How Can I Effectively Annihilate Rats Ravaging My Shed?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around methods for effectively dealing with a rat infestation in a shed. Participants explore various approaches, including traps and poisons, while also sharing anecdotes and humorous takes on the situation. The conversation touches on the implications of different methods, including concerns about safety and legality.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Humorous

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests using snap traps or poison bait to eliminate rats, expressing a desire for alternative methods.
  • Another participant humorously proposes the use of a "pied piper" as a solution.
  • A participant warns about the dangers of poison, particularly regarding pets, and shares their experience with traps, emphasizing the importance of cleaning them after use.
  • Several participants share anecdotes about the effectiveness and drawbacks of various trapping methods, including humane traps and the potential for unpleasant odors from dead rodents.
  • One participant mentions the use of terriers for rat control, suggesting it could be an entertaining option.
  • Another participant humorously lists extreme and impractical methods for dealing with rodents, including flamethrowers and grenades.
  • Concerns about animal cruelty laws are raised, particularly regarding the treatment of trapped rats.
  • One participant discusses the idea of leaving a light on to deter rats, as they prefer dark hiding places.
  • A participant expresses a strong desire to eliminate rats without concern for humane methods, indicating a willingness to use cruel methods.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of opinions on the best methods to deal with rats, with no clear consensus on the most effective or humane approach. Some advocate for traps, while others suggest poison or even extreme measures, leading to a variety of competing views.

Contextual Notes

Participants mention various personal experiences and anecdotal evidence regarding the effectiveness of different methods, but there are no settled conclusions or universally accepted solutions presented in the discussion.

Bladibla
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I've just found out the little buggers have ravaged our shed, with pillows being knawed away, bites on stored furniture etc.

Since i cannot use napalm to burn these scum to death, i have 2 options:
1. Rat trap (snap trap)
2. Poison bait.

Does anyone else havea better idea to purge these scum of earth? Many gradtitudes will follow.
 
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a piper, preferably pied and of hamlin descent.
 
Poison is always dangerous to any pets - yours and/or the neighbor's - that are in the area. We had a rat problem at another house and I used traps. The key is to wash the trap with bleach and water after each use. Otherwise the traps usually only work once over any short period of time.

Otherwise...https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=21807&highlight=mouse
 
Bladibla said:
Since i cannot use napalm to burn these scum to death
One of my favorite books, Deus Irae, has a scene where a man burns rats with napalm, and causes the rats to worship him.
 
BicycleTree said:
One of my favorite books, Deus Irae, has a scene where a man burns rats with napalm, and causes the rats to worship him.

:devil: :devil:
 
There was a recent news report about a man who was torturing rats by tying a rag soaked in lighter fluid to the tail, and then lighting the rag. As it turned out, he shouldn't have been doing this in the house. Yes, he burned the house down.
 
One building I lived in had a mouse problem. They said they had tried poison but the mice just ended up dying in the walls and such and stunk up the place. They thought glue traps were cruel, so they switched back to snap traps. I guess if the trap works properly, the animal dies quickly and you can dispose of them as you see fit. I wasn't in the building long enough to find out how well they worked.
It's actually kind of funny because we were talking about designing a better mousetrap and this was a college building and there's a quote in the college's brochure something like, "If I build a better mousetrap, will 100 people lose their jobs?" I guess that's common, but I thought it was amusing.
 
Ivan Seeking said:
There was a recent news report about a man who was torturing rats by tying a rag soaked in lighter fluid to the tail, and then lighting the rag. As it turned out, he shouldn't have been doing this in the house. Yes, he burned the house down.
:smile: You know, there's a saying- hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat. I guess that applies to hating rats as well. Too bad for the rats though.
 
Snap traps usually work the best, unless you are concerned about other small animals that might get into it, in which case you can get humane traps (they don't kill the rat, just trap it in a cage, which means you're still left with the dirty work once you catch the rat). Though, if you have multiple rats to trap, they're smart buggers. You might need to get a few traps and set some with bait and leave others with bait but not set. That way the smart ones don't learn to avoid the traps if they can't predict when one will go off. Remember to check the traps daily; you don't want rotting rat carcasses lying around.

It will also help to get rid of all the stuff they're getting into, like the pillows (probably being used as nesting material) or any food.
 
  • #10
We had a rat infestation a few weeks back. The Pied Piper came round and laid a load of poison. Couldn't find any corpses, but they stopped taking the poison after a week or so. No smell either, which is lucky because we'd heard scuttling in the cavity walls.

I'd probably stick a load of bigass snap traps down.


Funny story, - my cousin hated the idea of crushing mice heads, so bought a humane trap when she had a mouse in her kitchen. She came back one day from work to find the door shut, so she took the trap and its contents out to the woods to set the little chap free. Expecting it to scurry off when she opened the door, she was mortified to find that the mouse had already died, presumably of a heart attack when the door snapped shut!
 
  • #11
Where I live you can catch rodents in a humane (have-a-heart) trap but you can't transport them live (apparently because it would be too cruel to the animal). Legally, you must kill them after you humanely trap them.
 
  • #12
For a shed where you can't channel their avenue of approach and use snap traps I suggest inquiring locally about someone with terriers. True, it would be a small task for them but I doubt there is a great abundance of Ratters that still use Ferrets in the US. Plus...it's fun to watch the little buggers work.
 
  • #13
Don't tell PETA how I eliminate rodents. Here is my top ten list:

1) Flamethrower
2) Machete
3) Sledge Hammer
4) Grenades
5) Gatling gun
6) Molotov Cocktails
7) AK47
8) Katana
9) Napalm
10) Trebuchet
 
  • #14
Oh, but whatever you do, don't beat the rat to death if it's not dead when you find it (some guy got charged with animal cruelty for killing a rat with a baseball bat when it escaped his "humane trap").

Actually, something else that might drive them out, or at least keep new ones from appearing too quickly...leave a light on all the time, and don't provide any shadowy hiding places. Rats like dark places to hide and try to avoid bright light (they sleep in dark burrows during the day). If you know they are in there and you can't chase them out and seal up their entry, you can leave the light on and put the traps in just a few dark corners.
 
  • #15
dduardo said:
Don't tell PETA how I eliminate rodents. Here is my top ten list:

1) Flamethrower
2) Machete
3) Sledge Hammer
4) Grenades
5) Gatling gun
6) Molotov Cocktails
7) AK47
8) Katana
9) Napalm
10) Trebuchet
actually, the only reason I come to physicsforums is because PETA is paying me to look up stuff on members. here's the top 5 list:

1. danger- unimaginable reasons
2. moonbear- "science" experaments
3.Artman- helping danger
4.zoobyshoe- talk to him aboutl abuse to him
5.dduardo- obvious reasons
 
  • #16
yomamma said:
actually, the only reason I come to physicsforums is because PETA is paying me to look up stuff on members. here's the top 5 list:

1. danger- unimaginable reasons
2. moonbear- "science" experaments
3.Artman- helping danger
4.zoobyshoe- talk to him aboutl abuse to him
5.dduardo- obvious reasons
I'm probably already on their hit list. Did you see in the news that animal rights extremist groups (ones like ALF that bomb research labs) are now at the top of the FBI's list of domestic terrorist threats?
 
  • #17
Moonbear said:
I'm probably already on their hit list. Did you see in the news that animal rights extremist groups (ones like ALF that bomb research labs) are now at the top of the FBI's list of domestic terrorist threats?
Every one of them, and most of Greenpeace, should be shot and pissed on. The only thing that makes Pam Anderson no longer Canuk in my mind is her affiliation with those morons. Her other idiocies were forgiveable.
As for the rats: If you don't have access to BB or CB caps, my trick that worked great for mice, June bugs, dogs, etc. is to hand load a .22 calibre lead pellet (as made for an airgun) into the breach of a .22 rimfire pistol or rifle, and then stick a 5mm starter blank in behind it. It has about half the power of a .22 short cartridge, with no recoil at all, less sound than clapping your hands, and no ricochets (the pellets collapse upon impact with hard objects). As a for-instance, at 10 metres it will completely blast through one side of a 48oz steel fruit juice can and leave a significant dent on the other side without going all the way through. (It's pretty effective on burglars at short range, too.)
 
  • #18
thanks for the replies guys/girls. My concern is not whether killing is humane or not, because either way, the Rats must be purged. Therefore, whatever way i kill (i like cruelty to Rats) i don't really mind.

A initial idea i had was to mix bleach and chemicals to produce poisonous gas to suffocate the Vile things to death. However, My mother was not too keen on such an idea..

Therefore, I'm thinking of Lots of snap traps in dark areas, and if opportunity rises, grilling the corpses of the Rats along with those of weeds.

Note: i am *extremely* against Animal rights, especially those of Rats.
 
  • #19
aaaw, don't kill them! Gather them up, put them in a box or cage, and give them to the pet shop so someone can adopt them. hehe. that's what I would do.
 
  • #20
omgosh, why are you extremely against animal rights?
 
  • #21
totallyclueless said:
omgosh, why are you extremely against animal rights?

Why not? They are edible, so we eat them. They are annoying, so we purge them. And on the whole, i am against those animal activists whoe 'theories' are just full of fallacy, which are the majority if not all of them.
 
  • #22
totallyclueless said:
aaaw, don't kill them! Gather them up, put them in a box or cage, and give them to the pet shop so someone can adopt them. hehe. that's what I would do.
Don't take them to the pet shop. Though, I wouldn't be opposed to catching them live and dropping them off with PETA. Tell them the rats told you they wanted to move because your shed was substandard living conditions, and it wouldn't be right to force them to live in substandard living conditions when the PETA office was so much nicer - lots more paper for them to shred, and boxes to live in, and desk drawers to nest in, and plenty of food in the break room, especially all those grain type things that rats like to eat, etc. :devil:
 
  • #23
Moonbear said:
I wouldn't be opposed to catching them live and dropping them off with PETA.
Poetic justice at its best! Excellent suggestion! :biggrin:
 
  • #24
Danger said:
Poetic justice at its best! Excellent suggestion! :biggrin:

Indeed Moonbear. Such a good idea cannot be ignored..
 
  • #25
Bladibla, if you still have a rat problem, try this:
http://www.kness.com/BigSnap-E.html
but with the following modification. Hold the trap open and push
into the trap the bottom of a plastic grocery bag, then pull
the remainder of the bag over and around the trap so as to
hide it. Set that trap down and into the cavity formed by the
bag and on top of the trigger plate, put whatever bait you deem
fit.
I had a bit of a rat problem. They were using our back garden as
a thouroughfare. I set the trap in the usual way and watched as
the little monsters gathered around the trap, knowing full well
what it was. One of them actually snapped the trap and pulled
back without injury. Then they took the bait and went off.

But when I hid the trap and disguised it as a common grocery bag,
I caught 12 that day. It was satisfying in a disgusting sort of way.
Anyway, they are just so stupid when it comes to food that any other
cleverness they might have had becomes insignificant.

Oh. For anyone who thinks that the little creatures deserve better
treatment than to have their little necks and or backs broken, wait until
you accidently come across a rat's nest in your children's playhouse and end up with a few weeks of a viral meningitis before you speak up.

Good luck getting rid of them.
 
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  • #26
dduardo said:
10) Trebuchet
Trebuchet? Against a rat? No way, I prefer 40-65 pounds of C4. Incased in ball bearings of course.