Rats have been with humanity since the beginning of time. We are told that no one is further from a rat than six feet, at any given time. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, however, there are plenty of rats around.
There are apparently 60 species of rats in the world. The smallest is about four inches long and the largest is called the Bosavi woolly rat which weighs over three pounds, about the size of a cat.
Rats are not your “simple” little animal, they are very intelligent. This is shown by the fact that they are used to sniffing out gunpowder and are highly intelligent at solving puzzles and can find their way around mazes.
Seventeen species of rats are known to transmit fatal diseases to mankind: Weal’s disease, plague, viral hemorrhagic fever, and Q fever. Rats do not sleep much and most of their activity takes place during the hours of darkness .
Apart from me, the enemy rats are many; cats, foxes, dogs, snakes, large birds such as hawks, hawks, kites and, of course, the owl.
I have no experience in catching rats in a house, because to my knowledge I have never lived in a house with rats. However, my sister, who lives in Washington, had a neighbor who had a stray python in the house that lived on rats. You could try that if you want, I’d rather not because it might as well eat you up one day.
My serious rat hunting days started three years ago (2017) when rats ate all my beet and apple crops on my allotment. I knew they were around because I used to see them running from time to time. I didn’t think about it, just a few rats. How wrong I was:
2018 I caught 53
2019 I caught 84
One night in 2019 I caught two young men in a trap (aren’t they blades?). I also caught a very large slug.
This year, 2020, I have only caught two so far. The reason, I think, is that my plot was flooded for almost two months at the beginning of the year and they drowned or moved in at the moment, however, I did see one the other day. They are back, but so am I.
So how do I catch them? Well, first of all, I don’t use any kind of poison. I think that’s not safe and it takes three to four days for the rat to die. When you poison a rat, it will hide somewhere and die, and then there is a chance that something will come and eat it and that animal will die too. So by using poison you lose control of what happens and could be responsible for two or three very painful deaths.
I use rat traps, the wooden ones, not the plastic ones because they break in the sun. The bait I use is peanut butter, I find it better because the rat has to spend some time under the spring licking the bait. I always wear gloves when handling the traps, the reason is to keep my scent out of the trap.
Rats, like us, are highly focused, but also like us, they are creatures of habit. I take advantage of that fact in the following way.
I have five traps and I bait them every day, but I don’t set the trap. What I want is for the rat to get used to taking the bait. So every third day I set one of the traps and I always catch a rat.
People always have to know what to do with the dead rat, why don’t I know. Although, it is interesting, because it shows another animal behavior.
Like I said I always wear gloves so when I have a rat to get rid of I put the gloves on and take the rat in the trap out to some open ground on my plot and drop the rat on the ground and go and have a cup of coffee to wait for what happens next.
This all happens between four and four-thirty in the afternoon: As I sit in my chair, a red kite appears in the sky, circles, and then swoops down, picks up the dead rat, and flies over the nearby trees. . This has been going on for the past two years, summer and winter.
So, to catch rats, you need: rat traps, peanut butter, gloves, patience, and a routine.
