Rats

You see a rat or rat droppings, what do you do?

There is never just one rat. The minimum is a family. Likely more as they are secretive.

Nothng

The rat population will grow exponentially until it exceeds the food supply. This usually occurs in mid to late fall. Then they will starve and get desperate. Starvation and predators will kill them off. You will see crows picking rat carcasses in the street. The population may get so large that you need to take action anyway.

Clean up control

Clean up all piles of trash or other places the rats can nest on your property. Police up fruit from trees and other edibles. Aggressively clean up your garden and outbuildings to remove food and hiding places. The rats will move to your neighbors. You will see some fewer especially if your yard was the local food source.

Put out poison bait

Some rats will take the bait. They will generally crawl into a dark hole to die. Smells will result. Population growth will continue. Remaining rats will learn about the poison. Some predators will eat the dying rats and be poisoned. This may include valued birds such as falcons or pets.

Put out traps

You will need to buy the traps and bait them. You will also need to deal with the dead rats. If you use enough traps the population around your property will dip.

Call an exterminator or ask your HOA to do it

This will cost you money sooner or later. They will do one or more of the above things. Probably not traps though.


My solution is traps

Here are the basic steps:

Count the number of safe spots you can put the traps

Buy the good rat traps

Buy bait

Screw each trap down in the selected spots

Bait them

Check every week at first, remove rats, rebait, reset

Drop check frequency after a couple of months as the catch rate drops


Safe spots

You need a spot that no toddler can reach. No pets or valued small animals or birds either. There should be wood available to screw the trap to. It needs to be within ten inches of a horizontal surface a rat can stand on. Ideally you should be able to see at a glance if the trap is still set or you have caught one. Also your friends and neighbors should not be able to see the traps. The traps can be right beside each other in a row. Rats ignore other dead rats and do not make the connection with the trap and death directly.

Good traps

Not the wooden Victor traps. They are dangerous to set. You could easily get a broken finger. The BlackCat traps and the ones with a red kill bar are good. You need an easy set style. I have over a dozen, all in my garage.

Bait

Cheap peanut butter is good. Also peanuts in the shell or plain almonds. The nuts can be hot glued to the trigger to reduce stealing. Some stealing is good as it gets the rat family used to an easy source of food. Even bait broken traps for this reason.

Screw them down

Rats are fairly strong and have ridiculously fast reflexes. Spring traps often fail to get a clean kill. A rat in a loose trap will drag it into a hidden corner to die. This results in smells and a search to find your trap to reset it. A single screw can leave the rat hanging in the air so you can open the trap with one hand and catch the rat in a bucket without touching it.

Baiting

Some bait goes in the supplied cup. Putting more around the trap is fine as you want the rats to get used to them. Unset a trap before replacing stolen bait. Rats are capable of licking the bait cup empty without triggering the trap. But not every time.

Checking

If your traps are visible the check is super easy. You can just walk the area in your good clothes and look in the best case. Work is needed for caught rats and excess bait stealing. Check the rules for disposal of dead rats in your jurisdiction.


Good luck