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Ninja and/or genius rat in garage.... help needed (1 Viewer)

nirad3

Footballguy
Long story short, we discovered that we have a rat in our garage.  I've dealt with mice before but never a rat.  

We have a pest control company come out quarterly to spray for spiders and ants, so we had them come over to investigate.  They wanted $750 to set traps and come check weekly and dispose of it once trapped.  No way we were paying that and our landlord said no as well.  He had a handyman coming over to do some minor repairs in our house, so he bought traps for us.  

He told us to put food on the traps but not set them for 3-4 days so the rat would get "comfortable" with getting food from it. 

Sure enough, every night he took the food. We did this for 2 nights, thinking that was good enough.   

So we then baited it and set the traps.  My wife heard one of the traps snap a couple nights ago, but it either went off by itself or the rat somehow had a Matrix moment and avoided getting snapped.

Now, a couple days later, he hasn't taken the food.  Has he wised up?  Did he leave?

Any tips or tricks?  Schtick welcomed, but some advice here would be great, since it's grossing both me and my wife out (more so her, but I'll admit it's pretty nasty).

 
Tell your ####### landlord to hire a real exterminator.
If we don't have it snapped by the weekend I am going to ask for alternatives.  I don't want to have to deal with the dead rat anyways.

Or find a way to attract free feral cats to your garage. They will eat the dirty rat. If the feral cats get out of hand, find a way to attract free coyotes to your garage. The best thing is that this is all free.
Yeah we live in suburbia with no feral cats.  There are some domesticated cats the live across the street but I think they're more of the Fancy Feast types.

 
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Oh, and then set it up again, because you probably have more than one rat.
The pest control guy was pretty darn sure it was just one.  The guy was supposedly like a rat whisperer or something.  My wife was amazed about what he knew and how he knew it within 3 minutes of investigating our garage.

 
Try a Sherman trap (look them up) instead of a traditional trap. You'll have to then either kill the rat yourself or toss the trap in a garbage can or something (cruel death).

 
It may never take food from the snap trap again.  You could try what Mr R did.  We bought the rat a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger from Jack In The Box.  Mr R made a canape of death with the bacon and a toothpick by wrapping the bacon around the toothpick.  He placed the canape so that the toothpick triggered the trap, rather than the food.  Second night, I heard a sound in the garage.  Rat splooge = success.

You could try sticky traps.  Just don't use poison.  Then you get a dead rat in the wall which smells like death.  Ick.

 
Something I learned when setting traps a year ago (outdoor, opossum) was to wear gloves when setting the trap so they don't pick up the human scent.  Not sure if that's an issue with rats.

 
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Something I learned when setting traps a year ago (outdoor, opossum) was to wear gloves when setting the trap so they don't pick up the human scent.  Not sure if that's an issue with rats.
Oh right, forgot to mention that we're wearing gloves.

I was successful in trapping 3 mice in our house in Minnesota several years ago.  This, for some reason, seems like it's going to drag out and/or require professional help.  

 
It may never take food from the snap trap again.  You could try what Mr R did.  We bought the rat a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger from Jack In The Box.  Mr R made a canape of death with the bacon and a toothpick by wrapping the bacon around the toothpick.  He placed the canape so that the toothpick triggered the trap, rather than the food.  Second night, I heard a sound in the garage.  Rat splooge = success.

You could try sticky traps.  Just don't use poison.  Then you get a dead rat in the wall which smells like death.  Ick.
can of peas, my ###, that's a Ritz cracker and chopped liver!

 
I've been through this.  I've tried all the traps and tricks and ultimately hired an exterminator after a ####### rat ate the wiring in my oven and I had fireworks and a re-wiring job when I turned it on. When he told me he first wanted to try a bait station I balked because of the dying in the walls thing.  He explained that the poison actually makes them very thirsty so in most cases they die outside the house searching for water.  It worked.  I've been rat free for a couple years and still keep the thing loaded.  Never had one die in the house. It's one of those commercial dealies that you see outside of restaurants and it takes poison pellets that go on rods inside of it. Frankly, it works too well to be legal in CA.

 
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we used this:

Rat Zapper  It was super easy.  Put a little bit of Quaker Oats with Club Crackers at the front and some at the back.   In the morning we would dump the dead rat in the field next door and it was gone by the evening time... circle of life

 
Yeah I've seen those black "stations" outside of a lot of buildings around here.  

we used this:

Rat Zapper  It was super easy.  Put a little bit of Quaker Oats with Club Crackers at the front and some at the back.   In the morning we would dump the dead rat in the field next door and it was gone by the evening time... circle of life
Might have to get the landlord to invest in something like that.  

 
we used this:

Rat Zapper  It was super easy.  Put a little bit of Quaker Oats with Club Crackers at the front and some at the back.   In the morning we would dump the dead rat in the field next door and it was gone by the evening time... circle of life
I’ll have to try this. I’ve trapped 2 rats (as well as chipmunks, red squirrels, gray squirrels, opossum, woodchuck) one outside (it was huge, is there such a thing as a river rat? I think it traveled through a flooded drainage ditch next to my house) and one inside our garage, was living in a wall.

I drowned the huge one. The other was also big and when I tried to pick up the trap to drown it the darn rat almost pushed open the spring loaded door. Fearing it would escape, I ended up killing it with a pitchfork through the trap walls. Not fun. It had tunnels all through the insulation in a section of wall and it stunk to high heaven.

its an ongoing battle at my house with all the varieties of rodents. I typically know one’s in the garage from our dog before I know myself. Rats, mice, chipmunks, squirrels do tons of damage. Something chewed up most of a fitting that was built into the housing for a 400 dollar fish pond pump. Anything cloth (including old furniture in a carpeted room behind actual garage) gets destroyed. I have rat poison put down in pet-safe areas all over my property.

 
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You ever seen the movie Mouse Hunt? Give up now. Before you end up blowing out your entire first floor with a flea bomb.

Best to make a truce and go into the string cheese business with it.

 
I am reminded of a former roommate who would incessantly run the Monty Python Rat tart sketch when he was wasted.  We had to start hiding his weed.

 
we used this:

Rat Zapper  It was super easy.  Put a little bit of Quaker Oats with Club Crackers at the front and some at the back.   In the morning we would dump the dead rat in the field next door and it was gone by the evening time... circle of life
Reading the info on this and discovered that rats can restart their own hearts and so it zaps them for 2 minutes :eek:

 
The trap might have gotten part of him (leg or something) and he wobbled away, only to die elsewhere.

 
You need to think like a rat.

what does a rat primarily want? Food, water, shelter, mate.

look at your situation, what rat needs might you or your neighbors be accommodating?

you can likely impact 2 or 3!of those and make the area less hospitable to the rat.

Gold help you if you are your neighbors are assisting with the mating need. I’d move.

Could be you are helping with shelter. Can you find where your rat is sleeping during the day? Holes in the wall? Check your base boards for fecal trails. Rats hate open spaces so he/she is probably slinking along a wall to feel protected on one of his flanks. Do you have a bunch of stuff along the garage wall creating a safe space for him to travel along? Wall on one flank and boxes on the other creating a cozy little path for him/her to travel to his/her destination? Is so move the stuff off the walls to make his/her path feel more dangerous and less hospitable. 
 

find the nest. When we bought the house we are in, in the first two weeks after moving in I came face to face with a rat in the garage sitting on the hot water heater. I chunked the can of seltzer water I had come for at him. Of course I missed. But that is when I found the hole where the pipes come out if the wall. Ok how did he get in that hole?
 

Next day, Check garage  base boards, no droppings. No droppings on baseboard all the way to the garage door and oh look steel wool (they hate steel wool) jammed between the garage door track and the wall. So previous owner must have encountered this rat and didn’t bother to mention that. Keep going with visual inspection of exterior. 
 

let’s look behind this shrub that aligns with the hot water heater. Oh what’s this unusually place pile of stone pavers next to the foundation? Oh it’s attempting to cover this hole in the siding that lines up with the hot water heater.

new exterior siding panel installed , go to the hot water heater hole, 3 cans of foam, and for good measure dump some poison in the hole before finishing off with more foam seal.

on to food. No food other than canned drinks in garage and a freezer. If he/she can open the freezer door, they win I give up. Start looking at neighbor yard. Lady next door has a bird bath and bird feeder. Strike up casual conversation with her mention I saw a rat has she. Why actually she has. Mention food water shelter concept. She says I bet they are coming to my bird bath and bird feeder. She drains the bath and starts taking the feeder down at dusk. Good neighbor!

Talk to other neighbor, mention rats, food water, shelter. Seen rats on fence, blames it on creek a quarter mile away. Couldn’t have anything to do with his ramshackle shed in backyard or brush piles he never disposed of. Oh well not much I can do here.

see occasional rat using back fence as a rodent super highway. Rabbits use the bottom of the fence, rats on the middle stringer and squirrels and possum traffics on the top stringer.

but no more rats in garage.

 
Growing up, we had one in our house.. The neighbor had chickens, so we assumed that's what drew it in.... It scared the #### out of the babysitter..  My dad set a huge ### snap trap.. nothing.  

We'd see it occasionally and the trap never worked.  After awhile, he set out poison.  We didn't see the rat again, but after a week or so, we developed a "smell" in the living room.  It kept getting worse and worse.. My dad finally snapped and started tearing #### apart trying to find the smell.. He narrowed it down to the couch..  Us kids watched as he flipped it upside down and took a knife to it..  Inside the couch was the nest and the dead rat :X  

 
Growing up, we had one in our house.. The neighbor had chickens, so we assumed that's what drew it in.... It scared the #### out of the babysitter..  My dad set a huge ### snap trap.. nothing.  

We'd see it occasionally and the trap never worked.  After awhile, he set out poison.  We didn't see the rat again, but after a week or so, we developed a "smell" in the living room.  It kept getting worse and worse.. My dad finally snapped and started tearing #### apart trying to find the smell.. He narrowed it down to the couch..  Us kids watched as he flipped it upside down and took a knife to it..  Inside the couch was the nest and the dead rat :X  
:barf:

 
Growing up, we had one in our house.. The neighbor had chickens, so we assumed that's what drew it in.... It scared the #### out of the babysitter..  My dad set a huge ### snap trap.. nothing.  

We'd see it occasionally and the trap never worked.  After awhile, he set out poison.  We didn't see the rat again, but after a week or so, we developed a "smell" in the living room.  It kept getting worse and worse.. My dad finally snapped and started tearing #### apart trying to find the smell.. He narrowed it down to the couch..  Us kids watched as he flipped it upside down and took a knife to it..  Inside the couch was the nest and the dead rat :X  
Horrible 

assuming couch  burning ensued 

 
When I was about 17 I was driving with a friend of mine down his street.  He made me turn around as he was CONVINCED he saw a baby kangaroo on the side of the road.  Considering we were NOT in Australia, this did not make much sense to me.  We turned back and almost in front of his house was this giant ### sewer rat.  It must have been hurt or sick because it didn't run away when you go close to it.  The nasty ******* would just go up on its hind legs and lunge at you.  Thus the "baby kangaroo" he saw.  I'm pretty sure we were already high as well, so that may have contributed to his sighting.  We decided that we should kill the giant rat as "there were kids around the neighborhood".  So we grabbed a baseball bat and went out to bash its head in.  His brothers came out there as well so now there is a group of 15-18 year old guys trying to kill this rat.  Only problem was that as you got close enough to swing the bat, the rat would lunge at you.  Ended up looking pretty "manly" as none of us could get close enough to hit it without looking like we were trying to dodge a swarm of bees when the cat sized rat would lunge.  My buddy finally ended up just getting in my car and running the rat over.  A couple of times to be sure.  

I guess the who point of this story is that if the rat is in the garage, have you considered running it over?  Worked for us.

 
When I was about 17 I was driving with a friend of mine down his street.  He made me turn around as he was CONVINCED he saw a baby kangaroo on the side of the road.  Considering we were NOT in Australia, this did not make much sense to me.  We turned back and almost in front of his house was this giant ### sewer rat.  It must have been hurt or sick because it didn't run away when you go close to it.  The nasty ******* would just go up on its hind legs and lunge at you.  Thus the "baby kangaroo" he saw.  I'm pretty sure we were already high as well, so that may have contributed to his sighting.  We decided that we should kill the giant rat as "there were kids around the neighborhood".  So we grabbed a baseball bat and went out to bash its head in.  His brothers came out there as well so now there is a group of 15-18 year old guys trying to kill this rat.  Only problem was that as you got close enough to swing the bat, the rat would lunge at you.  Ended up looking pretty "manly" as none of us could get close enough to hit it without looking like we were trying to dodge a swarm of bees when the cat sized rat would lunge.  My buddy finally ended up just getting in my car and running the rat over.  A couple of times to be sure.  

I guess the who point of this story is that if the rat is in the garage, have you considered running it over?  Worked for us.
This story is similar to one of mine, that wife still laughs about to this day. We moved in our house 10 years ago and had a ton of work to do. Cleared back yard and had massive brush pile in middle of yard. One sunny day we had a few beers and decided to burn it. Most of yard was bare soil at this point. When pile was half burned a rat came stumbling out, still smoking like on a cartoon or something.

We were sitting in lawn chairs, I grabbed a shovel and went to finish off the rat. It still had life in it and began running and jumping. I couldn’t hit the damn thing. Then it turned and began lunging at me, at which point I turned and ran to safety. I eventually did finish it but wife said it was one of the funniest things she had seen. Guess you had to be there.

 
If you don't catch it by the weekend you should probably go food shopping. You don't have to kill the food there.

 
Copeman said:
The trap might have gotten part of him (leg or something) and he wobbled away, only to die elsewhere.
This is an excellent point.  We put out some food NEXT to the trap and he's left that alone too.  Maybe he's in the wall.  Great.

 
Welp, turns out the type of trap might just be the key.  Those standard wooden ones didn't work when we had mice back in our Minnesota house, and they didn't work with the rat.

Wife bought a different kind (black plastic) and baited it with peanut butter and pecans last night and came to find half a rat hanging out of it this morning.  

Gross.

 

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