# Big Hairy Rats in the Attic



## Huntn

I’ve been keeping Tom Cat brand poison blocks in the attic and they occasionally get nibbled on. Also use Combat brand gel for roaches, they eat it. The Air Conditioner guy said rats were nibbling on the pvc pipe AC condenser drain in the attic trying to get condensed water.* I asked _rats, not mice? _He said _big hairy rats!**_

* Without basements we keep our AC unit’s in the attic of all places.
** I’m thinking a movie quite from Ruthless People. 

Anyway I got 2 Tom Cat Brand Rat Snap Traps. Took a week but I caught one, not that big in the rat dept, but big enough. These are much better than the old fashioned wire bar mouse trap. Will provide a pic next time of the victim.  I have no idea how they get in, no holes that are visible, and I don’t know if they live in the attic or just visit. It gets damned hot up there in the summer.


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## fooferdoggie

a electronic trap that copnnects to your wifi will let you know when it does the job.


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## Pumbaa

fooferdoggie said:


> a electronic trap that copnnects to your wifi will let you know when it does the job.



with integrated webcam.


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## Huntn

fooferdoggie said:


> a electronic trap that copnnects to your wifi will let you know when it does the job.



That sounds like a great idea. I was checking daily, but no rat, then I let it go a couple days and there I found  an icky maggot ridden corpse. Are you familiar with a brand? I assume much more expensive than these traps that are $5 each.

Update: a quick search they run about $50, all I’ve seen run on batteries, which is not ideal.


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## fooferdoggie

Huntn said:


> That sounds like a great idea. I was checking daily, but no rat, then I let it go a couple days and there I found  an icky maggot ridden corpse. Are you familiar with a brand? I assume much more expensive than these traps that are $5 each.
> 
> Update: a quick search they run about $50, all I’ve seen run on batteries, which is not ideal.



they go a long time on batteries. I think its something like 50 kills. I would not use a rechargable one in that situation.


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## Huntn

fooferdoggie said:


> a electronic trap that copnnects to your wifi will let you know when it does the job.



Caught a rat, because I was not checking daily,  2 days later, icky mess, with maggots. Had to get the thing out of my attic, left a mess on the flooring.

Thinking about:





						Tiny Device Allows You To Get Rid Of Rats In 48 Hours Without Killing
					






					lifehackreport.com
				









						Amazon.com : Victor M2 Smart-Kill Wi-Fi Enabled Indoor Electronic Rat Trap - 1 Trap, Black : Garden & Outdoor
					

Amazon.com : Victor M2 Smart-Kill Wi-Fi Enabled Indoor Electronic Rat Trap - 1 Trap, Black : Garden & Outdoor



					www.amazon.com
				




Anyone have experience with these?


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## Yoused

I picture a tube that, upon detecting a creature, vacuums it up, but, upon approaching  the inlets, they shutter off, causing the rat's momentum to carry it past the outlets which cause it to shoot out the end of the tube. Up would be good. Preferably sevetal hundred feet. Make the right calculations to get them into the bay. The rat would probably survive, but might not be coming back any time soon.


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## fooferdoggie

Huntn said:


> Caught a rat, because I was not checking daily,  2 days later, icky mess, with maggots. Had to get the thing out of my attic, left a mess on the flooring.
> 
> Thinking about:
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> Tiny Device Allows You To Get Rid Of Rats In 48 Hours Without Killing
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> lifehackreport.com
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> Amazon.com : Victor M2 Smart-Kill Wi-Fi Enabled Indoor Electronic Rat Trap - 1 Trap, Black : Garden & Outdoor
> 
> 
> Amazon.com : Victor M2 Smart-Kill Wi-Fi Enabled Indoor Electronic Rat Trap - 1 Trap, Black : Garden & Outdoor
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> 
> 
> www.amazon.com
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> 
> Anyone have experience with these?



works well you need to wash the trap each time it is triggered.


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## lizkat

fooferdoggie said:


> works well you need to wash the trap each time it is triggered.



Sounds yucky....  

Triggered a flashback to some scene in  *The Wire * where detectives Bunk Moreland and Jimmy McNulty are discussing a then recent demand by Bunk's wife to rid their place of a rodent she'd seen in the bedroom closet. Moreland of course dispatched the thing with his.service pistol. It was just a mouse, not even a rat.

_You shot a *mouse *with your .38?_​​_Well first I got one of her dress shoes... _​


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## Huntn

fooferdoggie said:


> works well you need to wash the trap each time it is triggered.



Maybe the sonic device if that drives them away! In other words if they actually work.


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## fooferdoggie

Huntn said:


> Maybe the sonic device if that drives them away! In other words if they actually work.



its not hard to do it comes apart so the electronics don't get wet.


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## lizkat

Huntn said:


> Maybe the sonic device if that drives them away! In other words if they actually work.






fooferdoggie said:


> its not hard to do it comes apart so the electronics don't get wet.




You guys sound like starting to confuse the two types of devices, the sonic annoyer v the WiFi-connected battery-kill device.

I think the federal regulators (the FTC?) still have some kind of ban on bragging about the sonic disruptors, not sure.   Anyway there's a lot of dispute over whether they are effective.

I know one family that swears by plug-in sonic disruptors, and others who tried them and said the creatures got used to the unpleasant sonics.    On the other hand the famliy who likes them live in a sparsely settled exurban area and you could eat off her kitchen floor so...  i think the occasional field mouse who gets in there would yeah be distressed and leave again.  But if they lived on a farm and had grain rats around, a sonic disruptor might not be effective.  Farmers I know who have kids and pets to consider use bait stations with poison in their basements.

One thing about rats that's different to mice:   mice are naturally curious, rats naturally wary.   So the way you use traps if you don't have to worry about kids or pets is different for those two species.   When you set mouse traps if they don't catch anything after a couple days,  move the trap because the mice are not coming around where you had set it.   I don't even bait traps for mice, I just set them along the perimeter of a room where I've seen mouse droppings.  They'll just run into the thing if you set it with the business side facing the wall and an inch or so away from it.

  With rats though they seem pretty cautious about new places and objects, so it's best to put an unbaited, unset trap along a suspected pathway and not bait and not set it for awhile.   Then when they get used to it being there and "harmless" you can set it, with or without bait.  You don't have to use much bait, they can smell a tiny amount of grain or fat (peanut butter for instance) from quite a distance.


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## Huntn

lizkat said:


> You guys sound like starting to confuse the two types of devices, the sonic annoyer v the WiFi-connected battery-kill device.
> 
> I think the federal regulators (the FTC?) still have some kind of ban on bragging about the sonic disruptors, not sure.   Anyway there's a lot of dispute over whether they are effective.
> 
> I know one family that swears by plug-in sonic disruptors, and others who tried them and said the creatures got used to the unpleasant sonics.    On the other hand the famliy who likes them live in a sparsely settled exurban area and you could eat off her kitchen floor so...  i think the occasional field mouse who gets in there would yeah be distressed and leave again.  But if they lived on a farm and had grain rats around, a sonic disruptor might not be effective.  Farmers I know who have kids and pets to consider use bait stations with poison in their basements.
> 
> One thing about rats that's different to mice:   mice are naturally curious, rats naturally wary.   So the way you use traps if you don't have to worry about kids or pets is different for those two species.   When you set mouse traps if they don't catch anything after a couple days,  move the trap because the mice are not coming around where you had set it.   I don't even bait traps for mice, I just set them along the perimeter of a room where I've seen mouse droppings.  They'll just run into the thing if you set it with the business side facing the wall and an inch or so away from it.
> 
> With rats though they seem pretty cautious about new places and objects, so it's best to put an unbaited, unset trap along a suspected pathway and not bait and not set it for awhile.   Then when they get used to it being there and "harmless" you can set it, with or without bait.  You don't have to use much bait, they can smell a tiny amount of grain or fat (peanut butter for instance) from quite a distance.



I’m not, but possibly the other guy? One is a deterrent, another is a kill trap. I just don’t like having to face a daily check of my attic, hence me eyeballing the other options, one being a wifi communicative trap so I know when it springs.


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## lizkat

I would not like having to try to deal with a rat..   for  just mice I don't mind setting a Jawz trap in winter, it generally just breaks their neck and is bloodless, so then I just step out on the deck to airmail the released corpse to whatever eats carrion out there in the snowy landscape.   Come back in, set the trap again somplace because for sure it has cousins who also moved in during October to try to freeload over winter.

Rats though, ugh, they get big.  I used to see city rats when I was walking to my parking garage sometimes, and they were almost the size of miniature Yorkies.   I'd be afraid of setting those big spring-based regular kill traps for one of them, I mean what if it didn't break its neck but just caught a paw and annoyed the hell out of it?  You'd have this furious rat rampaging around your shop or cellar and no way to catch it safely.  No wonder they devised those battery-kill traps.


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## Joe

Im not looking forward to the day I have rats in my attic. First off, I am afraid of heights so its hard enough for me to climb the ladder to the attic just to change the air filter LOL

I will pay someone to take care of any rat issue that may come up LOL


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## lizkat

There's always the "really natural" approach, if you don't mind the details.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1408604483077214210/


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## Deleted member 199

Pumbaa said:


> with integrated webcam.




it’s the next streaming startup. You pay a minimal deposit for a trap, connect it to wifi, and the provider streams the killcam on a PPV site, to recoup the costs.





lizkat said:


> There's always the "really natural" approach, if you don't mind the details.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1408604483077214210/




but then you have a snake to get rid of, at least until the gorilla turns up:


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## Thomas Veil

We have occasional mice. Over the years we’ve tried the jaw type trap like the OP posted, but the little suckers somehow get the peanut butter without triggering it. We’ve tried the old-fashioned snap traps; same story. Essentially, every type of gadget trap we used, the mice have outsmarted on a number of occasions.

The only thing I found that really works is glue traps with peanut butter as bait. Of course you still end up finding live mice stuck to the traps. It sounds cruel, but rather than leave the mouse to die like that over a period of days, I put the thing out of its misery.

Of course, the best mouse trap is a cat. But not everyone wants one in the house. And I have no idea how good cats are at catching large rats.


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## Pumbaa

Thomas Veil said:


> Of course, the best mouse trap is a cat. But not everyone wants one in the house. And I have no idea how good cats are at catching large rats.



Not so sure about that. My friend’s cat is bringing home more mice than it gets rid of, even if we only count the ones that are still alive.


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## lizkat

Pumbaa said:


> Not so sure about that. My friend’s cat is bringing home more mice than it gets rid of, even if we only count the ones that are still alive.




Yes, that can be a problem.  I had an indoor-outdoor cat once that brought a live mouse home through the cat door...  popped it into the tub and proceeded to terrorize the creature until it practically croaked out of fear,  at which point the cat became bored of it and hopped out of the tub and just walked away.  Hello....??!!  So I scooped it up with a yogurt container, tossed the poor thing outside and after that there was a curfew associated with the status of that cat door.    Nightfall meant this "bed and breakfast" was locked up until after daybreak.


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## Huntn

lizkat said:


> There's always the "really natural" approach, if you don't mind the details.
> 
> https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1408604483077214210/



Holy crap! The poor snake if he ate one would be stuck in the wall for a while.


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## Huntn

Thomas Veil said:


> We have occasional mice. Over the years we’ve tried the jaw type trap like the OP posted, but the little suckers somehow get the peanut butter without triggering it. We’ve tried the old-fashioned snap traps; same story. Essentially, every type of gadget trap we used, the mice have outsmarted on a number of occasions.
> 
> The only thing I found that really works is glue traps with peanut butter as bait. Of course you still end up finding live mice stuck to the traps. It sounds cruel, but rather than leave the mouse to die like that over a period of days, I put the thing out of its misery.
> 
> Of course, the best mouse trap is a cat. But not everyone wants one in the house. And I have no idea how good cats are at catching large rats.



The jaw trap I have where the peanut butter goes, there is rim around it and the trigger plate above also has a small hole, so there is virtually no way to get a tongue on peanut butter without triggering. Now the heat has arrived, the attic is about 120F  so I imagine it’s not an ideal place for rodents. Only caught one, and since have been considering a wifi notify trap, but I’m hesitant to spend $50 on one.

I also wonder how the critters get in. I see no holes, and they would have to scale a brick wall on the outside to get up, unless there is a path that is not obvious like a tunnel through the foundation and up through the walls.


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## lizkat

Huntn said:


> The jaw trap I have where the peanut butter goes, there is rim around it and the trigger plate above also has a small hole, so there is virtually no way to get a tongue on peanut butter without triggering. Now the heat has arrived, the attic is about 120F  so I imagine it’s not an ideal place for rodents. Only caught one, and since have been considering a wifi notify trap, but I’m hesitant to spend $50 on one.
> 
> I also wonder how the critters get in. I see no holes, and they would have to scale a brick wall on the outside to get up, unless there is a path that is not obvious like a tunnel through the foundation and up through the walls.




They don't need much of a entryway.... they lack collarbones so can get in through amazingly small gaps, only about 1/4" for a mouse.  Depressing.


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