Thread: Help with a wise ole rat

Evening all

Seeking advice on how to get rid of a rat in my shed. It's far to wise for a trap and it's diet doesn't seem to include cheese or cheese coated in peanut butter. All my toys are a little to big to offload into the shed. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Cheers

steel bucket,preferably with straight sides...2/3rds fill with water and add warm melted fat to it....it will form layer on surface...place against wall etc...ol ratus ratus will smell it and jump in for nibble,break through surface and wont be able to get out with greasy paws...... dog can drink/eat it...worst that can happen is kids play in it....

Multi-pronged approach, extra strong glue paper around all possible runs.

I prefer DIY, corn starch + water= super gloopy yet strong adhesive mix that they will eat, spread it across a wide bit of board and wait (light coating at edges to lure in then thick centre).

Then poison if you can get it (not sure what your licensing laws are, have always found this to be the most effective but least rewarding as they crawl off an die in an otherwise inaccessible bit and stink the place out)

I'll send you something
KH

Hi pook
Give a postal address and I will send you some possum paste which will be be good on a trap I can send posion if you want that as well.
First strike or contrac the paste with some grain will do a job I think.
I have some wheat or barely here so can put that in the pack.
KH

I had the same problem with a rat. In the end i was putting peanut butter on an unset trap once the bait was regularly being eaten i set the trap and got it

Caberslash and Northdude have touched on some of the things I've found worked. A few further notes:

As Northdude said - baiting but not setting the traps helps. Multiple traps, all thoroughly baited but unset will eventually get the better of Mr Rat and he'll get used to having a free meal.

The standard wood base and wire Victor Rat Traps have always worked best for me. They're niggly to set, but trigger when the bait bar is moved in any direction unlike other traps. Plus you can lightly sand or file the bait bar to make it more sensitive. Putting most of the bait (peanut butter, chocolate, fat) on the underside of the bait bar helps in catching the rat since it's harder for them to get the bait - they have to work between the bar and the base of the trap, twist themselves sideways to get in there etc. Smart rats usually can learn to skim bait off the top of the trigger, but haven't found many that were able to remove it from the bottom. Some traps don't trigger by being wiggled or pushed upwards though. The T Rex traps haven't worked well for me. They're nice and sensitive and the small ones kill mice well, but the big ones don't seem to be strong enough for rats. Stopped using them after having three rats in a row caught but not killed by them.

Rats tend to drag traps off and die somewhere inconvenient. Wiring the trap to something or gluing it to a large base secure helps minimize the chance that it drags the trap somewhere inaccessible before dieing and stinking the place out. A trap screwed to a long board is great for putting the trap somewhere otherwise inaccessible, like a narrow roof cavity, inside a wall, or down a pipe. Just need to make sure that the trap has room for the jaws to swing when sprung and is well and truly secured so you don't end up with a rat stinking somewhere hard to reach.

A trap that works well on mice but needs to be way bigger for rats is the pop-can trap - basically a big pail or half barrel (for rats) with 15-20cm of water in the bottom and a wire stretched across the center of the bucket at the top, with a peanut butter coated pop can threaded onto the wire to form a rotating drum. A kink in the wire or nut on either side of the can stops it from being pulled towards the lip of the bucket. Rats and mice will try to reach the pop can and end up falling into the bucket and drowning. Rats have far better reach than mice, so a standard 20L bucket won't work. Would need to be a half 200L drum or something similar with multiple cans or a tube strung onto the wire. Especially nice for infestations because they don't need to be reset to keep catching.



A few rats proved far too wily and got the night vision and airgun treatment.

as above but with ammonium tri-iodide in the bottom, you will know when the rat falls in

Bacon fat on bait or trap trigger gets them every time

Just don’t do what an Aussie motelier did when he found a snake in his tiled shower cubicle. Blew it away with a 12 gauge! Crikey maaate; really dangerous!

Years ago we had one Mr BIG rat in a hut during the roar that simply refused to get caught in our traps, so we fed him with bacon scraps till he was accustomed to his feed in the corner of the hut, then hit him with an electric det. Messy but VERY satisfying

Box trap with sultanas as bait on the ‘trigger’

Had to once thread three evenly spaced sultanas on cotton thread which was tied to the trigger to catch a crafty rat that ate the lead-in sultanas that were there to lure the rat into the trap,
It regularly ate those sultanas but not the one on the trigger - however the cotton thread trick worked, ratty went into the trap to take the lead-in sultanas (as he usually did) but as soon as he pulled on them? Kachang! Down came the door

Originally Posted by gonetropo

as above but with ammonium tri-iodide in the bottom, you will know when the rat falls in

i just googled that stuff. No way, its a bit dangerous

Originally Posted by Martin358

i just googled that stuff. No way, its a bit dangerous

You do realise that now you've googled the stuff, you're on..... A LIST!

I have got two large Haveaheart cages around the estuary looking for ferrets, hogs and rats. I haven’t had a ferret in a couple of months but the hogs and occasional rats keep on coming in. I haven’t got any great rat pictures as both of the property owners are shooting them and biffing them in the tide. Both cages have hair triggers and a rat trips them easy. Maybe a large cage and a variety of stinky bait will pull in your wise old rat. I know a couple of guys down the street that always use smaller cages to catch rats around their sheds – I have never used my small cage as I prefer a kill trap.