Oh, Rats.
We had rats in our attic a few weeks ago.
Last week, I bought a variety of poisons and traps for Phillip to use in eradicating the vermin.
He decided the poison was the easiest method, broke up the bars, and tossed the chunks around the attic.
Predictably, the rats ate it and died.
I convinced him to go up with me the next day and look for bodies. We were lucky – we saw a tail sticking up out of the insulation and found one.
We didn’t find any others until last night.
The girls’ room had started smelling foul – the stink progressed rapidly throughout the day. After I realized there must be another rat carcass in the attic, I talked with Phillip about it.
My husband is a computer programmer, not a farmer, and he was born and bred in the city. He wasn’t going anywhere near that rat.
I am a farm girl. I was raised on one and I’m not afraid of yucky jobs. I wasn’t going to let that rat stink up my house while my husband went to a slick glass building all day and we suffered through it. With the way it smelled, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be hard to find.
Well, I started up to the attic and my husband was not going to be outdone by his wife, so up he came. It’s a good thing, too, because that rat was so far back under the eaves, burrowed deep in the middle of the insulation, that it needed two people – one who could scramble over to it and one to hold the light so we could find it.
It was a BIG rat. And it had *yuck!* exploded. I put it in a triple-bagged garbage sack, then put it in another garbage sack in the garbage can and threw my gloves away for good measure.
I think we’ve learned a valuable lesson. Poison is inefficient and lazy. Much better to go to the trouble of putting out a proper spring trap and checking it every few days to dispose of anything.
Today the roofer has come to fix the hole and add ridge vents to our roof. You can be sure we’ll be clearing out the growth by our home and making sure we’ve closed all the holes they’ve used.
I will, at least. But I bet you ten-to-one that if I go out to do it myself, my husband will tag along with me. For moral support, you know.
I *hate* problems like those! We got mice in our house a couple of years ago and I thought they were going to drive me crazy! Of course they loved the pantry, and I actually caught a couple by the tail and threw them to the cats… that’s how crazy I’d become! Just call me “cat woman” lol!
I tried poison too, but gave up when I had to fish one out from between the furnace duct and the wall… one limb at a time, literally! The only way I could find him was by his stench.
The glue traps work really great for mice; they find ways of getting the bait off the spring loaded jobbies and not get caught in the meantime. But then came the disgusting job of killing them, because I couldn’t stand to see them suffer (they *are* cute little critters, even if they are vile) and I squeezed their heads with pliers. Yuck! but it worked. I can’t imagine what to do w/ a rat though! Their heads are way bigger than a mouse’s.
I’m sure that what you did was actually the quickest way to get rid of rats. And the safest, too. The time you saved by poisoning them all in one shot prevented a new litter from being born, I’m sure.
Good job! Sorry about the stink.