenix, although miss the green grass, trees and lake cabin I had about 60 miles West where I had a nice bass boat with sonar in a large lake (Sugar)
 
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That would end up killing a bunch of homeless people that litter the streets in the urban areas of that town, too.
Not sure how wide a definition you meant when you tossed outthe term 'wildlife'.
Yes, we have a homeless problem, with many who die from the heat and are on the streets homeless. We are trying to get more affordable housing and have cooling centers, but it is a huge problem in Phoenix with our heat and in Minneapolis, even worse with the extreme cold.
 

mandrill

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Aug 23, 2001
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Let me make you a referral. This is Patrick the Wire Fox Terrier.

Cute, playful. Loves to chew on rodents' heads and toss their little rodent bodies around in his mouth before ripping their little ratty legs off....

Highly recommended.

F8UaYFjXAAAVcOA.jpg
 

kherg007

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May 3, 2014
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there's a dude who has videos on the internet releasing his minks who tear through mobs of rats...
 
Let me make you a referral. This is Patrick the Wire Fox Terrier.

Cute, playful. Loves to chew on rodents' heads and toss their little rodent bodies around in his mouth before ripping their little ratty legs off....

Highly recommended.

View attachment 381849
I think I hear handsome Patrick saying, "Yah I want to get out of the cold up here and join your army against rodents in Phoenix... at least before it gets hot there in the Summer,"
 
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jalimon

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Jan 10, 2016
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My problem are squirrels. And not tiny squirrels that you see at the pet shop. No garfield type squirrel. I have lots of trees and especially a huge oak. So men i was infested. And you think squirrels are nice??? Nah a squirrel is a rat dressed in a suit.

So i got a dog. A border collie. Whose fun in life is making sure no squirrels hit the ground ;) The squirrels still comes to the oak tree to pick the nuts but they don't damage the ground, my compost or garbage bin.
 
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