Posted on 12/12/2007 4:38:04 AM PST by Global2010
I have a serious question.
We live on a bay on the Oregon Coast and this time of year the rats want in really bad.
I can D Con in the Garage because I can hide it behind the tool bench where they follow along the wall.
I cannot D Con around the house because we have 3 Labs and sometimes the other Labs in the area sneak away and come visit our home ( I don't encourage them).
So I am looking at these plug in the wall sonar rat repellants.
Do they work? Can I plug them inside next to the doors and have them be effective?
The suckers come every year when it gets cold and if I don't kill them they knaw at the door frame.
I had one come up one year in the day and as my Lab was standing over his bone barking to the nieghbor Lab up the way the dirty rat came up under him and stole his bone. I kid you not. Brazen lil' sucker.
I hate rats.
They have been known to get into homes here while folks are gone for the winter and literally destroying the interior.
But I am asking about the rodents type not the liberal kind.
Sounds to me like what you need is a fierce CAT!
No they don’t work, at least not in my experience.
How about traps? Nice warm cozy ones. Too small for the dogs. Put the poison in the traps. (I’m presuming dogs won’t eat dead rats, though I’ve seen stranger things go into dogs.)
Well, if they are using them in Congress then they are miserable failures.
I quit keeping cats years ago due to the cross street down the hill is an old highway route and the young roughnecks drive their rigs at excessive speeds turning cats crossing the road to get to the fishing gear shed into road kill.
That and when it is cold they pee in the garage instead of going out to do their business.
Have had so many cats in the past years as pest control I can’t name them all.
Can’t leave cat food out either.
I even keep the garage immaculant so the rats are not attracted to things to cart off for bedding or food other than the d con.
I keep d con blocks under the hood of my van because the dirty rats crawl up and chew on the hood lining.
It is just a common issue here on the coast.
My neighbors lil dog got into some D Con in his fifth wheel that he was not aware was there due to loaning it out.
Broke his heart.
Like Rat Hotels?
I have decking all the way around the house and thought about putting those under the deck.
I can’t set rat traps as in the snap the neck kind due to a back injury I can’t bend over.
But the hotels I could use my handy grabbers to put under the deck and fetch them up when occupied.
And they are spendy too.
They don’t work.
You need to get a cat.
Or put the D Con inside a trap but be sure to put other tasty stuff along with it.
Even if the trap doesn’t work, it will still keep the D Con away from dogs.
IIRC I have seen you post about your fishing/living off the SE Coast.
So you would know about ocean/bay dock rats.
Thanks I will go search some out on the internet shopping mode.
Our local Grocery store does not carry the rat hotels, just the d con.
There are electronic rat zappers available and they work as long as you keep the batteries fresh and the mechanism clean. Here’s the one I bought :
http://www.skymall.com/shopping/detail.htm?pid=102202272&c=
It works very well (just put a nugget of dogfood in the end of it to “bait” it and you’ll soon have an electrocuted rat).
I use a Victor electronic mouse trap (battery powered). It works great for killing mice and, once, a larger vole. I bait it with a piece of peanut. It should be too small for any decent sized rat but then I don’t know how decent are your rats.
Get cats or Jack Russell terriers.
Those are the best way in my opinion. You bait them, they throw the rat into the enclosed area. Dog can’t get to the bait and no poison needed. Only bad part is killing the disgusting creatures.
I haven’t much experience with rats but I do know they’re smarter than squirrels, and I’ve had those. I had squirrels that somehow thwarted traps, stole the food and got out, or knocked over the trap and picked the food out from between the bars.
Still, if you make a trap cozy you should be able to catch a rat. Get somebody else to do the bending. There are always folks happy to oblige, you only need to ask.
My squirrels, by the way, didn’t go for peanut butter as expected. They fell for it when I put in pieces of newspapers and a pizza crust! LOL, I think it was the dinosaur media that drew them in.
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