What should a homeowner do if he sees a couple of rats in the backyard?
Question:What should he do in terms of extermination? Trapping them?
Answers:
Get cats. We live in farmland and everytime the farmers would harvest the fields, the mice would "join us". Once we got cats (we keep them outside, even), the rats/mice went away.
wanna have some fun ? 12 gauge .
I would buy some mouse traps and some rat poison. I would also check around my house carefully to make sure they don't have a way to get in!
shoot them with a beebee gun or a paint ball gun haha my brother shot a racoon with a paint ball gun left a big yellow mark on his butt
Depends on where you live first. If you live in a city then the city usually has a service to help. if you live in the county - call and see if they can help too. Then there is a professional exterminator - rats are nasty and can be dangerous. Do you really want to find a not quite dead one that is angry? Mice are easy little things that do great with sticky traps, snap traps and poison. Rats are tough and can spread disease and poison everywhere. I tried all the methods myself including a gun but it ended in me calling the City first then a pro when they kept coming back. I know you do not want to spend the money, but a pro is a guaranteed end to the problem. You see one - there could be a dozen that you do not see.
i'd get some pest controllers in,(you'll find them in the telephone book) as using a rat trap or poison you will need lots of them/it..probably costing you more in the long run,,,they should fix the problem, and get them to look at the areas around the outside/inside as they could be breeding in your roof or under your house!
one thing im suprised noone mentioned,eliminate the source of food for them, be it pet food, trash, garden, fruit trees.etc
Tightly cover the garbnage cans, empty the bird feeders, get rid of anything they might eat.
This happens to me every few years. I just place rat poison out and alert my immediate neighbors. They all do the same thing. 2-4 weeks later they're all gone. ( The rats, not the neighbors)
how strongly are you opposed to wildlife in your area?
natural way is get a predator of rats... rat terrier, jack Russel, cat or other.
chemical way is D-con or the like
sonic devices also work to run them out of range
also are you accidentally feeding them? trash, food spillage, local farm, pond or creek nearby? how about grocery stores or other food markets?
get a cat!
The cheapest and safest way for kids, pets, birds, etc. is to trap them is by using a Victor® Electronic Rat Trap. You put in the batteries and put a glob of peanut butter at the end with the holes. The trap basically electrocutes them. A light turns on when you have a "customer". Open the lid and dump in trash. No blood and guts and touching the remains.
I thought the price, abt $45 was high at first, but it worked like a charm (compared to the fortune I've spent on snap traps, glue traps, live traps...) and brought in multiple "customers" a day.
"The Victor electronic rat trap activates when the rat completes the circuit by touching the metal plates inside the plastic housing and features a patent pending design that prevents escapes. The electronic rat trap will exterminate about 12 rats using one set of four “C” batteries, and a red indicator light flashes when the batteries are low and need to be replaced."
You can buy them at http://www.safehomeproducts.co... They had the cheapest price I found for them. Look there for the category "Rodent Repellents"
The other thing to do is to look for what is attracting them and get rid of it. Good Luck !!
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