Rats.

[Paul.G.]

Gun cabinet full of "suitable" firearms, ready to lock n load!!

Get yourself a good quality air rifle with a reasonable quality scope, practice on suitable targets until your a confident shot then take em out! That way you only make the purchase once as no need to buy poison year arter year as sure as eggs are eggs, they will be back.

Just make sure your shooting is good enough to take em out with one shot, even rats should not be made to suffer unnessesarily

 

[Black Sheep]

also if going for the air rifle route, go for a 1.77 instead of a .22 as it's a larger pellet, don't use points as they'll just come out the other side leaving an injury, use domes of flats or specific vermin pellets as the impact is larger, bigger wound, more likely to kill in one shot.

 

[Night Train]

Try this.
http://www.addictinggames.com/shootrat.html

 

[Lisa21]

Gun cabinet full of "suitable" firearms, ready to lock n load!!

Get yourself a good quality air rifle with a reasonable quality scope, practice on suitable targets until your a confident shot then take em out! That way you only make the purchase once as no need to buy poison year arter year as sure as eggs are eggs, they will be back.

Just make sure your shooting is good enough to take em out with one shot, even rats should not be made to suffer unnessesarily

Hey, hunny, if you want one of those I can provide it free of charge. Would not need your LRA then either...

And so much better than milk bottles..........................

 

[badkitty]

Wow. So many replies, thanks people!

Right, have decided that the only sensible thing to do is to have one raucous party in the yard with the following :

Nightrain in the trailer shed, digging out the bucket trap ( I'll supply the peanut butter),

Buggi with the ratman of her choice in the workshop,

Dell with the high pitch sounder and a shovel behind the chicken coop,

Uncle Mort by the compost heap with a ferret,

Fnaar lurking up the back passage with the pussies,

Bongman, Paul G and Black Sheep up on the workshop roof randomly picking off the ones who escape that lot, whilst

Cubist and his tied up trousers, cricket bat and terriers attack the colony under the workshop.

If that all fails, its up to Arch with my future Jack Russell and/or future ratting cat, and Norm with his fork to get them from the front.

If they survive that, then Lisa will let rip with the shotgun.

And Slowmotion will trap any that get through that in the funky cage thing and choose any of the above to despatch them.

Then we'll all have a big bonfire and get drunk.

Any objections?


(and proust would not be invited, even if he was alive.. )

 

[Becs]

hilarious! I'm definitely a +1 for the terriers - as long as it's a proper one, not one that lives in a hand bag! IME humane traps don't work and poison is horrific (and dangerous to pets/wildlife). Dogs or guns every time!

 

[Cubist]

also if going for the air rifle route, go for a 1.77 instead of a .22 as it's a larger pellet, don't use points as they'll just come out the other side leaving an injury, use domes of flats or specific vermin pellets as the impact is larger, bigger wound, more likely to kill in one shot.

.22 for rats. (.177 is a smaller pellet and more likely to over penetrate. ) Nite-vision best as they are too quick under a lamp.

 

[Night Train]

When I was a kid I remember seeing a group of men running down the road waving wooden clubs with nails poking out the end.

I raced down the road on my bike to see what they were chasing and it turned out to be a big rat. The rat managed to get under a car (not many of them on the roads in those days) and then dissappear into the engine bay.
Someone started teh car and gunned the engine hoping to get the rat that way but then drove off to try and lose the rat on the road well away from his home.

Sometimes the oddest memories resurface. I hadn't thought about that for decades.

 

[Fiona N]

Wow. So many replies, thanks people!

Right, have decided that the only sensible thing to do is to have one raucous party in the yard with the following :

N....

Then we'll all have a big bonfire and get drunk.

Any objections?


(and proust would not be invited, even if he was alive.. )

Can I bring my trap?

Last summer I had a similar infestation - I realised too late that the reason the birds were getting through the fat blocks on the feeder every day was because rates were removing them. When I removed the fat balls and bird food, they decided the compost heap was fair game. After the usual addition of chicken wire there, they'd obviously got used to making my garden a thoroughfare to the next door neighbours who put out large amounts of bread from time to time.
So I got a trap. Baited it with pearl barley and oats and caught a rat a day for three days then it took another couple of weeks to get the cagier ones. I dispatched them by dropping the trap in the pond for a few minutes. I did feel a bit sorry for the one which got caught in the trap on an evening when I wasn't in and died of hypothermia when it rained horizontally for a few hours (the trap is a biggish wire box so no cover and it was just standing on concrete - they weren't very bright rats - no camoflage was needed). But still, probably not worse than poison or drowning.

 

[Sambu]

weve got aome pretty entrenched rats round our chickens ive got traps out but no poison for the dogs/cats/fox/owls sake. tried smoke bombs but to no avails ive even had a few with an old trident like fishing spear but i think the best method is dogs and an old chainsaw.

 

[Crackle]

Have you tried changing that fiddle to a pipe and going for a walk to the river?

 

[slowmotion]

Then we'll all have a big bonfire and get drunk.

....shouldn't that be ratted?


Sorry

 

[Lisa21]

Have you tried changing that fiddle to a pipe and going for a walk to the river?

 

[661-Pete]

What resource can I offer, on top of all these excellent ideas? Well, how about a pair of binoculars, wrong end forward? Looking through them, your nasty big ratties will have dwindled to the size of cute little mousy-wousies, no harm to anyone, so end of problem!

 

[buddha]

I'll loan you the stray cat that's been stalking me.
Last summer, it would kill and leave a dead rat outside the back door almost every day. Though I've only had a few mouse pressies and the occasional pigeon this year.