In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
The War On Rats
allen griggs
Member Posts: 35,669 ✭✭✭✭
I am way out in the forest, I'm nowhere near the county dump. These wild rodents show up out of the woods, they want to build a nest in the a/c fan of my car. They get in the basement and eat food I store down there. Several years ago bought a nice antique Mercedes diesel, and the mice chewed the engine wiring up.
I have over a dozen electric rat repellers in the woodshed, in the basement, and under the hood of my pickup. I noticed one of my repellers in the basement wasn't flashing, a rat chewed the wire in two.
*********************
Plug-in Rodent Ultra Sonic Repellent 4-in-1 Rat Repelling Device Get Rid of Mice with Ultrasound Flashlight Predator Sounds Indoor Pest PreventionLoraffe Rat Repeller600+ bought in past month$49.99 with 24 percent savings-24% $49.99
*********************
Yes, fifty bucks on sale.
Comments
Wood rats, they chewed through the 220 V dryer plug before chewing through the plastic pipe from my well .
I dug the nest out gettting the well pipe out and threw probably 20 babies out , they went away after that
Sort of wonder HOW a rat could chew through a live AC wire w/o being fried.
I've shot a lot of rats... Turnip hunts them. They are hard to keep down but where we live the hawk and owls are hunting them to so we can't poison. Where do you find this contraption of yours?
"Independence Now, Independence Forever."
John Adams
Just look up Loraffe plug in rat repeller on Amazon. Very highly rated.
I'm with you I don't want to harm a hawk so I don't use poison. I've caught 'em in my Havahart trap and deported them. I've killed them with glue traps and conventional mouse traps. There is literally an infinite number of rats and mice that I am battling.
If I killed every mouse on the property, on a cold December day Mrs. Mouse will sneak into my firewood pile and make a nest. She's pregnant, and in 3 weeks, I have 5 new mice!
We were infested with outside rats a few years ago. I bought the packets of rat poison from the feed store and scattered them around and that ended the rat problem.I still keep a few packet around in case any new rats show up,but I haven't seen rat sign or packets eaten in a long time.
Free house cats ads are everywhere, pick up a few to live around you but don't feed them, let them feed themselves and don't love on them at all. (old farm cats had a duty to perform…and they did good )
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Yep. Nothing better than a bunch of barn cats running around. Let ‘em go feral and they’ll help a lot.
2 years ago I noticed that the mice had made nests in some machines and not others. The others were parked in an area that had wild peppermint growing. So, as the weather gets cold, I "harvested" some of the peppermint and put in and around sheds, machinery and vehicles. So far, so good. Turns out, there's actually a peppermint spray that is a rodent repellant.
And there's no rotting odors left behind as if they died by poison behind walls and other places and you spend hours searching for it, cats cleanup their crumbs pretty well.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
I’m not a rat expert, But I seen a documentary once on the rats living in the sewers under ground in New York City. They asked the question about using cats to control the rats in the city, this guy answered the question as such: cats eat mice, rats eat cats. If they have a food source good enough Norway rats can weigh up to 1.5 pounds. I really don’t have an answer other than if there was someway to eliminate there food source. They also said that rats are intelligent, and learn, and after a while if you are using poison they learn to avoid it.
Maybe ask your neighbors if they have had problems and ask what they have done. If it’s an on going problem maybe be the county can help out.
My nearest neighbor is 1/2 mile away. He said he doesn't have a rat problem.
My buddy has told me that my problem is my dog. He said that rats eat dog doo doo. So that could be what draws wood rats into my yard. I guess, rats would eat that.
Bobcats. I'd like to see a 1.5 lb rat try to eat a bobcat!
@NeoNlackdog, I’d like to see that my self, actually maybe that would solve his problem. Have the state relocate some bobcats in his area.
40 years ago there was this one train that ran to Clinton Iowa and we had to cross the Mississippi River out of Illinois. On the Iowa side we had to stop and there was a switch we had to throw to get on the main track just on the other side, and it was by a dump, I never seen so may rats in my life. If it was night I’d throw one fusee out in front of the engine and one by the switch to keep the rats away. I’m serious there were so many rats you could see in the day time it looked like the ground was moving. I always thought it would be fun as hell to go over there with a rifle and shot them. I think it was back in the 90s sometime they closed the dump down and cleaned up that area.
I was in NYC a few times for work and saw a few rats in the streets at night, they looked like they were at least 10-15lbs. Was usually on the way back to the hotel after having dinner and drinking, but I'd have wanted a mountain lion to take them on! I swear some were bigger than small dogs I have raised.
We spent one night too many in Vancouver waiting for a cruise. I can't describe how deplorable that city is and stay within the boundaries of this site. Anyway, we walked past a closed deli & wifey said, "Woah." The place was over run with rats big enough for Martha to ride.
Back when we had a local dump hunting rats at night with a .22 was fun….but spooky. You could hear them squeaking and creeping about until you shined a light on them. AND, we always tied our pant legs shut. Back when I was a reserve with the Susanville, Ca. P.D. '74-'77, we would occasionally blast away with our riot guns on a slow night but we had to bring our own #6's as the issue buck shot was worthless on the tiny critters. And we had to account for any ammo missing or shot. On a lighter note, different subject, When we caught underage kids with beer or wine we made them pour it out and gave 'em a strict warning, we never called their parents until the 3rd violation. Often, I think I lived in the best of times.
They do love the German wire coating. A few years ago the German "green" Geniuses made wire coating out of soy. You can imagine what happened.
Instead of poison I saw a guy yapping about corn meal (like Jiffy) and baking soda. Cheaper than poison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBeySuYvdbY
Re: dump hunting rats. When I was in High School, the small town nearby had a dump, complete with an attendant who was allowed to stay in a shack onsite. He was renowned for sitting in the middle of the floor at night with a bottle of hootch and banging away at rats for entertainment.
Watch some of the British rat-shooting videos on YouTube. They use pellet guns but they are very accurate and powerful enough. They use night-vision equipment and some of the farms are just overrun with the critters.